Speaker 1: A new study out from a regular source here at drilled,
Speaker 1: Doctor Robert Brule with the Institute for Environment and Society
Speaker 1: at Brown University reveals just how big a role the
Speaker 1: PR industry has played in obstructing climate action. From spreading
Speaker 1: denial and disinformation to manipulating the masses to building political
Speaker 1: will for or against certain policies, the PR industry has
Speaker 1: been enabling the fossil fuel industries every move for more
Speaker 1: than one hundred years. Today, doctor Brule joins me to
Speaker 1: talk about that research and the firm that's worked the
Speaker 1: longest and hardest for big Fossil Edelman. Also joining us
Speaker 1: is former Edelman VP, Christine Arena, founder of Generous Films.
Speaker 1: If you're unfamiliar with Edelman, go back to our mad
Speaker 1: Men season season three and listen to episode three, all
Speaker 1: about the legendary Daniel Edelman, whose son Richard has followed
Speaker 1: in his footsteps, and the biography the firm commissioned on
Speaker 1: Daniel Edelman. They brag about how he put a human
Speaker 1: face on big oil for the American Petroleum Institute. Today,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about PR's role in architect and climate obstruction.
Speaker 1: Why PR firms have avoided accountability for so long, and
Speaker 1: what it might look like for them to face the
Speaker 1: music that's coming up after this quick break. I'm Amy
Speaker 1: Westervelt and this is drilled. This episode is supported by
Speaker 1: Degrees Real Talk about Planet Saving Careers, an original podcast
Speaker 1: from the Environmental Defense Fund. People ask me all the
Speaker 1: time what they can do about climate change, and I
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Speaker 1: show notes. Too Big thanks to Degrees for their support. Okay, so,
Speaker 1: doctor Barwl, maybe you could start by explaining what prompted
Speaker 1: this study in the first place. You know, what information
Speaker 1: were you looking for.
Speaker 2: For a long time, I've studied the environmental movement and
Speaker 2: the climate movement, and around twenty twelve I started to
Speaker 2: focus on on what I call the climate counter movement,
Speaker 2: which is the organized effort to stop climate action in
Speaker 2: the United States. And so I started looking at conservative
Speaker 2: think tanks and who funds them and what their role
Speaker 2: was in the climate obstruction process. And as I'm going
Speaker 2: through that data, I started, you know, I'm looking at
Speaker 2: dollar figures of you know, a total budget of two
Speaker 2: million dollars here or three million dollars here for organizations
Speaker 2: like the Heartland or the Competitive Enterprise Institute. And I
Speaker 2: decided to branch out into looking at trade associations like
Speaker 2: the American Petroleum Institute. So I started to get the
Speaker 2: IRS data on the American Petroleum Institute, and suddenly I'm
Speaker 2: looking at a budget of two hundred and twenty five
Speaker 2: million dollars as opposed to three million for the Heartland Institute.
Speaker 2: And so I'm going, my goodness, you know, this is
Speaker 2: at least one hundred times larger as the amount of
Speaker 2: money going into their political activities. And then I started
Speaker 2: to look at, well, where's that money going? And I
Speaker 2: came across a contract from the American Petroleum Institute to
Speaker 2: Ableman Communications in twenty ten for about seventy five million
Speaker 2: dollars to one organization from one other organization. And that
Speaker 2: really piqued my interest because even if I add up
Speaker 2: all of the money going into the climate science denial efforts,
Speaker 2: I recently published a paper on that, and it amounts to
Speaker 2: about thirty six million dollars annually. And I'm looking at
Speaker 2: a contract in one year of seventy five million dollars
Speaker 2: for one organization in PR And I said, how much
Speaker 2: of this is going on? You know, do we have
Speaker 2: any good studies of this? And it turns out that
Speaker 2: the answer is no, we're not looking that nobody had
Speaker 2: done any peer reviewed research into the extent of the
Speaker 2: role of advertising companies in the climate change arena. I mean,
Speaker 2: there were an isolated study here about this particular campaign
Speaker 2: or this particular campaign, but it didn't give you an
Speaker 2: overall comparative idea of how much activity there was. So
Speaker 2: I decided, let's go look at that. I'm just wondering
Speaker 2: how much of this is there? So I set out
Speaker 2: to do a really really basic discovery study where all
Speaker 2: I wanted to know is, well, how much is there
Speaker 2: and what do they do? What is this? And so
Speaker 2: we compiled the list of about two I think it
Speaker 2: was two hundred and fourteen organizations that are prominent players
Speaker 2: in climate politics. And it's all of the usual actors, API,
Speaker 2: Sierra Club and our DC, Exxonmobile, Chevron, etc. We have
Speaker 2: a list of two hundred and fourteen organizations. And then
Speaker 2: I looked up it turns out that there's a corporate
Speaker 2: directory that's put out annually by o'dwyers that basically, PR
Speaker 2: firms send in who they work for, you know, lists
Speaker 2: who they worked for. So we collected them all. That
Speaker 2: took a while, and then we just go in and
Speaker 2: we do a match. Who worked for Exon Mobile, we listed,
Speaker 2: who worked for Sierra Club, We listed, who worked for Chevron,
Speaker 2: we listed, and we just compiled that data very simple,
Speaker 2: and that forms the backbone of the paper. It's just
Speaker 2: a very descriptive paper. We make no claims about the
Speaker 2: content of their advertising campaigns. We just sort of say
Speaker 2: this is the frequency of employment that we see from
Speaker 2: this data. Then we said, well, what do these PR
Speaker 2: firms do for these organizations? So we did a Lexus
Speaker 2: Nexus search of all of the media coverage from nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty nine to the year two thousand that involved one
Speaker 2: of our two hundred and fourteen organizations and tried to
Speaker 2: find all the media coverage that had to do with
Speaker 2: advertising by these companies. And we compiled that and we
Speaker 2: wrote a forty page supplemental material to the report. So
Speaker 2: we focused on the ten largest PR companies that are
Speaker 2: engaged in this area based on our data, and then
Speaker 2: we found another ten that had gotten an extreme amount
Speaker 2: of coverage because of their activities were seen as controversial
Speaker 2: or obviously newsworthy. And what we found is that regardless
Speaker 2: of whether they're working for the Sierra Club or Greenpeace,
Speaker 2: or Exon Mobile or the American fuel and petrochemical manufacturers,
Speaker 2: the strategies and tactics of PR are pretty much similar
Speaker 2: across the board. There's a well defined discipline of public
Speaker 2: relations activities that is carried out on behalf of both sides.
Speaker 2: And what this tells me in the end is that one,
Speaker 2: basically everybody uses public relations as part of their effort
Speaker 2: to either support or to obstruct action on climate change. Two,
Speaker 2: they use pretty similar tactics, and so basically this is
Speaker 2: a ubiquitous and under examined area of the effort to
Speaker 2: obstruct climate action. The other thing we found is that
Speaker 2: it's not about denying climate science. The climate science denial
Speaker 2: it's less expensive to do than to try to change
Speaker 2: public opinion or to shift the cultural discourse, which is
Speaker 2: what a lot of these PR campaigns do. So it
Speaker 2: might only cost thirty or forty million dollars to try
Speaker 2: to cast out on climate science, but if you want
Speaker 2: to move all the public opinion of people in the
Speaker 2: United States, or you want to shift congressional discourse about
Speaker 2: it or media discourse on it. That's a much bigger proposition.
Speaker 2: And I've seen figures that range, you know, depending on
Speaker 2: the year, of course, but between five hundred million and
Speaker 2: seven hundred million dollars a year is spent on these
Speaker 2: pr activities to obstruct climate action. And if you only
Speaker 2: look at climate science denial, you're missing this other amount
Speaker 2: of money that's probably ten or twenty times larger than
Speaker 2: the climate science denial efforts. So I think, you know,
Speaker 2: for me, what I'm hoping that this study does is
Speaker 2: that it puts the role of the public relations organizations
Speaker 2: on the map, because it's pretty clear to me that
Speaker 2: they are integral to the efforts to obstruct climate action,
Speaker 2: and that they are independent actors, you know, in other words,
Speaker 2: they bid on these contracts and get them, but they
Speaker 2: choose to bid on what contracts they want to take
Speaker 2: and which ones they don't want to take, and so
Speaker 2: they're voluntarily signing on to assist in these efforts, whether
Speaker 2: it's helping to forward climate action. Public relations are to
Speaker 2: obstruct climate action, which is what the vast majority of
Speaker 2: these organizations are engaged in. So with that, I think
Speaker 2: hopefully this puts the role of public relations firms on
Speaker 2: par with Exon Mobile or API or Environmental Defense Fund,
Speaker 2: is that these organizations are significant actors. They're the people
Speaker 2: that Exon Mobile or API go to to say we
Speaker 2: need this done for us, and they're the people that
Speaker 2: carry it out and execute it. And so they are
Speaker 2: part of the effort to either forward climate action or
Speaker 2: struck climate action. And I think that it's going to
Speaker 2: be interesting to see how they're held accountable for their
Speaker 2: activities in the future.
Speaker 1: That's great, Okay, So I want to bring in Christine Arena.
Speaker 1: She is the head of Generalis Films and she is
Speaker 1: also a former VP at Edelman. I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: just your kind of initial response when you first saw
Speaker 1: the information in this study.
Speaker 3: What did you think, Well, just to drill down on
Speaker 3: what doctor Bull is saying, it was eye opening to
Speaker 3: see this is really the most comprehensive look to date
Speaker 3: on how PR firms and AD firms really are a
Speaker 3: major force in obstructing climate action. And also to doctor
Speaker 3: Bull's point, PR and AD firms are central players in
Speaker 3: what we look at as the influence industry. Right so
Speaker 3: Exon Mobile can't do what it's doing without its influence
Speaker 3: industry partners. Those partners include law firms, those partners include
Speaker 3: lobbying organizations right when think tanks and PR and ad
Speaker 3: firms are part of that influence industry and they're central players.
Speaker 3: And so what doctor Burle is describing is incredibly important
Speaker 3: because when you look at the resources channel through these
Speaker 3: influence industry partners, PR and ad firms are taking a
Speaker 3: big chunk of the money. A lot of emphasis is
Speaker 3: on external facing advertising, marketing and promotion that helps prop
Speaker 3: up Exon Mobile or the fossil fuel industry social license
Speaker 3: to operate. And the point of doing that is to
Speaker 3: give the world a sense that we got it. To
Speaker 3: quote API, we're on it. We don't need regulation, you know,
Speaker 3: we're good corporate actors. And so this is really, I think,
Speaker 3: just such a valuable study. And to me, also the
Speaker 3: major contribution is that it really helps illustrate why we are
Speaker 3: where we are on climate policy today. So to this
Speaker 3: point that doctor Burl's making, instead of the focus on
Speaker 3: outright climate denial or are questioning the science, I think
Speaker 3: our focus, everyone's focus, the public's focus needs to shift
Speaker 3: to climate obstruction, what that is, what it looks like
Speaker 3: in corporate propaganda as well. That's where the game is now.
Speaker 3: And to me, that's what's so valuable about the study.
Speaker 3: It points this out and it really shows who the
Speaker 3: major actors are and the kinds of activities they're engaged
Speaker 3: and on behalf of their clients. The three questions the
Speaker 3: paper answers, which I think are so interesting, are you know,
Speaker 3: which are the firms that are the most utilized by
Speaker 3: the industry, who has the deepest relationships, and then what's
Speaker 3: the extent of their involvement in climate politics and what
Speaker 3: activities do they undertake to advance fossil fuel interests? And
Speaker 3: I think what is really interesting with respect to the
Speaker 3: first point about the PR firms that are most utilized,
Speaker 3: is that we see that the current debate around whether
Speaker 3: or not fossil fuel clients deserve representation is really a
Speaker 3: flawed debate. It's not a debate. In fact, we're not going, oh,
Speaker 3: should PR and AD firms represent these clients? Should they not?
Speaker 3: This is not an ideological debate. The real issues are
Speaker 3: how are they currently represented? How are fossil fuel clients
Speaker 3: currently represented by PR and ad firms and to what end, like,
Speaker 3: what is the result of that? And so I think,
Speaker 3: as this research shows, there are some PR firms and
Speaker 3: AD firms that have relationships, you know, with some fossil
Speaker 3: fuel clients, but then we see that there are other
Speaker 3: firms with deep, deep relationships across these sectors oil, gas, coal, rail,
Speaker 3: utility and these fears. You know, you got your corporate
Speaker 3: clients like Exxons and Chevrons and then trade associations, and
Speaker 3: there's such a difference. You know, you got your American
Speaker 3: petroleum institutes, but also some of the more obstructing organizations
Speaker 3: like American fuel and petrochemical manufacturers and others that are
Speaker 3: considered more extreme. So that's actually interesting because some of
Speaker 3: those bigger relationships, and then if you look at the
Speaker 3: resources spent with those trade associations, if you're a business
Speaker 3: leader and you're representing those clients, you cannot plausibly, incredibly
Speaker 3: argue that your decision to represent them is neutral. It's
Speaker 3: not a neutral decision because the entire purpose of some
Speaker 3: of these super obstructing trade associations is to do just
Speaker 3: that they exist in order to obstruct climate action. That's
Speaker 3: their role, that's their purpose, that's the value proposition. So
Speaker 3: you are not advancing any goal other than climate obstruction
Speaker 3: by representing these clients, you are not helping to bring
Speaker 3: the energy transition into being, So any spin on that
Speaker 3: I think is really squelched, especially as doctor Brule is
Speaker 3: sort of unveiled the spending and the big, big contracts.
Speaker 3: So I think that's very interesting finding there, and it
Speaker 3: kind of puts, I think, a lid on the party
Speaker 3: line and from the industry, which is that look, we
Speaker 3: represent all clients, we're unbiased, we help everyone. That's not
Speaker 3: really true. Representation is not neutral, and certainly the outcome
Speaker 3: of representation is not neutral. And then the other aspect
Speaker 3: of the study that I find so interesting is just
Speaker 3: this drill down on disinformation. The fact that the vast
Speaker 3: majority of ads and marketing messages evaluated across a sample
Speaker 3: set of one hundred and seventy nine clients contain factual distortions, omissions,
Speaker 3: and greenwashing. That should be an alarm bell for the
Speaker 3: entire industry, because not only are these messages misleading, but
Speaker 3: they're uniquely harmful to people. And I think that is
Speaker 3: really something that we're going to see play out over
Speaker 3: the next year as we see how these ag lawsuits.
Speaker 3: Do you know, we got Mara Healey, Attorney General of Massachusetts.
Speaker 3: She successfully prosecuted Pretty Pharma and the Sackler family, but
Speaker 3: in the process of doing that she also named McKinsey
Speaker 3: their marketing partner, and you know, they settled for six
Speaker 3: hundred million there. So there is definitely a precedent that
Speaker 3: shows that professional services firms are not immune, that client
Speaker 3: privilege is not a panacea, and that is really just
Speaker 3: the point I think that activists should juilt down on,
Speaker 3: and I think it's something that I want employees inside
Speaker 3: these agencies to be really aware of. That disinformation, the
Speaker 3: fact that most of the messaging coming out of the
Speaker 3: oil industry, the fossil fuel industry now contains these distortions
Speaker 3: emissions are in greenwashing, and those distortions emissions are harmful,
Speaker 3: potentially harmful to people. That is just such an important point.
Speaker 1: So speaking of people inside of these agencies, I want
Speaker 1: to hear a little bit about both the media coverage
Speaker 1: of the study, Doctor Brule, who you've been talking to
Speaker 1: and who's covered it and who hasn't, and then also
Speaker 1: what you guys have both been seeing from from Edelman,
Speaker 1: which you know kind of looms large in this report.
Speaker 1: So maybe doctor Brule few and us speak first to
Speaker 1: you know, what the media response has been.
Speaker 2: We've had I think about ten or twelve stories coming out.
Speaker 2: Your Washington Post got it in their newsletter. What's what's
Speaker 2: been interesting for me is what's missing is that Wall
Speaker 2: Street Journal didn't cover it. The New York Times has
Speaker 2: yet to cover it. So that for me, I guess,
Speaker 2: is one area. But I mean, as far as the
Speaker 2: coverage itself, I find it incredibly amusing that every one
Speaker 2: of the media outlets that I talked to also tried
Speaker 2: to contact Aleman Communications and the answer was no comment,
Speaker 2: no comment, no comment, no comment, no comment, and no comment.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is not a controversial topic. As far
Speaker 2: as I can see, is that this is just as
Speaker 2: great descriptive analysis. I mean to follow on though a
Speaker 2: little bit with Christine is that I think what we
Speaker 2: really need to recognize is that it's not just about disinformation,
Speaker 2: it's about manipulation of consciousness. Is that what these PR
Speaker 2: firms do, and they spend I mean I did a
Speaker 2: paper on this up to like one point five billion
Speaker 2: dollars from I think like nineteen eighty nine to twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: I think one point three billion dollars one point five
Speaker 2: billion dollars. We know that the public relations industry itself
Speaker 2: has bragged about the result of their activities regarding the
Speaker 2: effectiveness of what they do. Some new information I have
Speaker 2: on this is that documents from the Global Climate Coalition
Speaker 2: and their efforts and their pr efforts by ebrew Sarason
Speaker 2: claimed that this is a quote GCC has successfully turned
Speaker 2: the tide on press coverage of global climate change science,
Speaker 2: effectively countering the eco catastrophe message, and asserted the lack
Speaker 2: of scientific consensus on global climate And then again they
Speaker 2: claimed GCC's effort to raise awareness of the science and
Speaker 2: economics of climate change influenced the administration's decision to rely
Speaker 2: on voluntary rather than mandatory measures to reduce climate change
Speaker 2: greenhouse gas emissions in its Climate Change Action policy. In
Speaker 2: other words, they're claiming that they're able to manipulate the
Speaker 2: consciousness of the American public, that they're able to manipulate
Speaker 2: and shift the media coverage of it, and that they're
Speaker 2: able to manipulate the public opinion so that climate change
Speaker 2: is not seen to be problematic and that climate science
Speaker 2: is inaccurate and that they're able to manipulate and change
Speaker 2: public policy because of these perr activities.
Speaker 1: Christine, what have you been seeing from the agency itself
Speaker 1: and what you know in terms of this sort of
Speaker 1: no common, no comment, now comment, how how much did
Speaker 1: you sort of expect that to be the reaction and
Speaker 1: what do you expect to see going forward.
Speaker 3: I absolutely expected the containment strategy that we've seen for
Speaker 3: the past, you know, five six years on these stories continue.
Speaker 3: A containment strategy is simply when you put up barriers
Speaker 3: to discussion because you don't want to address the material issues.
Speaker 3: You're going to try to undermine your critics. You're going
Speaker 3: to try to say, you know, this journalist from the
Speaker 3: New York Times wrote the story about FTI, she's biased
Speaker 3: against the fossil fuel industry. You're going to try to
Speaker 3: downplay this peer reviewed research. As activists, you know, you're
Speaker 3: going to not comment. You're going to instruct your employees
Speaker 3: not to comment. You're going to issue can statements that
Speaker 3: don't really address the material issues. You're going to pledge
Speaker 3: to not represent climate deniers when clearly no one is
Speaker 3: denying climate change anymore. The game has moved, so that
Speaker 3: is expected. It's what they've been doing for years, and
Speaker 3: it's not surprising. It is infuriating, but it's not surprising.
Speaker 3: I'm a little more bullish than doctor Burull on the
Speaker 3: long term implications here, because my attitude is they can
Speaker 3: issue as many no comments as they like, they can
Speaker 3: post as many canned environmental statements on their websites as
Speaker 3: they like. But I think that these old school containment
Speaker 3: strategies are just not going to succeed against the weight
Speaker 3: of this particular story and in today's climate, because let's
Speaker 3: not forget we really are in an era of accountability
Speaker 3: and accountability journalism. I mean, we got whistleblowers on the
Speaker 3: cover of Time magazine. So disinformation is a huge issue nationally,
Speaker 3: and when we drill down to climate disinformation, this is
Speaker 3: about a lot more than agencies are presently acknowledging. Because
Speaker 3: now not only do we have this body of peer
Speaker 3: reviewed evidence, but there's the seven state ag lawsuits filed
Speaker 3: on the basis of deceptive marketing practices. There's a congressional
Speaker 3: investigation into big oil disinformation. Subpoena is issued there. And
Speaker 3: so I do think that journalists, including inside the trades
Speaker 3: are going to start to ask tougher questions rather than
Speaker 3: towing the agency party line. So offending firms are really
Speaker 3: starting to receive pressure from all sides. They might not
Speaker 3: yet acknowledge this publicly, but that's what's really going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting. What do you guys both think about
Speaker 1: the fact that Edelman has announced that they are going
Speaker 1: to review their client roster. What does that mean when
Speaker 1: a firm reviews their claire roster?
Speaker 2: What do you think they did that, you know, after
Speaker 2: they got kind of beat up by clean creatives to say, well,
Speaker 2: we're going to look at maybe we're not going to
Speaker 2: keep working for fossil fuel companies. And maybe they maybe
Speaker 2: they will probably you know, they're going to throw somebody
Speaker 2: out of the bus to do this. But you know,
Speaker 2: guess what, you've been doing this for twenty years. You've
Speaker 2: got a history here, you've got an accountability here. Part
Speaker 2: of your effort is contributed to the obstruction of climate
Speaker 2: action and the you know, promulgation of false advertising and
Speaker 2: disingenuous activities that you know, you can't say, oh, well
Speaker 2: we're not going to you know, we're not going to
Speaker 2: continue to do these evil things. Yeah, okay, but that's
Speaker 2: not an excuse to an accountability for their past actions.
Speaker 2: I think they're going to try to not talk about
Speaker 2: their past activities. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I couldn't agree more. The story is just getting started.
Speaker 3: This is not just a bunch of activists. This is
Speaker 3: not a short term media cycle. This is a long
Speaker 3: gain and it's going to escalate over the next twelve months,
Speaker 3: particularly as we go into round two of the House investigation.
Speaker 3: But you know this whole thing about the sixty day review, Look,
Speaker 3: that is just a delay tactic so that they don't
Speaker 3: really have to say anything publicly and materially and all
Speaker 3: next year they can wait to see if other agencies respond.
Speaker 3: They're buying a little time. We're going to review our
Speaker 3: client roster. Well, that gives them the opportunity then to
Speaker 3: come up with basically standards that could be interpreted a
Speaker 3: number of different ways. For example, back in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 3: of course they came forward and said we will no
Speaker 3: longer work on behalf of climate deniers. But because the
Speaker 3: disinformation game doesn't really center on scientific climate denial anymore,
Speaker 3: it's moved and advanced to different messaging and more greenwashing
Speaker 3: and corporate propaganda, so technically they can work with anyone.
Speaker 3: So these standards are a bit subjective. They can be
Speaker 3: interpreted a number of different ways, and I believe that's
Speaker 3: by design that gives them the opportunity to kind of
Speaker 3: justify and say, well, we think Exon is being misrepresented
Speaker 3: and they're taking the lead in carbon emissions activities without
Speaker 3: acknowledging the fact that one hundred percent of those activities
Speaker 3: are on the supply side of Exxon's business. They're not
Speaker 3: talking about using oil and gas output. They're not talking
Speaker 3: about their core products when they say we're in line
Speaker 3: with the Paris Agreement. They're talking about bringing fossil fuels
Speaker 3: to market more efficiently. But because we have no laws
Speaker 3: in the United States to require fine print on advertising,
Speaker 3: Edelman can say, well, they're doing a lot for climate
Speaker 3: and the ads themselves past week fact checking criteria. So
Speaker 3: really the whole emphasis, I think needs to be much
Speaker 3: more pointed on the nature of the messaging that they're producing. Really,
Speaker 3: we need higher standards, and we need for those standards
Speaker 3: to be enforced, and we need leadership within the space.
Speaker 3: There have been no agency CEOs who have clung forward
Speaker 3: to say, you know what, we agree climate disinformation is
Speaker 3: out of control, just like COVID disinformation. This is a crisis.
Speaker 3: Greenwashing is out of control as well. This is a crisis.
Speaker 3: We acknowledge a crisis, and we're going to do something
Speaker 3: about it. Nowhere in Edelman's statement or in any other
Speaker 3: agency statement, do they even ignore knowledge that crisis exists,
Speaker 3: and that to me is incriminating. And that is the
Speaker 3: biggest hot button issue in my view, that we can
Speaker 3: look at. And then the other aspect I would say
Speaker 3: is that this whole crisis is also revealing a cultural
Speaker 3: rift inside agencies. You know, agencies are in a tough
Speaker 3: spot right now in the sense that the innovation in
Speaker 3: the marketing communications realm is really happening, not in the
Speaker 3: big old school agencies. It's happening outside and independence and startups.
Speaker 3: And so we have this new generation of young creative talent,
Speaker 3: whether they're into creator communities or n fts or you know,
Speaker 3: specialized formats like film, really gravitating towards these indies and startups.
Speaker 3: And so it is harder for big agencies like Wagner,
Speaker 3: Egstrom and Eedleman to retain top creative talent. So and
Speaker 3: then if you layer on top of that, the ethos
Speaker 3: of this new generation of creative workers climate is critical
Speaker 3: to them. It's a paramount consume. So when you have
Speaker 3: these old guard management attempts to deflect from the deeper
Speaker 3: issues to put forth you know, subjective standards that could
Speaker 3: be interpreted a number of different ways, that double talk,
Speaker 3: those containment strategies, those strategists are just not going to work.
Speaker 3: They're going to just eroad trust more, cause more leaks,
Speaker 3: and then really guarantee that the truth comes out some
Speaker 3: other way, which then lengthens the media cycle. So it's
Speaker 3: really funny. I was thinking, you know, yesterday, if the
Speaker 3: PR and AD agency world were my client at this point,
Speaker 3: I would be imploring them to come forward to address
Speaker 3: the nature of the problem, at the very least address
Speaker 3: that this material problem exists. If you don't do that,
Speaker 3: and you try to sidestep this, you're going to lose
Speaker 3: the trust not only of the media, the media cycle,
Speaker 3: of the public, but your own employees as well. I
Speaker 3: think this could be really much more damaging for them
Speaker 3: than they're willing to acknowledge.
Speaker 1: That's it for this time. Quick shout out to some
Speaker 1: of our latest Patreon supporters. Patrick Santucci, Nick Freeman, Ruth Schaeffer,
Speaker 1: Ak Shatt thea Young's, Tana Morgan, Katie, David Weiskough and
Speaker 1: Will Golli. Hugh thank you so much for the support.
Speaker 1: It means a lot and it really does pay for
Speaker 1: a lot of things over here, including a new reporter
Speaker 1: in Australia. Her name is Lyndall Rollins. You might have
Speaker 1: heard her a couple episodes ago talking about the gas
Speaker 1: fired recovery in Australia. We'll be hearing more from her
Speaker 1: incoming episodes. We also have two more parts of season six,
Speaker 1: our gas season, coming up in the next few months.
Speaker 1: Our producer or Juliana Bradley, is helping to put those
Speaker 1: together and doing a ton of reporting as well. Again
Speaker 1: reporting that our Patreon supporters have helped to support, So
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