Public relations giant Edelman has lost valued executives and clients by trying to play both sides of the climate debate

Edelman, which calls itself the world’s largest public relations firm, has lost four executives who lead its corporate-responsibility practice – at least in part because of the company’s unwillingness to take a strong stand on climate change. Two influential clients have also left the firm over the climate issue.

The executives include Lisa Manley, Henk Campher and Freya Williams, who have left the firm or given notice in the last two months. The exits follow the departure of Christine Arena in December. All four worked in Edelman’s Business and Social Purpose practice, which “helps clients bring together profit and purpose.” Williams ran the practice in New York, Manley in Chicago and Campher in San Francisco.

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In the meantime, We Mean Business, a coalition of more than 100 companies advocating bold action on climate change, terminated a contract with Edelman last fall after controversy arose over the firm’s work for fossil fuel industry clients, a spokesman for the coalition confirmed.

Nike declined to use Edelman on a climate-related project, said sources at both companies who spoke on condition of anonymity. And Unilever, a major client, also has expressed concern to Edelman over the climate issue, and is reviewing its relationship with the PR firm, sources said.

None of this will have much immediate financial impact on Edelman, which has more than 5,500 employees and reported worldwide revenues of $768m in the 2014 fiscal year. But the loss of the executives, who are well known in the world of corporate responsibility, could impact client business – and, at minimum, dent Edelman’s reputation.

The departures illustrate the challenges faced by PR firms, as well as professional services firms in such fields as accounting, law and management consulting, as they try to straddle the climate debate. Edelman has struggled for the last year to serve its fossil fuel industry clients, including Shell and Chevron, without putting off other clients or staffers who see climate change as a moral issue with clear rights and wrongs.

Richard Edelman, the firm’s CEO and the 61-year-old son of its founder, Daniel Edelman, has told colleagues that he wants to boost the firm’s revenues to $1bn. Turning away business won’t help him achieve that goal; indeed, in the public relations business, controversial clients can often be very lucrative. That said, Edelman has strict policies against working for tobacco companies and gun manufacturers.

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On climate, though, Edelman resembles most global PR companies who want to play on both sides of the debate over what to do about carbon emissions. Burson-Marsteller, a unit of communications giant WPP, helped design an ambitious campaign touting coal as a solution to poverty alleviation for Peabody Coal, which opposes any form of climate regulation.

FleishmanHillard, a unit of Omnicom, has worked for the anti-regulation American Petroleum Institute (API). At the same time, WPP and Omnicom joined forces last year to help build collectively.org, a digital platform urging young people to take action against climate change, albeit with such anodyne messages as “We Need to Get Better at Talking About Climate Change” and “Synchronized Swimmers Want You To Know One Thing About Climate Change”.

Historically, Edelman has positioned itself as a different kind of PR firm: family-owned, less subject to the short-term earnings pressures of its rivals, and driven by a sense of purpose and a desire to make a difference in the world. Just last month, Richard Edelman told graduates of DePaul University’s communications school to “make communications marketing your version of The Avengers, the force for good aspiring to change the world”.

As perhaps the world’s best known PR guru and a regular at the World Economic Forum’s Davos confab, Richard Edelman frequently talks about the company’s work on behalf of Walmart’s sustainability initiatives, GE’s Ecomagination campaign and CVS’ decision to stop selling cigarettes. In a blog post headlined The Climate Change Imperative, Edelman described a dinner at the home of his Harvard University classmate Jeffrey Sachs, the director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, saying he had “made a strong case for private sector involvement” in the process of deeply reducing carbon emissions.

His company’s formal position on climate change is more ambiguous.

In August, a survey by the Climate Investigations Center – a small NGO run by former Greenpeace USA research director Kert Davies – spotlighted Edelman’s work for API and the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which vehemently oppose regulation of climate pollution; the Alliance for Northwest Jobs and Export, which pushed on behalf of the coal industry and railroads for coal-export plants opposed by environmentalists; and TransCanada, which was advised by Edelman to take aim at environmental opponents of its Energy East pipeline. (TransCanada subsequently ended its relationship with Edelman. Edelman also no longer works for API.)

In response, Edelman released a statement saying it will not “accept client assignments that aim to deny climate change”. But the statement does not preclude Edelman from advising fossil fuel clients on campaigns to oppose climate regulation, or to support projects such as Shell’s arctic drilling or the exploitation of the Canadian tar sands that would make the climate problem worse. Edelman says only that its clients must commit to “fact-based, truthful and transparent communications”.

Edelman executives declined to elaborate on the firm’s climate position. Questions to Edelman were referred to a spokesman, Chris Allieri, who declined to comment, except to say that Edelman does not currently represent coal-industry clients.

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This no-comment policy may be surprising considering that Richard Edelman has said: “What people expect from business and government today is transparency, in word and in action. Business must explain both how and why it does what it does.”

The departing executives also declined to speak publicly about Edelman. Their clients included Hewlett Packard, The North Face, PwC, Starbucks, Unilever and the We Mean Business coalition, which was put together by executives from Ikea, Nike, The B Team, BSR, Ceres and The Climate Group.

Some clues about where Edelman is headed can be gleaned from a new set of values and a statement of purpose published last month. The statement makes explicit the company’s willingness to work on both sides of controversial issues, including climate change:

We believe that independently held, opposing views deserve to be heard in the court of public opinion and we assert our role as a firm to being advocates for our clients. Doing so doesn’t condone every action every client takes or imply implicit support for every position a client may adopt, but does reflect our absolute commitment and support of their right to exercise their freedom of expression.

It also grants each employee the “right to elect not to work on a piece of business that does not align with his or her personal beliefs.”

In a recent video to employees about the new statement of purpose, Matt Harrington, Edelman’s global chief operating officer, said simply: “We exist to be advocates for our clients.”

That makes Edelman a little more like every other big PR firm — and a little less like The Avengers, a force for good aspiring to change the world.