This article was updated in October 2023 to reflect the most recent industry developments.

We had the pleasure to go on the Growth Secrets Podcast with host Reade Milner. Reade runs an intriguing marketing consulting practice in Atlanta that helps a range of businesses market better.

By Melissa Baldwin and Mike Casey

Most clean economy businesses need to build profiles for both their company and individual members of their executive teams. Their reasons vary, often by where the company is in the business life cycle. We find a lot of our clients’ profile building needs clusters at these points: 

You might have seen this Washington Post story, “The Underbelly of Electric Vehicles,” which takes a critical view of EV production’s impact on people and the planet. It’s worth unpacking because it reflects several under-appreciated realities of generating attention from national media outlets.

At Tigercomm, we’re often approached by people seeking PR help, wanting us to pitch national stories. Effective corporate communications blends traditional news story generation with content marketing – a combination of both “owned” content and “earned” media.

How to Run a Renewable Energy Public Relations (PR) Campaign

In mid-2022, almost 60% of Fortune 500 CEOs said their company had a plan to reach net-zero by 2050. Renewable energy companies can expect to see a significant surge in demand from corporations looking to decarbonize. Because of this, renewable energy companies are also going to face a lot of competition. A strategic renewable energy public relations campaign is no longer a “nice to have” – it’s a must. In this blog post, we will explore key strategies and best practices to put you at the front of the crowd. 

#Cleantechers, one of the best things about my job is getting a close look at technologies with world-changing potential. Rondo Energy's "Heat Battery" is one of them.

The Heat Battery is the brainchild of past and current client, John O'Donnell. For a decade, this brilliant inventor has patiently evangelized that the world can store #renewableenergy-generated heat much more cost effectively than electricity from wind and solar.

By using basic bricks to store heat, Rondo's opened a path to rapidly decarbonizing heavy industries that traditionally require lots of heat, steam and power – creating a massive carbon pollution footprint.

As John told David R. Baker of Bloomberg in this story: "If you want to get to scale fast, it had better be boring — you’d better not have material science to prove.... We’ve combined stuff the world knows how to make at scale.”

Let's roll.

The Importance of Public Affairs in the Micromobility Industry

Micromobility (MM) risks the fate of other disruptive industries that underinvested in public affairs — and were wiped out by politicians as a result. The gaps in other sectors’ missteps have included: ineffective campaigns at the local level, lack of supportive coalitions, staff without government experience, and not showing officials how supporting micromobility is politically safe and beneficial. Among the approaches micromobility should consider: consistently using social media to flag riders on pending policy decisions that affect them, driving calls to action using segmented data, and engaging riders in taking “microactivism” steps from their phones.

The launch of Canary Media is terrific news for the cleantech industry. My hat is off to Eric Wesoff, David Roberts, Jeff St. John, GTM alumni, and the entire team they've assembled. We need good journalism now more than ever, especially climate-focused reporting. Eric and his team have delivered it for decades. It's reassuring to know that won't stop now.

Nat Schub and I enjoyed talking with CleanTechnica’s podcast host, Mike Barnard, to discuss the importance of the micromobility (MM) industry and our analysis of its public affairs programs. A year in the making, the analysis was a pre-pandemic snapshot of an exciting sector that’s evolving and growing.

Offshore wind communicators, community engagement leads and supporters: Have you had a question to ask offshore wind editors? Now’s your chance. 

Tune in Wednesday, November 18th as we host three editors of top publications covering the offshore wind sector. This is the first time such a panel has been convened, and Nancy Sopko of the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind and we are honored to moderate it.

by Tigercomm President Mike Casey

Yesterday, we posted on two recent interviews with Vestas CEO Anders Runevad. One of the questions, by a CNBC on-air correspondent, really jumped out at us:

Q: "Why doesn't ocean acidification get the same attention as climate change?"

A: "Too many syllables. It's not a good hashtag."

This was the tongue-in-cheek answer to a serious question that I found myself giving, as a panelist in front of a crowd of 200 people at Cross Campus in Santa Monica, California.

By Bridgette Borst

by Mike Casey

By Bridgette Borst

Bob Pickard has worked for dirty energy public relations firms in the past, but he's dead on correct and exhaustive in this piece ("The Climate Change PR Disaster"). A few key points.

By Ross Chanin & Emilee Pierce

We recently hosted Politico senior energy & environment reporter Darren Goode for a Scaling Green Communicating Energy talk. Our first post discussed Goode's estimates of the odds that various pieces of energy legislation will pass Congress and be signed into law. Our second post featured Goode's tips for pitching your energy story to a top reporter like him.  Today, we've got Goode's thoughts on how social media - particularly Twitter - is changing the way he reports and informs readers.

MediaMatters for America has looked at coverage of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, and not surprisingly (but sadly), they find that "the media continue to largely ignore the risk of an oil spill, while promoting the economic benefits of the project." A few key findings from MediaMatters' research:

For a number of important reasons - economic, environmental, strategic - it's clear that energy is one of the most important, urgent topics of the day.  It's also a fascinating, fun topic to talk about, with the price of clean energy plummeting, with massive investment pouring into the sector, with tremendous opportunity for profit, and with stunning technological breakthroughs being reported on a regular basis. For all these reasons, one would think that the media in general, and our leading newspapers in particular, would be sharply ramping up coverage of energy and energy-related economic, environmental, and strategic issues.

According to a recent TechCrunch story, "when untruthful information is immediately corrected in a news story," it doesn't fix the effect. In fact, a new study concludes, calling out false information can paradoxically make users “more resistant to factual information." Or, as the TechCrunch article puts it: "The more truth we read, the more we tend to believe strongly held lies."

At a time when energy and environmental issues are more important than ever, stories like this are truly pitiful.

by Brian Willis

This is truly astounding.

What should every startup know about public relations (PR)?  Communications consultant Lindsey Green tells us in a helpful article at The Daily Muse. The key points: