The lobby area of Edelman’s office in Victoria was taken over this morning by naked climate change protestors. We have been targeted because of our work with E.ON. I have spent much of the morning trying to engage in dialogue with the protestors – to no avail so far. Unsurprisingly, the naked demonstration (along with others in London today) is drawing attention from the media and below is a copy of a statement I made earlier to Sky News which I wanted to share to explain our position.
“Despite the presence of naked protestors in our downstairs lobby and a couple of banner-wavers on our roof, it is very much business as usual at Edelman today. This is not the first time we have been targeted by protestors because of our work with E.ON. As with last time, we offered the protestors the chance to sit down (preferably, fully clothed) and engage in a constructive dialogue with us. We are happy to hear their concerns and discuss their issues. Sadly, they seem more intent on going for the headline, picture story and the sound-bite, rather than for a constructive and engaged conversation.
The bottom line is that Edelman is proud to work with E.ON, as they continue to argue that in order to reduce our carbon emissions, keep energy affordable and keep the lights on, we need a balanced energy policy that includes renewables, nuclear and cleaner fossil fuels. In the last year, Edelman has worked with E.ON on numerous communications programmes around offshore wind at London Array and E.ON’s aspirations to build new nuclear, as well as for cleaner coal with carbon capture & storage at Kingsnorth. And we very much hope this relationship will continue long into the future.
The future of PR lies with engaged dialogue among multiple stakeholders, including the NGO community. It no longer belongs to cheap stunts that don’t, in all honesty, get to the heart of the big issues of our time.”
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