A Year-end Tribute to the Media and Journalism

As 2024 comes to a close, we want to take a moment to acknowledge and celebrate the incredible work of journalists, reporters, radio and television news broadcasters, news producers and video journalists across the country. Your dedication to reporting on the stories that shape our communities and our world is nothing short of remarkable – and increasingly necessary.

The role of a journalist has evolved significantly over the years. In today’s digital landscape, the pace is faster and the platforms more diverse. Despite these challenges, you continue to hold fast to the principles of truth, accuracy and integrity—principles that are the bedrock of a free and informed society. From breaking news and investigative reporting to feature stories that inspire and uplift, your work informs and empowers millions of people every day.

We understand your jobs are not easy. The pressure to deliver is immense and the stakes are high. That’s why we are committed to being a trusted partner to the media professionals we work with. It’s our goal to make your jobs easier by always providing clear, accurate and timely information. Whether it’s connecting you with expert sources, facilitating interviews or providing context for complex stories, we strive to support you in your mission to keep the public informed.

At (W)right On Communications, we also recognize the critical role you play in fostering understanding and driving meaningful conversations. In an age where misinformation can spread quickly, your work serves as a vital counterbalance, helping to ensure that facts and truth prevail. Your dedication to the craft and your commitment to serving the public good inspire us every day.

As we look ahead to 2025, we salute your resilience, your creativity and your tenacity, and we pledge to continue being a reliable resource for you as we all navigate the ever-changing media landscape. Your contributions are invaluable and your efforts do not go unnoticed. Here’s to a bright and impactful New Year—we can’t wait to see the stories you bring to life in the year ahead!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: David Cumpston is Associate Vice President of (W)right On Communications, Inc. Over his more than 20 years in public relations, he has worked with journalists in the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego, nationally and internationally.  David is also an avid news consumer with a deep respect for his media colleagues.

Cleantech Public Relations Tips

Cleantech public relations graphic design sample

We count ourselves lucky to support climate and energy innovators with cleantech public relations.  

But, no matter how ground-breaking an innovator’s solution is, it doesn’t mean anything if their target customer doesn’t know about them or how they can benefit from their tech.   

Here are some tips to ensure a successful cleantech public relations program:

Top Cleantech Public Relations Tips for Success

1. Understand how you fit in the marketplace.   

Sustainability solutions are coming to market, and they’re coming fast – thankfully.  

But this means that at the top of your cleantech company’s to-do-list is being perfectly clear about your position in the broader marketplace.   

Just take a look at the number of electric fleet innovations, battery storage companies, solar and wind power producers and the multiple software solutions coming to market to optimize them all.  

In a growing sea of competitors, it’s crucial to differentiate yourself and communicate your unique value proposition right out of the gate. 

Where to start: 

Cleantech companies must think broadly about who their real competitors are. You may be competing against more alternatives than you realize.  

Take Uber, for example. It’s easy to think of Uber’s competitors as just Lyft and taxi services. But even as Uber was spearheading the ride-sharing wave, it had to compete against taxis, walking, biking, or just driving yourself. Then came other last-mile solutions like electric scooters, Car2Go and more. Uber and Lyft both jumped into the electric scooter space quickly.  

Whether you’re a new cleantech solution, a long-established company branching into more sustainable solutions or a global business entering a new geographic market, start by zooming out to see the big picture and determine where and how you can stand out.  

With the growth in cleantech innovation, your competition may not be fossil fuels, internal combustion engines or traditional power sources. You may need to position yourself against other new or emerging climate technologies. 

So, start at the 50,000-foot view first, decide where you should fit before you focus your brand messaging and its specific value and contributions.  

Good cleantech public relations will start with a true understanding of your business stands in the existing cleantech landscape.  

RELATED: Cleantech Public Relations Example

The video below is a news story we helped our client partner, a battery storage company, secure. It’s a great example of a brand that understands its local marketplace, brand position and story: 

2. Build a strong platform before you launch.  

A strong brand is the platform you need to support your clean tech public relations. 

Are you a game-changer or shape-shifter? Having strong, purpose-driven convictions at the heart of your story is really important. You want to avoid coming to market with a brand story that continually pivots as you chase customers or investors. That just creates confusion and never gives your brand a chance to stick. 

Where to start: 

Assess your strengths so your messaging can amplify them and address your weaknesses to mitigate them before turning your attention outward and inviting the world’s attention.  

Questions cleantech brands should ask themselves:

  • Is your core technology unique? If not, is it vastly better than the current state of the art?
  • What are the pain points that your technology solves for your intended customers?
  • What are the barriers to adoption and how does your business model lower them?
  • Do you have partners lined up who send clear credibility signals?
  • Is there a beta customer, early adopter or willing reference site for your technology to point to?
  • Is there white paper content or published research that validates what you’re proposing to demonstrate that it’s more than just greenwashing?
  • What are the major trends or market datapoints that support the runway for your growth?

Once your brand messaging is developed, is a content strategy in place so that you have a clear search engine position for the solution you want to be known for? Is your social media engagement building some momentum and community around your ideas and your technology to demonstrate that people care?   

Before you go out to media and customers, you must make sure you and your team have that brand platform in place including core messaging that aligns with and promotes your world view matched with discoverable digital content and amplified by active social channels.  

RELATED: Learn about our cleantech public relation services HERE.

 

3. Don’t overpromise—show, don’t tell.  

Climate technologies, by their very nature, are expected to change the world and do need to be disruptive to old practices or technologies. But rather than making grandiose claims of revolutionizing the world, it’s wiser to let your portfolio or outcomes speak for itself.  

The main goal: 

Under-promise and over-deliver. This is an industry with a lot of noise and skepticism is rife.   

For instance, say you’re introducing a new home-heating system that uses renewable energy and decreases heating costs by 5%. Will you market on the fact that your tech will change how homes are heated forever, that it’s 5% cheaper or some combination of both?   

When your cleantech public relations strategy leads with the cost-savings message and provides your green cred for context, your brand will more likely stay afloat, sell product and avoid drowning in the sea of hyperbole in this industry.  

In other words, your sustainable business model is as essential to your cleantech public relations program as your environmental impact.  

 

4. Adapt your story to meet media needs.   

Be prepared for your media interviews. At some point in your company’s evolution, and if you’re fortunate enough, you’ll be sitting down with many different journalists.   

How to prepare: 

Be aware of who you’re speaking with and the audience they represent so that you can adapt your responses.  

Some trade media are very knowledgeable about clean technologies, but daily news reporters may not be. So, don’t just start talking.  

Read our best media training tips. A good understanding of your interviewer’s credentials and a well-developed plan of action for your interview will help you effectively communicate no matter who sits in the other seat.  

What to do if your solution is too complex: 

Start all of your interviews by asking the reporter what they already know about your subject. Ideally, your cleantech public relations team will have fully briefed you or your spokesperson on the reporter’s area of interest and knowledge level. But you would be amazed at how many technology executives jump directly into the weeds and speak a mile a minute about their solutions. Best rule? Just ask.  

That way, you can provide the right amount of context or background to ensure the reporter grasps the problem your solution addresses and how it does it so brilliantly.  

You’d be surprised sometimes how little a reporter might know about cleantech, and if you’re not careful, you’ll be talking over their head and then be unhappy with the published result.   

Why it’s important to ask questions first: 

You might be tired of repeating the same datapoints or explanations in media interviews and feel like it’s old news and that everybody’s on the same page as you. They’re not!   

You’ve got to assess your audience’s knowledge and interest and then meet them where they are.  

Asking those probing questions first – or having your cleantech public relations agency do it for you as part of your pre-interview briefing – is always a sound practice!  

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Julie Wright is President of (W)right On Communications, Inc. She has worked with leading investor-owned utilities, community choice aggregators, cleantech startups and billion-dollar clean energy powerhouses.

Rediscover the Lost Art of Conversation

For us communicators at (W)right On, it’s essential we understand and practice the art of conversation. It’s in part why we recently hosted a PRSA seminar on networking skills for industry up-and-comers, and on March 28th as part of The Next 25 series celebrating our 25th Anniversary will be hosting a panel of world-class tourism and travel industry experts to talk about the Future of Sustainable Tourism. Being both in-person at our San Diego headquarters and broadcast live online, it will be another great opportunity to put our conversational skills into practice. 

Shown in Celeste Headlee’s interesting TED talk, it’s apparent that fewer and fewer of the younger generation are developing and exercising this skill. Imagine if the 1/3 of teens who send more than 100 texts per day instead worked on their conversational skills: they’d be better prepared for the dating scene, career opportunities and so much more. As Harvard University’s David Deming points out, “high-skilled, difficult to automate jobs increasingly require social skills.” In fact, surveys have for decades highlighted the importance of soft skills – such as oral communication; teamwork/collaboration; professionalism/work ethic; written communications; and critical thinking/problem solving – that are increasingly hard to come by.

Becoming an older person myself, I wrestle with this issue. On the one hand, it seems to me we need to learn – and teach – oral conversation skills for the numerous good reasons just noted. On the other hand, the tidal wave of alternate communication like texts, tweets, SnapChats and Instagram, TikTok and Facebook posts, to say nothing of the evolving immersive world, cannot be ignored. Communication evolves, and so must we all. So is the latter the new reality, with the art of conversation destined to a fading past? I think not.

At (W)right On, we deeply understand the importance of relationships in just about all endeavors. And at the heart of every developing and flourishing relationship is conversation. When we provide presentation training, media training, a social media program, and just about everything else we do, at the core of each is conversation. So while Celeste focuses on tips for conversations while you’re in them at networking events, say, I offer these thoughts as to how to get in – and out – of them.

  1. Go for it– Relax and let go of your fear, since there’s always something you can use to start a conversation. Ask a question, whether it’s for help, an opinion or advice. Make a provocative statement, or muse about a hypothetical situation. Noticing something about the other person (not too personal) or a mutual friend will usually pique their interest to talk with you. Having some topics in mind beforehand will let your subconscience be doing some prep work for you.
  2. Be aware of timing– Catching someone with their mouth full or clearly with one foot out the door is likely to be unproductive. But noticing and approaching someone by themselves in a crowded room will usually be met with appreciation.
  3. Embrace diversity– Conversations are more interesting if they’re with someone less like yourself. To switch things up, avoid the ‘comfort zone’ with your clone, and instead seek to converse with someone who knows things you don’t, be it a younger or older person or someone from another culture, societal background and/or education type and level. You’re less likely to find yourself drawing blanks since differences and new information are inherently more interesting than consistent agreement.
  4. Exit gracefully– Too much of a good thing can be just that, so it’s important to know when to move on gracefully. If needed, you can use a common reason (‘have to get back to…’, ‘connect with [person] before they leave’, ‘take this call/text I’ve been waiting for’, etc). If needed, you can also pull someone else into the conversation to tactfully take over for you. If you’re there with a colleague, you may even have a pre-arranged cue to help you guard your time. In any case, listen for the natural transition, keep the ending on a positive note and recap follow-up actions (so that it’s not so much a ‘good bye’ as it is a pause in the conversation to be picked up later).

The art of conversation is just that: an art. Though some seem to possess the gift of gab, it really isn’t something genetically programmed within a certain few. Great conversation skills must be taught, role modeled and ultimately learned and kept sharp. Like many skills, becoming good at communicating is as much about attitude and willingness to put in the effort as it is about technique – if you continue to work hard and develop your abilities, before too long it becomes effortless.

This post is updated from an earlier version published in 2016.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Grant Wright is CEO of (W)right On Communications, Inc., the award-winning integrated strategic communications firm founded in 1998. With offices in San Diego, Los Angeles, and Vancouver, B.C., his team handles complex communications challenges for B2B tech, cleantech and energy, healthcare, tourism and hospitality, not-for-profit and public sector organizations. Wright and his team elevate the agency experience through data-driven insights and measurable results for client partners.