Each year the United States alone generates approximately 250 million tons of waste;  our nation’s businesses can be a key part of the solution to this and other environmental issues. While “corporate social responsibility” is the most commonly known term, “corporate responsibility” can address issues in up to three separate categories: social, economic and environmental. As influential members of the community it is vital for businesses to seek ways to contribute to a more sustainable future.

We’ve noticed the environmental CR industry has been in the news a lot lately – ranging from new program announcements, sustainable education opportunities and extensive studies on the future of the industry.  As more mainstream companies are implementing sustainable programs including carbon offsets and composting initiatives, we decided to explore what corporate responsibility means to companies large and small.

Microsoft recently announced their company-wide carbon offset program, where each business unit is responsible for decreasing their footprint, with an overall goal of becoming a carbon neutral company by 2013, including data centers and laboratories.

Similarly, Green Biz’ Heather Clancy wrote: Why companies need composting to meet zero-waste goals. While most offices currently recycle, many individuals are not educated on proper recycling techniques. Without the correct education and showcasing proper signage, many people misinterpret recyclable goods for waste.

Fast Company’s Ariel Schwartz highlighted many of the questions the environmental corporate responsibility industry as a whole is seeking in her piece: The State of Corporate Responsibility: Ambivalent, Leaderless, And A Little Apathetic.  The current state of CR is relatively vague, which creates the opportunity for companies to stand out and create their own standards and guidelines. Additionally Schwartz touches on the importance of a formalized training and certification program in an effort to help mold tomorrow’s sustainable leaders.

While the term corporate responsibility is loosely defined, it allows sustainable influencers and innovators the opportunity to mold the industry into a standardized environmentally sound practice.

With the recent flurry of CR articles lately, it is clear that CR as an industry and as a mainstream business practice is here to stay. How will different companies rise to the occasion?

[Photo courtesy of Flickr user Joost J. Bakker IJmuiden]

Shauna and Roger Nyhus originally met when they both participated in a panel discussion on the Future of Public Relations for the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Puget Sound Chapter. We found her to be a kindred social media spirit, primarily because we both believe in integrating social media and digital strategy into all client teams instead of breaking them out into a separate department. This ensures social media is embedded in the client strategy from the beginning, not an afterthought or an add-on.

After the conversation with the team, we took a few more minutes with Shauna to film her advice on three ways strategic communicators can integrate media relations with social media. Check out her perspective on using Twitter to pitch reporters and bloggers, the importance of simplicity and “reverse-pitching” (getting the attention of national media via hyper-local blogs).

Social media savvy Seattleites know Shauna as kind of a big deal. She is the 2012 president for Seattle’s Social Media Club chapter, which is the largest Social Media Club chapter in the world. She has worked in social media at Nordstrom and Comcast as well as consulted for Google as part of her employment at Ant’s Eye View. Her extensive consulting and volunteering related to social media for nonprofits and technology groups earned her a spot in GeekWire’s Geeks Who Give Back series and calendar.

Check out our past blog posts on Breakfast Brainfood:
U.S. Innovation Policies and Economics: Jonathan Bensky’s Perspective (VIDEO)
Bill Stafford on Global Competition and Seattle

If you live or work downtown, you’ve probably noticed the Space Needle is sporting a new orange top in honor of the 50^th anniversary of the 1962 World’s Fair.  Seattle Center Foundation’s The Next Fifty celebration includes six months of attractions and activities at Seattle Center in a variety of areas our region is a global leader in – including arts and culture, history, sustainable futures, science and technology, global health, learning, commerce and the innovation economy, and civic action.

Global health is a key component of The Next Fifty celebration because Seattle is continually proven as an international hub for innovative work in this field. Seattle’s work will be featured in themed events and exhibits on the topic throughout the summer months, with a particular focus on July. Event highlights include Agency, a student competition; and Groundswell, which features Melinda Gates as the keynote speaker.

It’s no secret that the greater Seattle region is a world leader for global health innovation and education. Here’s a quick glance at a few of our region’s milestones:

• 1956: The first Group Health research project is launched by K. Warner Schaie, PhD. The Seattle Longitudinal Study on aging continues to this day.

• 1979: PATH launched its first large-scale international project and helped China modernize its contraceptive factories and increase production of condoms, oral and injectable contraceptives, and intrauterine devices that met international standards.

• 2010: Seattle BioMed opens the Malaria Clinical Trials Center (MCTC), one of only four centers in the world that can safely and effectively test new malaria treatments and vaccines in humans by the malaria human challenge model.

Most local global health companies don’t need to look back 50 years to see how far they’ve come – in the past few years, local organizations have developed new vaccines, global initiatives and even transformed an entire city block to create the global headquarters for The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. More than 50 local organizations and businesses have formed a collaboration, Global Health Nexus, an initiative by the Washington Global Health Alliance, to continue to grow this sector and raise public awareness of global health issues.

From SightLife, a local organization that specializes in eye banking to the Puget Sound Blood Center, a leader in transfusion medicine and research, local organizations have been making an impact on the Seattle community and communities across the globe.

We’re excited to see what happens next on the global health scene. Here’s to the next (next) fifty!

[Photo courtesy of Department for International Development]

GoGreen! It’s not just a good mantra—it’s a national conference tour focused on sustainability practices in business that takes place across the country. The 2012 conference kicked off in Seattle on Wednesday, April 25^th and will make stops in New York, Phoenix, Portland, and Austin.

Nyhus, along with our clients Skanska and Imperium Renewables, attended the conference and sat on panels to discuss the future of sustainability practices within the green economy. Nyhus client Imperium Renewables CEO, John Plaza, spoke to Imperium’s leadership in biofuels development as part of the “2012 Innovators in Sustainability” panel. Beyond the profitability and success of the company over the past three years, Plaza highlighted the incredible opportunity that exists in the northwest to foster a new industry around sustainable, jet fuel.

Roger Nyhus, our president and CEO, moderated a concluding session titled “Green Marketing & Branding: Success stories in the new media landscape.” The panel featured Lisa Picard, executive vice president at Skanska Commercial Development Seattle; Ralph Allora, co-founder and marketing director of TRAY Creative and Greg Hanscom, a senior editor at Grist.

Roger and the panelists explored ideas around the influence of citizen journalists, greenwashing and new media platforms for businesses who promote sustainability. Lisa noted that the best practice in development is to think about what your customer wants and what their customer wants. That philosophy can be seen in Skanska’s work with Brooks Running – the proposed Stone34 building will be Brooks’ international headquarters while also creating an urban trailhead for the Burke Gillman Trail. In considering and incorporating the needs of runners into the design of Stone34, Skanska can provide a building that empowers the Brooks brand instead of simply housing it.

The panel also explored the rise of greenwashing, the difficulty in defining what’s green and what’s not, and how new media allows the market to better identify greenwashed products. The panel discussion folded well into a story in Sunday’s USA Today where Roger was quoted in a piece on the Kashi brand’s PR crisis – Kashi cereal’s ‘natural’ claims stir anger:

“Kellogg got itself into trouble by ‘not being entirely transparent,’ says Roger Nyhus, president of Nyhus Communications in Seattle. He sees a trend among some companies ‘of fudging language to allay consumer concerns and jump on the green bandwagon, and I think it’s starting to backfire.’”

GoGreen Seattle was a successful arena to bring together visionaries and leaders in business to share, collaborate, and commit to empowering the green economy. Nyhus is excited about the contributions of our past and present clients in attendance including the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, Imperium Renewables, Pan Pacific Hotel Seattle, Skanska, and the Washington Clean Technology Alliance – all of whom participated in the conference – to elevate their leadership in the green economy.

The conference Twitter hashtag, where you can see insights by Nyhus and other speakers, is #gogreensea.

#FF New Twitter friends from #GoGreenSEA: @carolsanford @ghanscom @gogreenconf @grist @honestbuildings @lilgirlbigvoice @wastemanagement

— Nyhus Communications (@nyhus) April 27, 2012

  See below for highlights live-tweeted during Roger’s panel discussion on green branding and new media:

@Nyhus game at #GoGreenSEA: Green Marketing or Greenwashing? Examples: Al Gore’s green investment firm, Levis Water.org campaign — GoGreen Conference (@gogreenconf) April 25, 2012

“all journalists work to build their personal brand” – @ghanscom of @grist #GoGreenSEA

— Nyhus Communications (@nyhus) April 25, 2012

Keep #GreenMarketing messages simple to avoid appearance of #greenwashing #GoGreenSEA

— Randy Bolerjack (@RandyBolerjack) April 25, 2012

Geography. People. Events. Dumb luck. Which was it that made this relatively remote city in a rainy corner of the Pacific Northwest one of the world’s recognized centers of international commerce, culture, and innovation? The correct answer is all of the above.
– Stephen H. Dunphy, Crosscut

Last week, Bill Stafford, Nyhus senior counselor and founder of the Trade Development Alliance of Greater Seattle, chaired a panel discussion titled “From World’s Fair to World City” at the Museum of History and Industry. The panel examined Seattle’s rise as a global city, and enjoyed the insights of Dick Ford, former head of the Port of Seattle; Shan Mullin, former chair of the Trade Development Alliance of Greater Seattle; and Diane Adachi, director for international relations at the University of Washington.

The panel looked to identify how Seattle, a “rainy corner of the world” grew into a global, economic powerhouse. A deepwater port, equidistance between Asia and Europe, a genial culture, and the three Bills (Bill Boeing, Bill Weyerhaeuser and Bill Gates) established Seattle as a hub of international trade, travel and culture. Global reach isn’t unique to Seattle – international trade supports one in every three jobs in Washington state. Washington is the most trade-dependent state in the country, and with the rise of the BRIC nations, our state is poised to grow as a key gateway for the movement of people, goods and ideas.

Nyhus is a product of its environment; like the city our global headquarters calls home, our work spans the nation and the globe. With clients in diverse markets like Australia and China and work varying from statewide campaigns to national thought leadership – we take advantage of our location in one of the world’s best innovation hubs and tailor our work to be meaningful across borders.

[Image courtesy of Wikimedia]

Sifting through endless racks of clothing or staring at various electronic devices is often the fate that comes to mind when one contemplates shopping for a loved one. Thoughtful is attempting to change the stress of selecting gifts for friends and family by integrating data from Facebook and other sources to make intelligent recommendations based on users’ likes and dislikes.

As a startup, the company faced the challenge of establishing its brand in a market place that is already dominated with players such as Groupon and Living Social. As a result, sophisticated messaging was important to clearly differentiate the brand and build awareness with key audiences.

Thought leadership and executive visibility were also critical to cutting through the media clutter. One way to approach this is to become your own journalist and choose one topic and spokesperson to aggressively build and maintain social media, speaking and contributed article programs around. Also, involvement with the community through in-person events and social media can showcase a personal side of an organization, which in turn can be a key factor in gaining brand loyalty.

Lastly, it’s especially important during launches to make sure all aspects of your campaign are coordinated. Train spokespeople and marketing and social media managers to ensure that you are putting out a consistent message across all your communication vehicles – from press releases to blog and Twitter posts to marketing collateral.

You can view a case study on Nyhus’ work for Thoughtful here: http://www.nyhus.com/our-work/case-studies/thoughtful/

[Photo courtesy of Wikimedia]

Cameron Bays

Cameron joined Nyhus in October 2010 as an account executive for the technology public relations team and was promoted to senior account executive after top-notch client team management and media placement.

Through her proactive and creative approach, Cameron provides valuable communications strategies that deliver tangible results. Her strategic and proactive approach to creating opportunities and her collaborative style have contributed to major media, speaking and award placements for her clients.

Recently, Cameron led a successful sector specialist visit for Invest Victoria that included meetings with C-level executives from top Seattle companies and interviews with targeted technology and biotech media.

Jon Misola

Jon was recently promoted from account coordinator to marketing specialist, supporting a variety of internal and client-facing marketing initiatives.

Jon uses his video-editing and desktop publishing skills to support with a broad range of audio, visual and graphics projects. He also manages web projects and is ready to capture photo opps at events.

Angi Ramos

Angi was promoted to account executive after a year working as an account coordinator on corporate and consumer public relations accounts at Nyhus. She started at Nyhus as an intern and worked with technology clients on the public relations team.

Angi has been a project lead for clients in a variety of industries, including hospitality, real estate, sustainability and financial services. Her stellar media relations and event management skills have helped her position clients as thought leaders in local and national news outlets.

Recently, Angi helped prepare comprehensive strategic communications plans for two local nonprofit organizations and planned a successful media workshop in New York that attracted reporters from American Banker, CNBC, Dow Jones, Financial Times and Reuters.

In a recent project with American Express, the team wanted to  get more insights about how consumers feel about new and emerging payment options – such as Serve, PayPal and Google Wallet.  So we conducted both qualitative focus groups and a nationwide quantitative survey to really dig into consumer attitudes.

As you can imagine, we uncovered a lot of data through the research, but we needed a creative way to communicate our findings as well as create a narrative around how the payments landscape is changing. We decided to create an infographic that posed the question: “what does your wallet say about you?” Using the research, we weaved together three archetypes of consumers and used the infographic to bring our numbers to life and connect them to the larger trend story as well.

In addition to our survey data, we also wanted to communicate the benefits of the American Express Prepaid Card and their Serve peer-to-peer payment technology. Because we had a multi-layered approach, we decided to pursue a Multimedia News Release (MNR), which lets you include interactive tools like videos and photos. This has many of the same advantages of a social media release.

We saw great results with the MNR and infographic in a variety of outlets including national and industry specific publications. Additionally, the infographic was shared virally on social media channels and interactive blogs – which can be hard to do with traditional press releases.

When distributing news, you have to think about how people want to consume it. By using visual assets such as infographics, microsites, videos and online newsrooms, you can make sure that reporters and consumers alike have the ability to share your news and access all the background content to tell a rich story.

What you do you think is the best way to distribute news? Have you seen any creative infographics lately?

Steve Smith, Senior Account Executive

Steve brings to Nyhus more than a decade of experience in public affairs, advocacy and strategic communications counsel. He is a consummate public affairs practitioner, with deep knowledge of policy and issue communications and advocacy. Steve’s background and experience span global, national and regional issues management, including service to elected officials at the city, county and state level in Washington state.

Before joining Nyhus, Steve was a project manager at the Northwest Trade Adjustment Assistance Center in Seattle. Previously, he worked in public and corporate affairs with Edelman Seattle, Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, and PRR, Inc., where he supported clients such as Microsoft and the Washington State Department of Transportation. Steve is currently vice chair of the City of Snoqualmie Planning Commission. Connect with him on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevesmith or Twitter @srs162.

Todd Burley, Account Executive 

Todd brings nearly a decade of regional, cross-sector relationships and experiences to Nyhus as an account executive. At Nyhus, he works with clients to build strong strategic relationships and compelling messaging to help them achieve their goals.

Prior to joining Nyhus, Todd was communications director at both Seattle Parks Foundation and Seattle Center Foundation, where he worked to improve the community through public relations, outreach and advocacy, including working on high-profile campaigns such as the 2008 Seattle Parks and Green Spaces Levy and the 50^th anniversary of the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, “The Next Fifty.” Check out Todd’s insight in the Nyhus blog post: Nyhus Public Affairs Career Advice for Students.

Maggie Humphreys, Account Coordinator

Maggie brings to Nyhus an elevated understanding of international affairs and intercultural communication strategies. As an account coordinator, Maggie assists the public affairs team in media monitoring, policy research, stakeholder engagement, media pitching and strategic messaging development. Before coming to Nyhus, Maggie studied international relations in Lugano, Switzerland at Franklin College.

Check out Nyhus blog posts by Maggie: Washington State’s Aerospace Sector Helps Revitalize America’s Export Economy and The Export-Import Bank: A Quiet PR Crisis.

Lauren Purkey, Account Coordinator

As an account coordinator at Nyhus Communications, Lauren provides support across the agency’s diverse range of public relations clients including corporate, consumer and technology.

Lauren assists the public relations team with media monitoring, strategic messaging and marketing.

Before her experience at Nyhus, Lauren completed successful internships at two Seattle-area agencies where she supported a diverse set of clients in the corporate and hospitality industries, providing valuable support in creating press materials. In addition, she contributed to social media strategy, coordinated events, reached out to local media outlets and aided in developmental marketing strategies. Connect with Lauren on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenpurkey.