The importance of PR for the Umweltinstitut of Munich
Climate Change . Media . SocietyI had the opportunity to interview Jurek Vengels, working in the public relations office of the Umweltinstitut as a campaign planner . We will come back to his studies and previous works which led him to the Umweltinstitut, after which we will focus on the work led by the PR team and the obstacles they can encounter.
A career shaped by activism
After studying political sciences and getting a master degree in international relations, Jurek’s voluntary activism for the protection of the environment led him to get into contact with NGOs (non-governmental organisations). He started to work for the Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz in Berlin. Jurek adds : “It was kind of a coincidence that I got into this job, but on the other hand, I had an interest in these topics. I think it was a good match”.
(c) Umweltinstitut München with the authorization of Jurek Vengels
As part of the PR team, the main job of Jurek now is to assist the experts of the Umweltinstitut by spreading their research to the public and the press, to which the topics covered by the experts are not reachable : “My job is to take information from experts in a field and make it more accessible and engaging for normal people”. For this, he needs to develop campaigns strategies, finding a target group who could be influenced, but also to identify political opportunities to try to impact the environment policy.
Reaching people
Making people aware of environmental issues is a great step, but Jurek’s goal is also to engage them, by encouraging them to sign petitions, participate in demonstrations or donate to the organisation. To reach these people, the PR team mostly counts on the Umweltinstitut’s newsletter which has 230.000 subscribers. As for social media, the use they make of each is very different : X is a way to directly get in touch with politicians and journalists, so it is a good platform for lobbying and communicating their stands to influential people. Facebook, targeting mostly 50-60 years old people, is used as a way to get more funding, as this category of the population has often more money to give to NGOs than the 20-40 years old target of Instagram for exemple, the latter is mostly used for branding.
Doing public relations as a non-governmental organisation
The team is composed of two graphic designers, two persons working on social medias as well as other types of publications, one press officer, one person focusing on the website and the newsletter and three campaigners. Recently, the PR team was reorganised : “We had the impression that the marketing team was getting too big, so we decided to have a campaigning and fundraising team on one side which I am now part of, and the marketing team as a different team. It’s easier to organise ourselves now”.
As a NGO, organisation is very important indeed, because on the contrary to companies, their limited budget does not allow them to make mistakes and try out risky strategies, as well as invest as much money in advertisement. To balance this budget and understaffed issues, they cooperate a lot with other environmental NGOs, which increase their impact : “For instance, by publishing about a topic on social media at the same time, publishing reports together, organising demonstrations or share posts from other NGOs to support them…”.