When “we” first started out, the agency was called The Write Stuff. “We” is overstating it a bit, as it was just Suzanne Shelton for the first few years. Employee #1 didn’t come on board until ’94.

Our first venture into “environmental” comms came when we went down the rabbit hole of the utility world. Deregulation was part of the national conversation, and we raised our hand to support utilities with comms and marketing.

Based on all the insight and experience we’d gained in the energy space, we planted our flag as the country’s leading marketing communications agency entirely focused on the energy and environmental sector.

To support our position in the market, we launched our first (of many) annual Energy Pulse, the only insights report of its kind revealing consumer beliefs and expectations related to energy, energy efficiency and environmental impact.

As corporate sustainability began to emerge as a field – and companies started to evaluate their impact on the planet and explore how they could leverage their actions for reputational gain – we broadened our scope to include this work.

Having learned that the only way we could help our clients create real impact in the world — and in their businesses — was to bring the “doing” and “saying” of sustainability together, we sold Shelton Group to the world’s leading management consultancy entirely focused in sustainability: Environmental Resources Management (ERM).

This move made us the only sustainability comms firm backed by the technical expertise of a global sustainability actor — and opened our practice up to a global scale.