Austin PR firm closing after 21 years
EnviroMedia founder made decision as work for the state dried up.
A groundbreaking Austin public relations and advertising agency has shut down after more than two decades in business.
EnviroMedia co-founder Valerie Salinas-Davis said the firm, which specialized in advocacy work, has seen less business from the state in recent years — a key contributor to its demise. EnviroMedia, for instance, crafted anti-smoking campaigns following the record $17 billion settlement that attorneys general in Texas and other states reached with the major tobacco companies in 1998.
“For the majority of our history, working with the state of Texas has been our core business,” Salinas-Davis said. “Today, we have some fantastic clients but no active work with the state. We’ve had a contract with the Texas Health and Human Services Commission for 18 years, and still do, but it’s been dormant — even though it was renewed in May.”
The firm has also worked with the Texas Department of Transportation in the past. That 18-year arrangement ended in 2016, Salinas-Davis said.
“In general, we’ve seen very few marketing requests for proposals from the state of Texas in the past couple of years,” she said. “We’ve responded to a few, but sometimes it can even be difficult finding out who was awarded the business.”
Salinas-Davis announced the news — one of the toughest decisions she says she’s ever had to make — to the firm’s clients and its 15 employees this week.
“Pretty consistently, it’s been surprise, followed by compassion for the tough decision to close,” she said. “Together we’ve created some pretty big, positive momentum over the past two decades and I know it will continue without EnviroMedia, the agency.
“I urge corporations to step up more than ever for sustainability and diversity and inclusion. I urge politicians to preserve and pass laws that protect the environment and our health, and that make good business sense. And I urge everyone to vote in these important mid-term elections.”
One of EnviroMedia’s last big projects was in conjunction with the League of Women Voters, crafting a campaign to get Central Texans to register to vote and, on Election Day, cast their ballots.
“You’ll see the ad campaign we created, inspired by two iconic Austin murals, on more than 50 Capital Metro buses through Elec-
The decision had been expected. President Donald Trump said at a campaign rally in Duluth in June that his administration would soon rescind the withdrawal.
The Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters, The Wilderness Society and allied groups denounced the decision as a sellout to foreign corporate interests. They blasted the agency for failing to complete the study, despite Perdue’s assurances to a congressional committee that it would be and that no decision would be made until it was finished.
“The Trump Administration broke its word to us, to Congress, and to the American people when it said it would finish the environmental assessment and base decisions on facts and science,” Alex Falconer, executive director of the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters, said in a statement.
Forest Service spokesman Brady Smith said the agency determined that there was no need to complete the assessment, based on what it had learned over the last 15 months. But he said the Forest Service met its obligations to conduct a scientific analysis that included multiple opportunities for public feedback.
U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, the lead Democrat on a subcommittee that funds the Forest Service, issued a statement accusing Perdue of breaking his promise to her panel, “bending to political pressure from a foreign mining company and abandoning sound science.” She said Perdue’s word “cannot be trusted.”
But Twin Metals, which is owned by the Chilean mining company Antofagasta, welcomed the decision, which will also give a freer hand to other companies that have conducted exploratory drilling in the area.
“This important action ensures that federal lands that have been open to responsible mining activity for decades will remain open, offering the Iron Range region the potential for thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars in economic growth,” Twin Metals CEO Kelly Osborne said in a statement.
The Trump administration in May reinstated two key mineral leases for Twin Metals that the Obama administration had declined to renew. Environmental groups are challenging that decision in court.
The Twin Metals project is not as advanced as the planned PolyMet mine, which would become Minnesota’s first copper-nickel mine if it gets final approval of its permits. PolyMet sits several miles away in a different watershed.