About ZDS Communications
ZDS Communications is a public relations and marketing agency specializing in companies, nonprofits and individuals dedicated to making a difference. We have proven success in connecting clients with the customers they desire and implementing customized campaigns with outstanding return on investment.
What we deliver: Strategic messaging; outstanding media placements; project management; co-marketing partnerships; corporate sponsorships. Areas of expertise: Cleantech and sustainability.
Zan Dubin, president, developed her PR and marketing expertise as a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, where she wrote features and breaking news stories for 15 years. She co-founded National Drive Electric Week, the annual celebration bringing EV test drives and more to thousands from coast to coast and beyond.
We have obtained media coverage for clients in all of these outlets. Please click to read.
Watch the National Drive Electric Week event produced by ZDS Communications
Services
Our goal is to rapidly ascertain your needs and your distinctive position in the marketplace. Then, we’ll work with you to create a multifaceted PR and marketing plan to help you achieve the results you desire. We excel in pinpointing your strengths in order to develop effective, integrated marketing campaigns and in obtaining media exposure. Over the past 25 years, we’ve built relationships and formed broad based partnerships that we’ll draw upon to further your cause.
Public Relations Planning and Execution
Special Events: Planning, Execution and Sponsorship Attainment
Marketing
- Conference Engagement
- Advertising
- Partnerships
Writing
- Press releases & media kits
- Blogs
- Editorials
- Websites
- Brochures
- Annual reports
- Newsletters
- Employee magazines
- Copywriting
- Speeches
Video Production
- From script to editing supervision
Crisis Communications
Testimonials
activism
1. DISNEYLAND'S AUTOPIA RIDE
Problem
Disneyland’s iconic Autopia ride uses gas cars that spew pollution and send up a stench, which has drawn condemnation for decades. Even auto journalists recommended a switch to electric. It all fell on deaf ears.
Solutions
We launched a strategic outreach and communications campaign by contacting Los Angeles Times climate columnist Sammy Roth, knowing of his personal passion for Disneyland. Then, as we filed official complaints with local and state air-quality regulators as well as with Disneyland, Roth prodded: Would the park ditch the gas cars billowing “lung-damaging” emissions?
In fact, Disney replied, it would–but it hadn’t ruled out hybrids, which burn climate-destroying oil, or given a specific timeline. So, we staged a rally to demand plug-in EVs, only, within two years.
Results!
Disney corporate called direct: It would meet our demands and Autopia’s gas cars would be gone by fall 2026. The “activists won,” as The LA Times stated. The full measure of our victory: We got one of the world’s biggest, most beloved brands to deliver a global endorsement of all-electric vehicles and a renunciation of the internal combustion engine.
2. DODGER FANS AGAINST FOSSIL FUELS
Problem
The Los Angeles Dodgers have been advertising for Big Oil for decades through their sponsorship deal with Phillips 66. This greenwashing, with the oil giant’s 76 gas station logos plastered across Dodger stadium, has fans associating a deadly fossil fuel with their beloved championship team. It sends deceitful messages that oil is as wholesome and gauzily nostalgic as America’s favorite pastime. Climate change? No biggy. A Dodger dog will make it all go away.
Solution
We sent an Open Letter of protest to Dodger owner Mark Walter signed by environmental leaders including Bill McKibben and actor Kyra Sedgwick and staged a protest at Dodger Stadium.
Results!
Our petition has now been signed by nearly 23,000 and our campaign, launched by three women and now a project of the Sierra Club’s Southern California chapter–its largest-counts among its supporters Communities for a Better Environment, Bill McKibben’s Third Act, Earthworks, Resilient Palisades and more. The media coverage we have obtained to date includes:
- Los Angeles Times, here, here and here.
- KCRW
- Spectrum News
- Bill McKibben’s The Crucial Years
- Earthworks
- Common Dreams
- One Earth Now
- UCLA Emmett Institute, Legal Planet
In fall 2024, a federal grand jury indicted Phillips 66 for allegedly sending thousands of gallons of water contaminated with oil and grease into LA County’s sewer system. The company is accused of knowingly and negligently violating the Clean Water Act. We plan related actions for our campaign, now named Dodger Fans Against Fossil Fuels #DF3; read our press release here.
3. NATIONAL DRIVE ELECTRIC MONTH
Problem
After staging history’s first electric vehicle parade with other early adopters in 2009, we remained dissatisfied with media coverage and general awareness of this promising new gasoline-free technology.
Solution
Zan Dubin co-founded National Drive Electric Month (previously one week long), which comprises EV test-drive and similar meetups coast-to-coast, with fellow EV pioneer Jeff U’Ren. The idea, in addition to providing in-person education from EV owners themselves, was to give media more reason to cover any single NDEM event because it was part of an national observance.
Results!
Initially taking place in just a couple dozen cities, today some 200 cities celebrate NDEM, attended by thousands from Hawaii to Maine, in Mexico and Canada. And yes, our theory proved true: media from “60 Minutes” and the Wall Street Journal to Alabama’s Yellowhammer News step up each year to report the event and thus promote cars without tailpipes. NDEM and its April offshoot, Drive Electric Earth Month, constitute a programmatic centerpiece of Plug In America, the powerful and influential clean transportation nonprofit, which Dubin helped launch as founding communications director, putting Plug In America on the media map.
Need to move the needle? Call for a complimentary consultation: (310) 383-0956.
Case Studies
Citizen Group/Project Nexus
Led communications for Project Nexus, the first-in-the-nation test deployment of solar over canals, coordinating media coverage by AP, the New York Times, Reuters, PBS NewsHour and dozens of others.
Plug In America
Established Plug In America as the voice of the EV driver and media’s go-to for first-hand EV expertise and opinion. Co-founded, launched and led communications for National Drive Electric Week, the world’s most successful grassroots EV celebration, now observed with test-drives and similar events by hundreds of thousands coast to coast and beyond.
Tesla Solar (formerly SolarCity)
Generated a cascade of positive media coverage to help SolarCity go public and expand its business from a handful of states to the nation’s leading solar power provider.
Circularix (formerly CarbonLITE Recycling)
Garnered a six-minute profile of this global recycling leader on Los Angeles’ leading PBS affiliate that’s been viewed by more than a million.
5 Gyres
Obtained coverage of 5 Gyres in the Washington Post, AP, on Good Morning America and in Time, among others, to keep this pioneering NGO and its leaders in the press as the world became aware of the scourge of plastic ocean pollution.
CLIENTS
