Report Title

In February 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused a sudden shift in the global energy market. Before this, the fossil fuel industry had been working towards a sustainable transition. But once oil and gas companies started to experience record profits, they changed their tune and started backpedaling on their green promises.

This created a shift in narrative strategy in their advertising and PR campaigns. Between 2020 and 2024, oil and gas campaigns shifted from setting climate targets and saying “we’re part of the solution” to emphasizing fossil fuel dependence and convincing people “you can’t live without us.” Shareholders followed suit and moved from supporting climate action to prioritizing fossil fuel profitability. 

Oil majors used to be preoccupied with social license, but now, the fossil fuel industry is radicalizing. Companies like BP and Shell, who have a history of greenwashing and made net zero pledges in 2020, are now going all in on fossil fuels. Greenwashing is no longer the core strategy of the fossil fuel industry — it’s about power and political influence. 

For decades, advertising and PR agencies have helped oil and gas companies manufacture climate doubt, spread disinformation and delay decarbonization. Today, their tactics are becoming more manipulative and strategic to convince people that we can't live without fossil fuels when, in fact, 91% of renewable projects are cheaper, faster and more reliable than fossil fuel alternatives.

The world has moved on from fossil fuels, but oil companies want to keep you hooked. Over the years, their narrative strategy has moved from establishing climate leadership towards a sustainable transition (2021) to emphasizing energy security (2022) to using a “both, and” narrative to promote both fossil fuel expansion and emissions reduction (2023) to asserting fossil fuel dependence and energy pragmatism (2024).

Toxic Accounts is the first ever qualitative project to decode the narrative shifts in fossil fuel campaigns between 2020 and 2024 and present the new oil and gas playbook.

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Writer and Head of Research: Nayantara Dutta

Research by Source Nine Insights

 

full report

Deck on the left. video on the right

 
 

 Methodology

At Clean Creatives, we have been tracking the fossil fuel industry and its ad campaigns since 2020. We developed this study to investigate whether there had been a narrative shift where greenwashing was no longer the focus of fossil fuel campaigns. We found much stronger support for our hypothesis than expected, and clear and conclusive evidence to suggest that we are in a new era of oil and gas communication which is all about fossil fuel dominance.

With Source Nine, we analyzed over 1,859 campaign materials from BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell between 2020 and 2024 to identify the emotional need they address and narrative shifts they indicate. We chose these four oil majors as they released several creative campaigns in this time period and excluded TotalEnergies and Petronas due to a lack of creative work.

We scanned digital campaigns across Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, TV ads and also consulted ad libraries like Ad Forum, Ads of the World and relevant press releases, interviews, and speeches by company executives. 

Although our analysis had a global scope, we found the narrative shift to be displayed most prominently in campaigns from the U.S. and U.K. and have focused on those case studies in this report. In this time period, creative work from Asia and the Middle East largely continued its usual focus on family values, brand loyalty, cost savings and purpose-washing. 

Fossil fuel campaigns have been influenced by geopolitics, but we found this narrative shift to follow its own timeline independent of political influences. It does not coincide with the Trump administration or any other shifts in global politics. Instead, it reflects a clear and strategic agenda for fossil fuel domination developed by the oil and gas industry.

 

Key Findings

  • Dream it.

    It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

  • Build it.

    It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

  • Grow it.

    It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

 

Timeline

Timeline summary

 

Deep dive of BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell between 2020 and 2024

False solutions

 

Natural gas (LNG, RNG)

Oil majors are positioning natural gas as a “bridge fuel” to cleaner sources of energy, even though natural gas is mostly made up of methane, a fossil fuel which is 81.2 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over 20 years and responsible for 30% of human-caused global warming.

This is a frequently asked question?

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

This is a frequently asked question?

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

This is a frequently asked question?

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

This is a frequently asked question?

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

This is a frequently asked question?

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

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