“Clean Creatives” Campaign Calls on PR and Ad Agencies to Stop Working with Fossil Fuel Clients
A new campaign is underway to pressure the most powerful public relations and advertising agencies to stop working with the fossil fuel industry.
The campaign, called Clean Creatives, will target PR and Ad agencies that deploy multimillion dollar greenwashing and misinformation campaigns that help delay climate action on behalf of fossil fuel clients.
“PR and Ad agencies pollute the airwaves so that fossil fuel companies can pollute the atmosphere,” said Duncan Meisel, campaign manager at Clean Creatives. “The spread of climate misinformation can be directly traced back to firms with names like WPP, Omnicom, and Edelman. As long as they continue to engage in polluter relations, these firms will be one of our greatest barriers to climate progress. It’s time for PR and ad agencies to come clean.”
The launch of Clean Creatives coincided with an article by writer and environmentalist Bill McKibben in the New Yorker: “They are less significant monetarily than the banks, but more so intellectually; if money is the oxygen on which the fires of global warming burn, then pr campaigns and snappy catchphrases are kindling for the fire that is roasting us all. And there’s a degree of intellectual complicity--of intellectual intimacy—that makes even the cash that comes from banks seem distant and abstract.”
The article has already prompted the campaign’s first win: in response to McKibben’s inquiries, Porter Novelli announced its association with the American Public Gas Association.
“Porter Novelli is committed to regularly assessing evolving issues, the science that guides them and their impact on diverse, global audiences. We have determined our work with the American Public Gas Association is incongruous with our increased focus and priority on addressing climate justice—we will no longer support that work beyond 2020,” said Maggie Graham, Porter Novelli’s global chief of staff.
The firm had previously come under fire for its attempt to get millennials to adopt “natural gas as a lifestyle.”
Over the past thirty years, communications firms have become some of the fossil fuel industry’s most valuable allies, with contracts spanning years and amounting to billions of dollars in revenues. Since the 1990’s, the five major oil companies have spent over $3.6 billion on reputational advertising, much of it aimed at projecting an environmentally and socially responsible image.
Between 2008 and 2017, fossil fuel industry trade associations spent almost $1.4 billion on public relations, advertising, and communications contractors. Industry front groups like the American Petroleum Institute (API) spend tens of millions of dollars a year on advertising: according to their tax filings, API spent $31.9 million with GSD&M in 2018 and paid Edelman $327.4 million between 2008 and 2017.
“Despite their sustainability goals and past pledges to stop working with climate deniers, nearly all of the world’s largest PR and Ad firms continue to work with fossil fuel industry clients,” says Jamie Henn, founder of Fossil Free Media and producer of the Clean Creatives campaign. “WPP does business with Shell and Chevron, Omnicom’s BBDO does much of ExxonMobil’s advertising, Ogilvy runs branding exercises for BP. Our campaign will expose the depth and breadth of these relationships.”
Clean Creatives aims to pressure PR and ad agencies on a number of fronts. First, the campaign will focus on revealing the intentionally concealed relationships between PR and advertising agencies and their fossil fuel industry clients.
“Very few agencies openly acknowledge their fossil fuel work on their websites or in their citizenship and sustainability reports, while most tend to evade questions about their industry relationships when asked,” says Christine Arena, former Executive Vice President at Edelman and CEO of creative agency Generous. “This creates an accountability gap and lack of information that current and prospective shareholders, employees and agency clients need to know.”
Another strategy will be to organize PR and Ad industry employees, including the many creatives who likely feel conflicted making propaganda for oil and gas companies. The campaign will be reaching out to creatives directly, including high profile directors and artists, as well as running targeted ads on LinkedIn and other social media to find employees who are willing to sign a pledge stating their desire to no longer work with fossil fuel companies.
“We are uniquely aware of the influence our work has over policy and consumers," said JaRel Clay, digital director at Hip Hop Caucus and former associate with Edelman's energy practice. “We cannot claim to be committed to a sustainable future for the next generation while actively working to block – and in some cases, reverse – progress made to solve the climate crisis. This commitment is more than a job or a title that we may hold, it's about how creatives center our voices on the front lines of this work to completely transform the conversation around fossil fuels.”
Clean Creatives will also organize PR and ad agency clients, the sustainability-minded businesses, nonprofits, and other institutions who will be unhappy to find out that their agency is actively undermining progress on climate change by spinning fossil fuel industry propaganda. Clean Creatives will be circulating a business sign-on letter via networks like the American Sustainable Business Council and the Ceres BICEP Network (Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy) in the coming days.
“It’s past time for not just truth in advertising, but truth in the advertising and PR business,” said Thomas Oppel, executive vice president of the American Sustainable Business Council. “For too long, companies, including ad and PR agencies, have compromised the higher motives they publicly proclaim by attempting to hide the catastrophic damage inflicted by fossil fuels and their complicity in covering for this devastating deceit.”
The campaign will also be applying political and legal pressure. Members of Congress, like Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, have already written about the need to expose dark money lobbying against climate action, much of which flows through these firms. Lawsuits, such as the Massachusetts Attorney General’s “ExxonKnew” investigation, have focused on the public harm caused by false advertising. In the UK, a legal complaint from Client Earth forced BP to stop running ads that gave the impression the oil giant was a renewable energy company (less than 3% of BP’s budget is spent on renewables).
"The fossil energy industry’s long history of spreading disinformation has led to catastrophic climate destruction and opened these companies up to a world of liability. Meanwhile, the creative agencies designing those disinformation campaigns continue to rake in millions while communities suffer the consequences. PR firms should think twice about enabling the industry driving the climate crisis,” said Ortal Ullman, senior campaign coordinator at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
PR and advertising agencies have had a long and sordid history with the fossil fuel industry. The “Father of PR,” Ivy Lee, worked to transform the image of John D. Rockefeller after the public turned against Standard Oil. PR firms like Edelman played a lead role in spreading climate denial for decades.
“The fossil fuel public relations push has grown in size and sophistication in the digital age. Polluters dole out millions every year to PR companies and consultants to create online content and slick ads that deflect attention from the climate crisis by promoting false solutions while attempting to rebrand fossil fuels as cool and essential for a happy life,” said Kert Davies, the founder and director of Climate Investigations Center. “These ads could easily give someone the false impression that Exxon is a renewable energy company rather than one of the world's largest polluters bent on preserving a status quo at the expense of the planet.”
Today, the fossil fuel industry is undoubtedly gearing up for another major PR push as a new administration in the United States prepares to tackle the climate crisis and the world gears up for another major climate summit. Clean Creatives aims to stop them in their tracks.
November 20, 2020
Contact: Jamie Henn, jamie@fossilfree.media, 415-601-9337