Clean Creatives Issues “Polluted PR” Report Outlining Agency Collaborations with Fossil Fuel Corporations

The fossil fuel industry is spending at least $200 million on advertising and public relations every year, the vast majority of it designed to mislead the public 

Contact: Jamie Henn, jamie@fossilfree.media, 415-601-9337 

Clean Creatives issued a new report today, “Polluted PR: How Ad Agencies and PR Firms Secretly Block Climate Action,” that outlines how major PR and Advertising agencies are working with fossil fuel corporations to spread climate misinformation. 

“This report shows how the PR and Advertising industry has emerged as one of the greatest barriers to climate action,” said Duncan Meisel, the Clean Creatives campaign director. “When PR and Ad agencies help the fossil fuel industry pretend they’ve ‘gone green’ or lobby against climate action, they’re actively undermining our ability to confront this crisis.” 

The report found that the fossil fuel corporations and their trade groups are spending at least $200 million a year on corporate promotion, dwarfing the spending by the clean energy industry.  

The report goes on to show how nearly all of the world’s largest public relations and advertising agencies are working directly with fossil fuel corporations. This work often involves lobbying against climate legislation, setting up fake front groups, greenwashing, and other unethical practices. 

“This research is right on time. We can expect a massive wave of greenwashing PR by the oil and gas corporations in coming months,” said Kert Davies, director of the Climate Investigations Center, a contributor to the Clean Creatives report, “Just wait for the aggressive image scrubbing and feel good ads about natural gas and carbon sequestration as the incoming Administration tries to amp up climate policy solutions.  We will see the fossil fuel industry deploy an influence peddling army as they try to quash those efforts.”

Getting a sense of the fossil fuel industry’s total spending on public relations and advertising is difficult because much of the information is hidden--few PR agencies publicly list their fossil fuel clients. The report’s authors combined data from trade association tax forms with academic research by Dr. Robert Brulle of Brown University on corporate promotion spending to determine that over the 5 years between 2014 and 2018, the fossil fuel industry spent at the very least one billion on public relations and advertising, an average of over $200 million a year.

“This isn’t advertising, it’s polluter propaganda,” said Jamie Henn, the founder of Fossil Free Media which is producing the Clean Creatives campaign. “When you help a fossil fuel corporation greenwash the damage it’s doing to our planet, you aren’t just violating the basic promise of ‘truth in advertising,’ you’re doing real damage to our future as a species. 

The report shows how the world’s largest PR and Advertising firms, many of whom proudly display sustainability commitments on their websites, are working with the most polluting fossil fuel corporations to greenwash the company’s public image or block climate action. 

WPP, the world’s largest advertising company, has numerous subsidiaries that work directly with fossil fuel clients. Ogilvy, Landor, and Mindshare, for instance, worked on yet another rebranding attempt by BP designed to convince the public the oil giant was quickly becoming a renewable energy company, despite the reality that 96% of BP’s annual spend is on oil and gas. Another WPP subsidiary, Wavemaker, does many of the advertisements for Chevron, who has been accused of polluting communities of color in the United States and engaging in human rights abuses in Ecuador and beyond. Meanwhile, WPP’s Hill & Knowlton has done work with Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and industry groups like America’s Natural Gas Alliance, which worked to actively undermine state climate policy. 

Omnicom, the second largest global advertising giant, also has a rogue’s gallery of corporate polluters as clients. Its subsidiary BBDO is the agency behind ExxonMobil’s notorious “algae ads,” that overplayed the oil giant’s investment in algae fuel, as well as advertisements explicitly aimed at convincing children that Exxon was a friendly science partner, as opposed to an oil giant wrecking their future. Another subsidiary, FleishmanHillard, has been a go-to agency for the American Petroleum Institute, the Edison Electric Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers and other industry front groups who have actively fought against climate action. Meanwhile, the desperately hip Omnicom advertising firm, GSD&M, produced ads for the American Petroleum Institute that are running on TV today. 

The report also examines the close ties between the fossil fuel industry and Edelman, including the firm’s long partnership with the American Petroleum Institute. API’s tax filings reveal that API paid Edelman, the largest PR firm in the world by revenue, up to $75 million a year between 2008 and 2012, with a total of $327 million over those five years. In addition to API, Edelman has had multiple contracts over the past decade with trade associations promoting fossil fuels including Edison Electric Institute, National Association of Manufacturers, National Mining Association and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM). 

In response to the Clean Creatives campaign, CEO Richard Edelman told PR Week that, “We are proud of the work we do for clients in every sector of the energy industry. We believe that business, government and society must work together to address climate change while supporting economic growth and meeting the needs of a growing global population. We are committed to honesty and transparency in all of our work and adhere to the highest standards of accuracy and truth in advancing the interests of our clients and in communicating with the public.”

Recent tax filings and reporting, however, suggests that Edelman is likely still working with AFPM, a group singled out for using fake front groups and other dirty tactics to influence the Trump administration to roll back regulations aimed at cutting global warming pollution.

“In conversation with my former Edelman colleagues, we would discuss the impact our clients had on the communities we were engaging with, but as professional communicators, our clients’ interests and advancing their goals and bottom line always came first,” said JaRel Clay, digital director at Hip Hop Caucus and former associate with Edelman’s energy practice. “For the Black, Brown, and poor lives who live disproportionately near industrial facilities, when Big Oil wins, we all lose.”

Clean Creatives will be sending a copy of the Polluted PR report to a long list of agencies across the PR and advertising industry. The report includes a set of asks for agencies (stop working with fossil fuel clients), creatives (urge your agency to go fossil free), and clients (don’t hire agencies who work fossil fuel clients). Over the coming months, Clean Creatives will be actively organizing with creatives inside the industry to put pressure on their employers, as well as asking sustainability oriented clients to stop working with agencies who spread climate misinformation. 

Less than a month old, the campaign has already generated significant attention with articles in PR Week, Fast Company, the Financial Times, Bloomberg, Axios, Business Green, and beyond. The Clean Creatives effort is supported by Fossil Free Media and a growing coalition of groups including the Hip Hop Caucus, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Sum of Us, and the Climate Investigations Center. 

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