Clean Creatives Releases Video Mocking WPP’s “Empty” Net Zero Pledge
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 8, 2021
Contact: Jamie Henn, jamie@fossilfree.media, 415-601-9337
The global advertising agency WPP pledged to make their operations “net zero,” but isn’t taking responsibility the work they do for fossil fuel clients.
New York -- The Clean Creatives campaign, which is pressuring advertising and public relations agencies to cut ties with fossil fuel companies, released a new video today mocking advertising giant WPP’s recent pledge to make their operations “net zero” because it fails to take into account the impact of the advertising WPP does on behalf of fossil fuel clients.
“WPP’s net zero commitment is just another empty promise if it doesn’t include a pledge to stop promoting fossil fuel companies,” said Clean Creatives campaign director Duncan Meisel. “The climate impact of an advertising agency is the work it does in the world, not the lightbulbs it has in its offices. If WPP is still polluting our airwaves with climate misinformation on behalf of clients like bp and Shell, they’re part of the problem, not the solution.”
The Clean Creatives video released today mirrors WPP’s own, hyper-stylized promotional video for their net zero pledge, but points out that the pledge does “zero” about their fossil fuel clients. As stock footage of ‘zero’ like images flash in the background, a narrator reads, “We’re a big ad agency that makes big ads and we’re going zero...But our biggest clients aren’t going zero. They’re going over 2 billion tons of CO2 per year. That’s right: they’re still polluting like crazy. But we’re going zero and that’s what matters, right?”
Clean Creatives will be promoting the video across a variety of social media platforms, including running paid ads on LinkedIn targeting WPP employees.
WPP made a big deal about its net zero commitment when it announced the pledge around Earth Day this year, describing it as an “industry leading standard.” By reducing emissions from their operations and buying offsets, WPP hopes to zero out its current footprint of 5.4 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent a year. That’s a welcome contribution, but it’s nothing compared to the 2 billion tons of CO2 equivalent that WPP’s fossil fuel clients produce every year.
As Clean Creatives pointed out when WPP first released the commitment, if WPP’s advertising helped just one of their clients, bp, increase sales by .3%, it would wipe out all the gains made by cutting their own emissions.
“By greenwashing companies like bp, ad agencies like WPP are doing real damage to the very concept of net zero and our ability to reach it,” said Jamie Henn, director of Fossil Free Media, which is running the Clean Creatives campaign. “Our goal is to get agencies to take responsibility for the work they’re putting into the world. That means making a commitment by this year’s COP26 UN Climate Talks to stop working with fossil fuel companies and only engage with clients who have verifiable plans to zero out their emissions.”
WPP’s work to promote a “net zero” commitment by bp was actually pulled from the UK after the watch-dog organization Client Earth filed a formal legal complaint alleging the campaign was misleading to consumers since, despite their advertising, 97% of bp’s capital expenditures were still in oil and gas and less than 3% in low-carbon projects.
Over 80 agencies and hundreds of individual creatives have signed the Clean Creatives pledge to stop working with fossil fuel companies. Over the coming months, Clean Creatives aims to continue to turn up the heat on major ad firms and PR agencies that continue to spread climate misinformation, as well as support the growing movement to ban fossil fuel advertising.
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