Clean Creatives reiterates call for advertising and PR firms to ditch fossil fuel clients as it publishes most comprehensive report to date on the sector's work with polluting clients
The Clean Creatives campaign has published its latest deep dive into the advertising and PR industry's work with fossil fuel companies, in a report that reveals more than 1,000 active and recent contracts between the sectors.
The study reveals how leading advertising and PR firms - including Dentsu, Edelman, Havas, Interpublic Group, Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP - boast numerous contracts with leading fossil fuel companies, including the likes of BP, TotalEnergies, Shell, Chevron, and ExxonMobil.
In total, the F-List 2024 report counts 1,010 contracts between 590 PR and advertising agencies and 332 fossil fuel clients in 70 countries between 2023 and 2024.
Of these contracts, 692 are new to this year's F-List report, while 318 are carried over from the 2023 edition. More than half - 551 - have never been reported before, according to Clean Creatives.
The campaign said it had scoured agency websites, creative portfolios, LinkedIn's ad library, PR agency directories, and lobbying databases to compile its report, noting that each contract listed had been corroborated by at least three different sources.
Nayantara Dutta, research director at Clean Creatives, described the report as "the most accurate report on the ad and PR agencies working for fossil fuel companies ever produced".
She said the findings revealed how large holding companies were "not making the progress required" to divest from fossil fuels.
"After making net zero pledges and SBTi targets in 2021, they have remained relatively silent," Dutta said. "Instead, independent agencies have been twice as likely as holding companies to discontinue fossil fuel contracts, whether this is intentional or they have lost the business."
The report reveals that 5.7 per cent of advertising and marketing industry holding companies have ended their fossil fuel contracts since last year, compared to 10.8 per cent of independent firms.
Notable contracts uncovered for the first time in the F-List Report were deals between PR giant Edelman and Chevron, Sasol and ConocoPhillips, and Havas Agencies and Promigas, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, Repsol, RWE, and Opet.
The report also identifies Ogilvy Africa and Edelman South Africa as "key agencies" in TotalEnergies' campaign to build the controversial East African Crude Oil Pipeline project from Uganda to South Africa.
The report comes after UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres used a major address earlier this summer to call for a ban on fossil fuel advertising, describing PR and advertising firms as "Mad Men fuelling the madness".
Duncan Meisel, executive director of Clean Creatives, urged the advertising agency to heed Guterres' plea and cut ties with fossil fuel clients.
"Many things in the advertising industry have changed since the 1960s, but when it comes to climate change, major holding companies are still stuck in the era of indoor smoking, three-martini lunches, and [Mad Men series protagonist] Don Draper," he said. "Annual investment in clean energy is now double that of fossil fuels, and the creative industry could be a natural ally to climate action, but fossil fuel clients are standing in the way. Like every other outdated practice of the ad industry, it's only a matter of time before fossil fuel campaigns come to an end."
WPP, Omnicom, and IPC are the holding companies found to hold the most fossil fuel contracts, with 79, 74, and 50 deals, respectively, listed in the research. Meanwhile, Ogilvy, McCann WorldGroup, and FTI Consulting are the independent agencies found to have the most fossil fuel deals, with 15, 15, and 14 contracts listed in the study.
BusinessGreen reached out to a number of the companies listed in the report for comment.
Almost all the firms' revealed to have the closest links with fossil fuel clients have made sustainability commitments and have set targets to reduce the climate impact of their day-to-day operations.
For example, Dentsu International, Havas, Interpublic Group, Omnicom, Publicis Groupe, and WPP are members of the Ad Net Zero campaign, which bills itself as the advertising sector's response to the climate emergency. Edelman, meanwhile, has pledged to "put science and facts first" and to only work with "committed to accelerating action to net zero and in compliance with the Paris Accords".
Industry insiders have long argued they can help support and accelerate the net zero transition by working with polluting industries to help them promote emerging low carbon technologies and practices.
The Ad Net Zero initiative, launched in 2020, is focused largely on pushing advertising firms to reduce their operational, office, and production emissions, while recommending that creative agencies "harness advertising's power to support consumer behaviour change". But it stops short of calling on its members to rethink the clients they take on and engage with how their work fuels demand for high-carbon products or enables polluters to resist reform.
It is an approach that has helped curb emissions and promote green best practices across the industry, but it has also put the sector at odds with Clean Creatives and other campaigners who have argued that by far the biggest impact the ad industry could have on global carbon emissions would be through a refuse to promote polluting companies.
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