The fossil fuel Mad Men: Clean Creatives exposes climate-wrecking PR firm ties

A newly published report from campaign group Clean Creatives has uncovered 1,010 active and recent contracts between fossil fuel organisations and leading advertising and PR firms worldwide.

The F-List: the Who’s Who of fossil fuel-linked PR firms

This year’s F-List report incorporates over 30 new sources of data to reveal 1,010 contracts between 590 agencies and 332 fossil fuel clients in 70 countries between 2023 and 2024. Of these 1,010 contracts, 692 are new, and 318 have continued from the F-List 2023. A total of 551 contracts haven’t been reported before, making it the most comprehensive report on fossil fuel advertising and PR:

Clean Creatives’ 2024 methodology included searching agency websites, creative portfolios, LinkedIn’s ad library, PRCA and O’Dwyers agency directories, the OpenSecrets lobbying database, and more. To ensure accuracy, each contract uncovered has at least three different sources.

For the first time, public affairs firms, production agencies, retail marketing agencies, recruitment agencies, animation studios and OOH agencies have also been included in the total figure.

Nayantara Dutta, research director at Clean Creatives, said:

This is the most accurate report on the ad and PR agencies working for fossil fuel companies ever produced. We’ve incorporated over 30 new sources of data so that clients, employees, and business partners fully understand the risks of working with fossil fuel agencies. Our research shows that holding companies are 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. 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. Fossil fuel pollution is now killing more people than cigarettes. We need to do more to hold agencies accountable for the sake of our planet and public health.

Propping up the climate crisis

These findings illustrate the fossil fuel industry’s reliance on a mixture of independent agencies and leading advertising and PR firms such as Dentsu, Edelman, Havas, Interpublic Group, Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP, all of whom are identified as engaging in several contracts with the likes of BP, TotalEnergies, Shell, Chevron, and ExxonMobil in the F-List 2024 report.

A larger number of agencies on the F-List does not indicate a trend of more agencies taking on fossil fuel work, however. Campaign’s 2024 School Report – which provides individual analysis of 99 of the UK industry’s top agencies–shares that 15.2% of agencies are “reducing work with fossil fuel clients” and 73.9% don’t currently work with fossil fuel clients.

On 5 June 2024 (World Environment Day), UN secretary-general António Guterres cited, for the first time, the advertising and PR industries as key facilitators for the fossil fuel industry and called on agencies to drop fossil fuel clients, saying:

Many in the fossil fuel industry have shamelessly greenwashed… They have been aided and abetted by advertising and PR companies – Mad Men fuelling the madness. I call on these companies to stop acting as enablers to planetary destruction. Stop taking on new fossil fuel clients, from today, and set out plans to drop your existing ones.

Key findings

Key overall findings from the F-List 2024 include:

• Holding company fossil fuel contracts: WPP (79), Omnicom (74), IPG (50), Publicis (40), Havas (19), Dentsu (18), Edelman (11), Stagwell (7).
• The agencies with the most contracts: Ogilvy (15), McCann Worldgroup (15), FTI Consulting (13), Burson (12), IPG Mediabrands (12), Edelman (11).
• Shell is the fossil fuel company with the most contracts (54), followed by BP (40), TotalEnergies (36), ExxonMobil (33), and Chevron (31). Other oil majors, such as ConocoPhillips (20), Saudi Aramco (19), Petronas, and Equinor (14 each), are also highly represented on the list.
• Global and regional contracts: 91 contracts have a global scope. Regionally, contracts were placed in North America (261), Europe and the UK (239 – 96 of which are UK only), APAC (219), MENAT (83), Latin America (67), and Africa (50).
• Comparison to F-List 2023: 104 contracts uncovered in the F-List 2023 report have been discontinued.

Notable contracts uncovered for the first time in the F-List 2024 report:

• Edelman has worked for Chevron (2022-2023), Sasol (2022-2024) and ConocoPhillips (2023-2024).
• Havas agencies, who recently had their B Corp status revoked, have 9 previously unreported fossil fuel contracts with Promigas, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), Repsol, RWE and Opet.
• Ogilvy Africa, Edelman South Africa and fireworks Advertising were the key agencies in TotalEnergies’ campaign to build the controversial East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project from Uganda to South Africa.
• 34 new agencies are working on Shell’s globally controversial advertising contracts, including 7 new contracts among major holding companies.

Clean Creatives: exposing the links, one by one

Duncan Meisel, executive director of Clean Creatives, said:

The UN Secretary-General was right to call fossil fuel agencies “Mad Men fueling the madness.” 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 Don Draper. 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. Clean Creative agencies are the future. F-List agencies are the past. 

Clean Creatives has also launched a new database of oil and gas companies with over 50% revenue or generation from fossil fuels. This database is the first global list of fossil fuel clients to help agencies and creatives understand whom they should not be working for.

To date, over 1,200 agencies worldwide have signed the Clean Creatives pledge to refuse contracts from fossil fuel organisations, along with over 2,300 creatives, dozens of brands, and a growing list of content creators and influencers.

Featured image via the Canary