The report “Smoke and Mirrors: The Legal Risks of Fossil Fuel Advertising” details how the fossil fuel industry is facing a huge number of climate litigations and how both PR and advertising agencies can be swept up in that wave.
Many of these lawsuits, says the report, are centered on false communication campaigns carried out by some of the most recognized agencies in the world. This creates both legal, commercial and reputational risks, to the point of being held liable for related damages due to misinformation and misleading advertising.
“The fossil fuel industry uses advertising agencies and public relations agencies to make it difficult for governments to hold them accountable. And the ads are misleading and make companies appear more committed to climate action than they really are,” said Clean Creatives director Duncan Meisel. And he adds, “Advertising and public relations agencies (…) have a clear choice: continue with the dirty work of spreading lies on behalf of the fossil fuel industry or become clean creatives and help us save the climate. The time is finishing”.
In this sense, there are more and more movements like Clean Creatives that invite agencies to disassociate themselves from companies whose core business is fossil fuels, or the Creative Climate Disclosure manifesto, which promotes disclosing, while respecting confidentiality, the percentage of their clients’ billing with high carbon content.
To this is also added a report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the UN that ensures that “advertising and brand building strategies can also try to divert corporate responsibility”.
The waters are separating and in this context as well as Solitaire Townsend head of public relations firm Future, which stopped working with oil and gas clients 15 years ago, argues that more and more agencies will have to do the same if their goal is to attract the best people because the new generations “don’t want to work with oil and gas clients”; there are also the agencies that continue with fossil fuel clients, such as the UK’s WPP which, in the words of one of its spokespersons, said “we apply rigorous standards to the content we produce for our clients and seek to fairly represent their environmental commitments and investments” .
Although it is clear that any PR agency must have the independence to work with whoever it considers, in a scenario of so much access to information and growing environmental awareness, it is key to be transparent and credible. However, there is still a long way to go on this transition path.