Aiding and Abetting
Godspeed: good fortune; success (used as a wish to a person starting on a journey, a new venture, etc.)
We in the advertising industry talk a good climate game, but often don’t go beyond the claims, sometimes even using our “feel good clients” to obscure the underbelly of the those clients we don’t vigorously promote to the outside world.
That's why today I’m featuring a smart and clever marketing campaign from Clean Creatives.
Clean Creatives is a nonprofit organization – made up of advertising and marketing pros – that pursues climate action by connecting professional communicators in the PR and ad industry in an effort end the industry's work for the fossil fuel industry.
The first thing Clean Creatives does is ask agencies to sign a pledge NOT to work with the fossil fuel industry. So far, 4,664 individuals (who work at agencies) and 1,664 agencies have signed the pledge.
I’m a curious sort, so I checked out agencies in my own neighborhood to see who’s signed, and there are only two in Boise that I can see – WP Wellness and mine (Oliver Russell).
Clean Creatives also publishes an annual compilation – the F-List – of agencies who ARE working with the fossil fuel industry. This year’s reporting shows the highest number of contracts since the annual research began six years ago, with a record number of agencies, contracts, and fossil fuel clients.
Unfortunately, that tracks as this year the fossil-fuels industry is raking in record profits. So, why not spend a little more on greenwashing?
Clean Creatives’ response to this dirty agency work is to create campaigns that bring attention to these agencies, in essence “outing” them with the intent of applying public pressure that could cause reputational risk. Often these contracts are not published on an agency’s website for just that reason. As they say, daylight is the best disinfectant.
The F-list presents badges of ignominy to 802 agencies around the world. And because I’m the curious sort, I had a look and was surprised to find that even in my little Boise backyard, one agency, Drake Cooper, makes the F-List, gaining the “Loyal to Oil” badge.
For this year’s newest video campaign, Clean Creatives draws upon a PR insight, casting members of a fictitious agency for a crisis communications meeting prior to an emergency client call.
Interested? You can join the F-List Client Response Meeting here. (Relax, it's just a video representing a videoconference.)
Said emergency call is occasioned by a client who, upon discovering the agency’s support for the fossil fuels industry, has big questions for the agency to answer.
If you're trying to hide something, that’s a call nobody wants to have.
This creative direction puts agency leaders on notice that they could conceivably receive such a call. It plants the idea in clients that perhaps they should be asking this question of their agencies. It also portrays this work as a consideration for agency employees – if your agency has to freak-out scramble for a response to a climate-concerned client, should you even be working there?
As I said, strategically it’s clever, smart, and spot-on.
It also strikes home because during the pandemic, my agency was asked to pitch a major fossil fuel client.
As you may remember, the pandemic was a <please insert your own descriptor here!> time for everyone, and revenue in the business world was hard to obtain. From insider scoop, we learned we were the frontrunner for the account, which would have brought seven figures of revenue. That’s big money for a small agency. We had an initial meeting at the company’s headquarters that went well and returned to Boise to consider next steps.
On the one hand: Gobs of money. Gobs, gobs, gobs.
And jobs, jobs, jobs, too.
On the other hand: Guilt, shame, our B Corp certification, and our values.
We turned down the gobs and jobs and took ourselves out of the process, while at the same time cleaning house by resigning another client that was adjacent to the fossil fuel business.
Our decision triggered one of my favorite parenting words, “consequences.” Resigning the existing client was a significant financial hit, which happened at the same point our long-time relationship with Hewlett-Packard was winding down. Through a combination of events and decisions – some of them strategically poor and made by yours truly – we wound up being an agency of one – me. Just as when I started in 1991.
It will be interesting to see if the work of Clean Creatives effects real change in the agency world. I applaud and support their efforts, though know how challenging a positive outcome will be – while not impossible, it’s hard to shame the publicly held advertising holding companies for whom this revenue is so lucrative, and the required changes – typically job cuts – are painful, especially at smaller agencies with less distance between workers and the CEO suite.
At the very least, the campaign is fun to watch, and I can’t help but hope there are some people in the industry who are squirming a bit.
I’ll end with a question that’s broader than just the advertising industry: If you have clients or customers who are actively damaging the atmosphere (or working in other ways that are egregiously at odds with your values), you might give some thought as to how to stop aiding and abetting the carbon crowd and others of their ilk. Extraction from behind enemy lines can be painful ($), but once you’re out it feels damn good.
And you’ll never have to answer uncomfortable questions from your children or grandkids, the generations that will be living with today’s climate consequences.
That's it for today – Happy autumnal equinox🍁. See you next week.
Godspeed, friends.
Russ