Clean Creatives’ F-list report names and shames agencies promoting fossil fuels
Our Clean Creatives South Africa (CCSA) campaign has produced the second edition of its F-list report, called “A Flood of Greenwashing”, which names and shames the 42 South African public relations and advertising companies we know are promoting the fossil fuel industry.
“The report highlights who the major enablers are of the fossil fuel industry’s lack of commitment to climate action, and how these collaborations have costly and deadly consequences for the environment and human life,” said Noni Poni, Clean Creatives campaign manager in South Africa.
The upside is that Clean Creatives’ work, including the report, is having an influence: three of the agencies featured in last year’s F-list have since signed our Clean Creatives pledge to shun contracts with fossil fuel companies. They join the 190 creatives and 68 agencies in South Africa who have signed.
The Clean Creatives report quotes the plea from United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to PR and advertising agencies to shun work for fossil fuel clients, instead of being “enablers of planetary destruction”.
This year is expected to be the hottest on record, as was last year, and South Africans are grappling with increasingly severe droughts, floods and extreme heat, along with people in countries across the world, as climate breakdown accelerates.
Fossil fuel companies still contribute three-quarters of the pollution driving global warming, even though their ad campaigns often suggest otherwise, the F-list report explains.
To avert catastrophic global warming, the world needs to halve its carbon emissions by 2030 and reach net zero by 2040. However, the fossil fuel industry is blatantly disregarding these targets.
Rather than slash their emissions, oil companies oil companies plan to increase production by 9% annually, peaking in 2028, states a report produced recently by the Carbon Disclosure Project.
Further, not one of the world’s top 100 oil and gas companies can reduce emissions “at a rate sufficient to align with a 1.5°C pathway over the next five years”.
Over 190 creatives and 68 agencies in South Africa have signed the Clean Creatives pledge to decline future work from fossil fuel companies. They join the over 1,200 agencies and 2,300 individuals worldwide who have made the commitment.
It’s not only marketing agencies who can sign: clients of marketing agencies can can refuse to work with those on the F-list, who include Edelman, FCB, Ketchum and TBWA, Digitas, Burson and Ogilvy.
In South Africa, the conversation about "greenwashing” is heating up and milestone towards accountability for it was reached in August 2024, when the Advertising Regulatory Board ruled largely in favour of a complaint by FFSA’s Fossil Ad Ban campaign,
The regulator found that TotalEnergies’ “sustainable development” claim in relation to its support for SANParks was misleading and a violation of the advertising code.
Are you an agency or a creative concerned about climate breakdown? Sign the Clean Creatives pledge here and, as always, let us know if you have comments or questions by emailing cleancreatives@fossilfree.media. We’d love to hear from you!
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