Clean Creatives: Pledging to Break Ties with Climate-Wrecking Industries
Discover how Clean Creatives is challenging the PR and advertising world to refuse contracts with fossil fuel clients for a greener future.
Clean Creatives: The Pledge Refusing to Work for Climate-Wrecking Industries
The advertising and public relations sectors have long played pivotal roles in shaping public discourse. But as the climate crisis accelerates, industry professionals face a reckoning: should creativity fuel climate denial and greenwashing, or drive the shift to sustainability? Clean Creatives is a groundbreaking movement answering this question with a firm commitment—by urging agencies and freelancers to pledge never to work for fossil fuel companies again.
Table of Contents
- What Is Clean Creatives?
- The Origins of the Movement
- Pledging for Change
- Why Focus on Advertising and PR?
- Fossil Fuels and Industry Greenwashing
- Impact on the Creative Industry
- Milestones and Growing Momentum
- The Case Against Fossil Fuel Clients
- Challenges and Resistance
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Is Clean Creatives?
Clean Creatives is a coalition of agencies, freelancers, and their clients within advertising, marketing, and public relations. They are united by a central tenet: a public pledge never to work with fossil fuel corporations or their representative trade groups. Instead, they commit to aligning their professional power with transformative climate solutions and clients focused on clean energy.
The campaign represents a shift within the creative world, aiming to address the industry’s role in perpetuating fossil fuels’ image and undermining real climate action.
The Origins of the Movement
The Clean Creatives campaign emerged in 2020, launched by Fossil Free Media and led by Duncan Meisel. It was conceived as a response to two alarming trends:
- The fossil fuel industry’s historical reliance on talented PR and ad talent to greenwash its image and delay climate action.
- Growing outrage among creative professionals about being complicit in campaigns that downplay, obscure, or misrepresent the climate crisis.
The organizers recognized that creative work carries immense influence—and risk—when used to defend polluting interests.
Pledging for Change
At the heart of Clean Creatives lies a clear and actionable pledge. Agencies, studios, and individual professionals sign a commitment declaring they:
- Refuse contracts or projects for any fossil fuel companies, trade associations, or front groups.
- Only accept clients whose climate action claims are demonstrable and have verifiable plans to zero out emissions.
This pledge is more than symbolic; signatories agree to turn down work from some of the world’s largest and most influential companies in favor of industry integrity and a safer planet.
Why Focus on Advertising and PR?
The advertising and PR industries wield enormous soft power. Their campaigns shape:
What others are reading
- Public opinion: Advertising influences consumer attitudes, policy debates, and cultural values.
- Reputations: PR manages crises, rehabilitates brands, and positions polluters as climate leaders through greenwashing.
For decades, fossil fuel companies have invested billions in creative campaigns to distract from their core business—fossil fuel extraction and emissions. With potent storytelling, they promote token renewable projects, rebut robust climate science, and foster confusion about viable solutions. Clean Creatives challenges this machinery directly by asking creatives to stop lending their talents to misleading fossil fuel messaging.
Fossil Fuels and Industry Greenwashing
The term greenwashing describes when companies exaggerate or falsely represent their environmental progress. For the fossil fuel sector, this has taken forms such as:
- Ad campaigns highlighting minuscule investments in renewables (<1–3% of expenditures) while over 97% of spending continues to fund oil and gas projects.
- Sponsorships of environmental events and use of eco-friendly imagery, despite little change in business practices.
- Promoting false solutions like carbon offsets and future technologies to distract from present pollution.
Large agencies have been instrumental in designing these strategies. For instance, WPP, one of the world’s biggest advertising groups, announced a net zero pledge for its own operations, but its client list includes major oil and gas corporations whose emissions far exceed those of WPP’s internal operations. Clean Creatives and allied campaigners argue that “net zero” for agencies is meaningless if they continue to amplify fossil fuel brands.
Impact on the Creative Industry
The Clean Creatives movement has sparked critical reflection within the creative sectors:
- Talent Recruitment & Retention: Young professionals increasingly rank climate change among their top concerns and want employers who align with their values. Agencies seen as complicit with fossil fuel clients risk losing top and emerging talent.
- Brand Conflicts: Sustainable brands are reluctant to work with agencies still servicing fossil fuel polluters, which could weaken future business opportunities.
- Legal Risks: As litigation mounts against companies and agencies for misleading climate claims, those working for fossil fuel interests can be drawn into regulatory or reputational risks.
- Compromising Authentic Change: Fossil fuel-funded ads promising ‘net zero’ or minor green reforms dilute real climate leadership, fostering consumer cynicism and making it harder for genuinely sustainable brands to be recognized.
Milestones and Growing Momentum
Clean Creatives’ reach has expanded rapidly:
- By 2024, over 1,200 agencies worldwide have signed the Clean Creatives pledge, doubling in just a year.
- Hundreds of freelancers, copywriters, strategists, and designers have joined the commitment, amplifying the signal across the creative world.
- The campaign has released nationally visible satirical videos and open letters, applying public pressure on industry giants who continue serving Big Oil.
These achievements mark a turning point, signaling a rising dissatisfaction among creatives with the status quo and building support for systemic industry change.
The Case Against Fossil Fuel Clients
Clean Creatives’ arguments rest on multiple foundations:
- Environmental integrity: The scientific consensus is clear. Fossil fuel expansion is incompatible with a safe climate future. By refusing to promote oil and gas brands, creatives align their profession with climate action.
- Social responsibility: The public is increasingly aware of the role of advertising and PR in shaping perceptions. Credibility and trust matter; greenwashing damages the reputation of agencies and campaigns alike.
- Business resilience: Growing legal, financial, and regulatory risks make fossil fuel-dependent business models a liability. Agencies with diverse, sustainable client bases are better positioned for the future.
As a result, Clean Creatives challenges agencies to see climate action not as a niche consideration but as central to their future relevance and value.
Challenges and Resistance
Despite the outward momentum, obstacles remain:
- Financial Temptation: Fossil fuel accounts are lucrative, often funding significant parts of large agencies’ portfolios. For some, the short-term profit is hard to forego.
- Industry Pushback: Major holding companies such as WPP, Omnicom, and Publicis argue that their clients’ transitions depend on continued communication, and resist cutting long-standing ties.
- Tokenistic Commitments: Agencies sometimes announce sustainability pledges for internal operations, while sidestepping the impact of their client work—the heart of Clean Creatives’ critique.
- Global Scale: Fossil fuel marketing and influence are global, with agencies and holding groups spanning continents and legal jurisdictions, making unified action challenging.
Yet, the Clean Creatives campaign continues strategic pressure, from targeted social media campaigns to supporting legislative calls for fossil fuel advertising bans.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q: What is the Clean Creatives pledge?
A: The pledge is a public commitment by advertising and PR agencies, clients, and freelancers to reject all current and future work from fossil fuel companies and their trade associations.
Q: Who can sign the Clean Creatives pledge?
A: Agencies, studios, freelancers, and even clients can sign the pledge. The aim is to build a coalition across roles and disciplines in the creative industries.
Q: Doesn’t fossil fuel advertising help promote clean energy alternatives?
A: Most fossil fuel ad spending highlights minor green projects or future plans, not actual systemic change. According to campaigners, these campaigns often distract from the core business of expanding oil and gas extraction, slowing real climate solutions.
Q: Why do agencies still work with fossil fuel clients?
A: Most often, fossil fuel accounts are large, prestigious, and lucrative. Some agencies maintain that working with these clients can influence change from within, but critics argue this enables greenwashing without accountability.
Q: How can I join or support the Clean Creatives movement?
A: Visit the Clean Creatives website to sign the pledge, read resources, get updates about industry progress, and encourage your agency or colleagues to do the same.
Fossil Fuel Clients and the “F-List”
To increase transparency, Clean Creatives has published resources identifying advertising, creative, and PR firms—nicknamed the “F-list”—that continue to take fossil fuel contracts. This provides:
- Clients with information to make values-aligned choices.
- Industry media and policymakers with data for further scrutiny.
This database, updated regularly, serves as both a call to action and an accountability tool.
Looking Forward: The Future of Clean Creativity
Annual global investment in clean energy is now double that of fossil fuels, and the creative sector could become a decisive voice in climate advocacy. Clean Creatives’ continued pressure is propelling the industry to question its legacy and imagine new, more ethical futures. As new generations of creatives enter the workforce, their preference is clear: honest, impactful, and sustainable campaigns.
By refusing to shield polluters, advertising—and the talent powering it—stands to become an agent of transformation in the climate emergency, rather than its accomplice.
Key Takeaways
- Clean Creatives represents a rapidly growing movement within the advertising and PR industries to refuse collaboration with fossil fuel clients.
- The pledge is both practical and symbolic, signaling support for a sustainable future while building business resilience and reputational trust.
- Greenwashing by fossil fuel companies undermines climate action and misleads consumers—creative professionals can be powerful agents for accountability and positive change.
- Momentum is building, with thousands of creatives and over a thousand agencies having signed the pledge as of 2024.
- Individuals and agencies can take part by publicly endorsing the pledge and advocating for cleaner industry standards.
References
- https://cleancreatives.org/news/clean-creatives-releases-video-mocking-wpps-empty-net-zero-pledgenbsp
- https://cleancreatives.org/news/1000-creative-agencies-pledge-to-divest-from-fossil-fuel-industry-in-major-milestone-for-clean-creatives-campaign
- https://cleancreatives.org
- https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2024/09/26/clean-creatives-f-list/
- https://cleancreatives.org/creatives
- https://cleancreatives.org/news/clean-creatives-issues-the-f-list-2021-report-detailing-90-ad-and-pr-companies-working-for-the-fossil-fuel-industry
- https://grist.org/culture/greenwashing-for-oil-companies-awards-clean-creatives/
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