Clean Creatives, pushing Ad agencies to take a stand

Clean Creatives wants the advertising and PR industry to cut ties with fossil fuel companies. Stephen Horn heard about the campaign while listening to a climate change podcast and immediately tweeted his excitement about it. Shortly after, Clean Creatives director Duncan Meisel contacted him about starting a South African version of the campaign.

Stephen is now the Clean Creatives SA country lead and we spoke to him about why creatives should take action and how many have already signed their pledge in SA.

When and why was Clean Creatives founded?

The global Clean Creatives campaign is a project of Fossil Free Media, a nonprofit agency supporting climate communications founded by 350.org co-founder, Jamie Henn.

While working on climate change communications, the agency’s work was frequently undermined by well funded PR campaigns paid for by the fossil fuel industry. They soon realised the only way to combat the tide of mis- and disinformation would be to get the creative and communications industry to stop doing work for the companies wrecking the planet.

In 2021, while listening to the podcast A Matter of Degrees, I learnt about the campaign and tweeted about how we should do something similar in South Africa. Clean Creatives Executive Director Duncan Meisel reached out and was very supportive of us building a local version of the campaign.

We soft-launched the SA version in marketing publication, MarkLives.com, in November 2021, and held an in-person launch event in Cape Town in July 2022.

I’m quite new to climate activism but have been ably supported by some creative industry advisors and David Le Page of Fossil Free South Africa, which is our local implementing organisation.

Why is an initiative like this important in South Africa?

South Africa is among the world’s top contributors to climate change. Thanks to heavy reliance on coal, the country is the world’s 12th biggest emitter, despite a relatively small population and economy. The country is also particularly climate vulnerable, warming at twice the rate of the global average.

On the other hand, climate change literacy is strikingly low, with a 2021 HSRC survey showing that only 20% of the population understand that climate change is real and being driven primarily by human activity.

This makes South Africa a fertile ground for climate change denial, disinformation and greenwashing. Despite every major independent study showing that renewables offer the least cost pathway to secure South Africa’s energy future (and thereby eliminate “load shedding”, the country’s frequent power cuts), fossil fuel companies use misleading advertising and PR strategies to delay a just transition away from polluting fossil fuels towards clean wind, solar and energy storage solutions.

A recent report by Just Share has also revealed the extent of corporate lobbying by heavily polluting companies in South Africa, and how the lobbying activity contradicts their public statements on climate change.

What does Clean Creatives’ pledge entail?

The Clean Creatives pledge is a commitment for advertising and PR agencies, as well as individual creatives to decline future work with the fossil fuel industry, utilities that primarily generate energy or revenue from burning fossil fuels, and associated trade groups. The full exclusion criteria can be found on our website.

For decades, the fossil fuel industry has partnered with advertising agencies and PR firms to create a multi-billion-dollar campaign to mislead and confuse the public, downplay the urgency of the climate crisis, and overstate the work they have done to find a solution. So we feel that creative professionals should not be using their talent to aid this industry any further.

The pledge can also be signed by clients (brands, companies, organisations) who make use of advertising agencies to say they will no longer work with agencies that are working for fossil fuel companies.

We are very pleased to say that the Desmond and Leah Tutu Foundation recently endorsed our campaign by taking the pledge as a client. Archbishop Desmond Tutu was famous for advocating for divestment of fossil fuel companies, and saw the climate crisis as this generation’s “moral challenge,” so getting this endorsement from his foundation should be a powerful signal to companies that signing the pledge is the right thing to do.

Why’s there a focus on getting advertising and PR companies to sign the pledge?

The ad and PR industry have until today mostly played a negative role in the climate crisis. As the film The Good Life 2030 by climate advertising network Purpose Disruptors shows, advertising has typically promoted a high consumption lifestyle, which increases emissions and other negative ecological impacts.

But there’s a great opportunity to shift the narrative and create the social tipping point needed to rapidly accelerate the just transition to clean energy if we can get those who shape culture, public behaviour and consumer habits on side. So advertising and PR can also play a really positive role.

In fact, given the climate crisis is above all a communication crisis, the keys to shifting public perception and getting the policies in place to address it likely lie in the minds of top creative directors and strategists at agencies. We can’t do this without them.

How many people/agencies have signed the pledge in SA and globally?

Globally, over 400 agencies and more than 1,000 individual creatives have taken the pledge. In South Africa, over 20 agencies and 30+ individual creatives have signed up.

Does Clean Creatives do any other work?

A major focus has been on climate education this year, for example, by hosting a panel discussion on the topic “The Climate is Changing, is Advertising?” during Loeries Creative Week 2022. We are going to continue this education drive next year at agencies and advertising schools.

We also run a newsletter with updates on the campaign, and host regular meetups for the creative community. Next year we will be hosting a Greenwashing Awards to highlight the most egregious examples of greenwashing in South Africa, and will be releasing a report highlighting the agencies working for fossil fuel companies.

We’re also hoping to continue the great strides we’ve made so far into 2023 by getting even more agencies and creatives involved.