Duncan Meisel on: The Clean-up of Creativity

The origins of Clean Creatives

My background is in communications for climate NGOs, and through that work, I realised that every time you try to do something good, there are very effective, very well-run PR and ad campaigns that promote something bad instead. Those campaigns work. Greenwashing works.

In 2020, whilst sitting at home during the pandemic, I started a project to find the agencies that were advertising for the American Petroleum Institute and to make them feel bad about themselves and the work they were doing.

At its core, creativity and communication is about empathy. It’s about understanding where other people are coming from. And there’s something very anti-empathetic about trying to promote climate change and fossil fuels.

Having seen tobacco advertising’s downfall due to people refusing to work with them, I realised that we could do the same for the fossil fuel industry. So Clean Creatives launched in November 2020 to do just that. I am proud to share that we now have 1000 agencies who have signed our pledge not to work with fossil fuel companies around the world.

The lies told by the fossil fuel industry

The first time that the heads of major oil companies were aware of the impact of climate change and their products on the climate was in the late 1950s. They’ve known about this problem for over 50 years. If there was any honest effort being made to make a transition to green energy, it would have been done decades ago. Instead, they have spent every day since trying to shift public opinion away from the obvious solutions to this problem.

Money talks.

If these companies wanted to send a message about the importance of clean energy, they would be putting their money in different places. But the reality is that as of 2022, they were spending 1% of cash expenditures on climate solutions.

The fundamental issue is that these companies have said that they want to destroy life on Earth. They told investors that. They told regulators that. That is their business plan.

The role of B Lab

Right now, B Lab hasn’t done what is obviously necessary. Currently, you have agencies providing marketing and promotional services to companies that are explicitly banned by the B Corp accreditation process. You cannot be a fossil fuel company and apply for B Corp status, but you can be a company that provides marketing services, promotes them and tells people that they’re clean and green and good for the world whilst being a B Corp. That is an unacceptable conflict of interest.

We have submitted a complaint to get B Lab to review their standards, but there has been no action yet. We are trying to encourage them to act soon. This is being dragged out beyond its reasonable limits. Hopefully, we will see them clarify their position and move in the right direction very soon.

What can you do if you are stuck working with fossil fuel clients?

I really encourage you all to reach out to us. We have an incredible network of people who are in that same position. We now have lots of resources to help move this conversation forward effectively. We have a Clean Creatives activist toolkit, as well as lots of direct support we can provide and people you can connect with who may already be at your agency.

The people at these big agencies are the most valuable part of this conversation; you’re the people that I’m most interested in talking to. We approach this with an extreme minimum of personal shame. You’re not the person making these decisions if you’re just an employee there. But you’re the person with the most leverage.

If you would like to find out more about the work that Clean Creatives do, go to their website: https://cleancreatives.org/