Imagine spending countless hours producing a catchy ad campaign that’s now blanketing the internet. Views are bubbling up like champagne fizz. The creative team is high-fiving each other down the hallway —
But that’s where the celebration stops. At all-staff meetings, your work isn’t shared with the rest of the company. Your revenue is missing from the pie chart. And your carefully crafted messaging certainly won’t be nominated for any public awards.
The reason? Your team was working on a contract with an oil and gas company.
And as the devastation caused by the climate crisis intensifies, fossil fuel clients are no longer a good look for an industry where image is all.
“Awards are a dangerous place to talk about fossil fuel clients,” said one advertising industry insider who’s worked in the sector for more than a decade. “If you win, that’s not necessarily good news because that becomes public.”
If the work does get spoken about, company leaders are tying themselves in knots to justify it, added the insider, who declined to be named for fear of professional repercussions. When their CEO reassured staff that an oil company client had a particularly low level of carbon emissions per barrel, the industry insider recalled thinking: “Great, that’s like saying this gun is going to kill you with a smaller hole in your head than this other gun.”
For more than two years, DeSmog has been investigating how advertising and public relations agencies profit from making oil and gas companies appear more sustainable than they really are. Our reporters and researchers have interviewed dozens of sources working across the industry and reviewed hundreds of industry documents, including corporate reports, press releases, social media posts, and media interviews.
Our findings formed part of a complaint filed today against UK-based WPP, the world’s largest communications group by revenue, alleging that the company’s work for clients such as Shell, BP and Saudi Aramco breached international corporate responsibility guidelines. Adfree Cities and the New Weather Institute, who lodged the complaint with the OECD, an intergovernmental body, argue that WPP’s work drove up demand for polluting products and undermined global efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
While the complaint is emblematic of growing concerns over the strategies used to give polluters a green sheen, we found that advertising companies are using similar tactics to make themselves seem climate-friendly, too.
The trend is visible among each of the “Big Six” communications giants — Dentsu, Havas, Omnicom, Interpublic Group (currently being acquired by Omnicom), Publicis Groupe, and WPP — who had a combined revenue of $72 billion in 2023 and whose hundreds of subsidiaries dominate these industries globally.
DeSmog has published in-depth profiles of the Big Six in our Advertising and Public Relations Database — a freely accessible resource that profiles more than three dozen agencies working to promote oil and gas companies, with new entries added every few weeks. The profiles include details of many of the 280 contracts with fossil fuel clients the Big Six have held since the start of 2023 — a figure based on DeSmog research and findings from campaign group Clean Creatives. [For an interactive map showing some of the most significant deals, see below].
Here are six ways the Big Six portray themselves as climate champions:
- A culture of silence around fossil fuel contracts
- Presenting oil and gas work as climate-friendly
- Developing anti-greenwashing measures (but still greenwashing)
- Misrepresenting carbon emissions from running their businesses
- Ignoring advertising’s role in boosting sales of polluting products
- Running tokenistic ‘green’ campaigns
None of the six companies responded to requests for comment.
‘Mad Men Fuelling the Madness’
Dressing some of the world’s biggest polluters up as responsible corporate citizens is big business.
Oil and gas majors Shell, BP, TotalEnergies, Chevron, and ExxonMobil spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on strategies “to portray themselves as positive and proactive on the climate change emergency,” according to research by InfluenceMap.
The incentive for Big Oil to spend such vast sums is clear: If these companies can convince the public they are working hard to solve the climate crisis, they can retain their social licence to continue expanding oil and gas production.
But as the climate crisis worsens, the creative agencies paid to cast fossil fuel giants as the gatekeepers to climate solutions are themselves coming under growing scrutiny.
In 2022, more than 450 scientists wrote an open letter urging major advertising firms, including WPP and Interpublic Group (also known as IPG), to stop producing disinformation and representing fossil fuel clients. And last summer, UN Secretary-General António Guterres echoed this call in strident terms — describing ad executives as “Mad Men fuelling the madness,” and warning that oil and gas are “toxic to your brand.”
Lucy von Sturmer, founder and CEO of Creatives for Climate, a nonprofit promoting sustainable creativity, told DeSmog that advertising and PR agencies “are obviously wanting to, like big polluters themselves, maintain their own social license and image.”
New York-based Interpublic Group, for instance, said in its 2023 annual report to CDP, a nonprofit environmental disclosure system, that its “visible commitment to sustainability … is viewed [by Interpublic Group] as an opportunity to enhance its reputation among clients.”
Green credentials also help attract and retain staff. A 2021 industry survey found nearly three-quarters of communications industry employees are hesitant to work with fossil fuel clients. Compared to previous generations, Gen Z and Millennials are especially eager to align their values with their work, according to von Sturmer. “And obviously agencies rely on young, often cheaper, talent to retain the cultural zeitgeist,” she added.
Here’s how the Big Six’s strategies work in practice:
1. A culture of silence around fossil fuel contracts
Advertising companies often do their best to keep their fossil fuel work under wraps, even to their own staff, employees told DeSmog. For instance, managers may hold separate meetings for fossil fuel accounts teams to tout their accomplishments internally, rather than sharing at all-staff gatherings.
At the same time, these agencies sometimes loudly promote their sustainability achievements.
In 2023, French communications giant Havas made a public commitment to “an ambitious decarbonization trajectory.” But later that year, the company won a contract to run British oil major Shell’s ad placement strategy. In 2024, a Havas agency pitched (unsuccessfully) for Shell’s global PR account.
One Havas employee told DeSmog reporters in 2023 that a culture of silence had existed around both pitches, with “zero internal communications.” Another said that, by contrast, there were “huge celebrations” when Havas London attained B-Corp status, an ethical business certification, in 2018.
Havas’ four B-Corp agencies had their certification stripped after the Shell deal sparked a backlash from campaigners and other B-Corp businesses, who said companies working with fossil fuel companies should not be eligible. In November 2024, Havas warned investors of the possible “negative publicity” associated with its work for fossil fuel clients in its prospectus for its listing on the Dutch stock exchange.
Interpublic Group, meanwhile, publicized a 2022 Earth Day campaign encouraging its staff to take small actions supporting the environment, touting it on Instagram, in a trade magazine interview and reporting it as part of its climate emissions reduction efforts a year later. By contrast, Interpublic Group employees told DeSmog in 2023 that the agency had kept its work for Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco, one of the world’s largest polluters, quiet internally.
Paris-based Publicis Groupe remains the only one among the Big Six to publicly advertise any fossil fuel clients (British Gas) on its main website.
2. Presenting fossil fuel work as climate-friendly
Large deals, such as the one between Havas and Shell, can be hard to keep under wraps, and while the Big Six may outline lofty-sounding climate ambitions, loopholes and faulty justifications quickly emerge when they come under fire for taking on polluting clients.
In September 2022, Interpublic Group announced that it would now “proactively review the climate impacts of prospective clients that operate in the oil, energy and utility sectors before accepting new work.” However, the policy doesn’t apply to existing clients, allowing Interpublic Group subsidiaries including ad agency McCann to continue working for clients such as Saudi Aramco. Since the start of 2023, Interpublic Group has held 50 contracts with fossil fuel clients, according to Clean Creatives.
The CEOs of Paris-based Havas and London-based WPP, meanwhile, argue that their companies can help the fossil fuel industry embrace cleaner energy.
In 2022, WPP CEO Mark Read told financial analysts, “We are there to support them [oil and gas clients] on that transition.” An October 2024 report by InfluenceMap, however, found that WPP had more clients obstructing net zero climate policies than supporting them — and revealed a similar picture at Interpublic Group, Omnicom, Dentsu and Publicis Groupe.
Havas CEO Yannick Bolloré mounted a similar defence of his company’s work for the fossil fuel industry in response to questions from industry press about his decision to work with Shell in 2023.
“We believe the most effective change comes from within,” Bolloré was quoted as saying. Bolloré later told an audience at an industry conference: “Our industry should be able to work with any industry as long as, and this is important, they are themselves on a meaningful transition journey.”
That same year, Shell stated that it was “stepping back” from its renewable energy portfolio, despite having previously promised to increasingly offer renewable power.
Asked about Bolloré’s position on working with Shell at the time, Solitaire Townsend, co-founder of sustainability communications agency Futerra, told DeSmog that advertising agencies have “nowhere near the competency, education, or knowledge” to make a client meaningfully change their behavior.
3. Developing anti-greenwashing measures (but still greenwashing)
While CEOs of the Big Six argue they are helping their fossil fuel clients transition to cleaner energy, regulators have looked askance.
In June 2023, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the UK regulator, banned an ad in Shell’s “Powering Progress” series created by WPP’s VML (formerly Wunderman Thompson). The ASA ruled the ad could mislead consumers into believing renewable energy comprises a large portion of the oil giant’s business.
VML was also the creative muscle behind earlier Shell ads that the Dutch Advertising Code Committee banned in 2022 for misleading consumers about the impact of Shell‘s carbon offsetting programme. VML did not respond to a request for comment.
That year, VML’s parent company WPP had launched its Green Claims Guide to ensure environmental statements in its advertising were “not misleading in any way.”
Last August, the ASA received dozens of complaints that Shell’s most recent “Powering Progress” ad gave a misleading impression of the company’s commitment to clean energy. VML had also created the ad in question, while Havas Media (a subsidiary of Havas) worked on placing the ad in one of its first big projects since winning the account. The ASA is yet to deliver a ruling.
Other agencies have also sought to present themselves as authorities on avoiding greenwashing.
After nearly a decade of making ads promoting U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil’s speculative algae biofuels research programme as a viable climate solution, Omnicom ad agency BBDO launched a sustainability consultancy designed to help clients navigate greenwashing concerns in 2023.
BBDO’s newest ad campaign for ExxonMobil, however, features a flood of social media ads suggesting that the company will use carbon capture and storage to fight the climate crisis. Currently, ExxonMobil uses the technology to pump more oil. There is also little realistic prospect of the technology being deployed at a scale that could make a difference to the climate: The emissions from burning the oil ExxonMobil alone sold in 2023 would outweigh the amount of carbon capture industry plans to deploy by 2035, according to an analysis of investment plans by BloombergNEF.
In 2022, Interpublic Group went a step further than the other holding companies when it announced it would not work on campaigns intending to shape policy to prolong fossil fuel use. However, in 2022 and 2023 Interpublic Group subsidiary Weber Shandwick lobbied the European Union over its climate policies on behalf of Shell, Eurogas, and a fuel supplier trade association. An InfluenceMap investigation had previously found that these fossil fuel companies were lobbying to include natural gas — a fossil fuel — in Europe’s energy future. Weber Shandwick did not respond to a request for comment.
4. Misrepresenting operational carbon emissions
Each of the Big Six have made public commitments to reduce the carbon emissions from their operations — those caused by the running of the firm, such as employee travel or energy used to power office buildings. But just as they exaggerate green claims for their clients, how they report their own climate progress isn’t always straightforward.
In a report to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade body specialising in digital marketing, Publicis Groupe stated that it managed to make its operations carbon neutral in 2022 using carbon offsets. However, a Bloomberg investigation found that a large proportion of the offsets Publicis Groupe had purchased the previous year were tied to low-cost, low-credibility renewable energy projects. Publicis Groupe has also offset carbon using credits from the Peru-based Verra Carbon Standard Madre de Dios program, which has been extensively criticized, both for being ineffectual and for hurting Indigenous rights. WPP, meanwhile, has promoted its involvement in the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), a global body through which businesses can set net-zero targets. However, in 2024, WPP was among one of almost 240 companies that SBTi delisted for failing to meet key reporting deadlines.
Dentsu states on its website that by 2022 it had reduced its Scope 1 and 2 emissions — the emissions that the Japanese-based firm directly produces from its operations and services — by 52.8 percent since 2019. However, a table in its 2022 annual report painted a less rosy picture: In the same year, the company’s Scope 3 emissions — those generated by Dentsu’s supply chain, including business travel and employee commuting — actually increased, meaning the net reduction in 2022 was a less impressive 3.8 percent.
Dentsu has now published its 2023 emissions and its Scope 3 emissions have continued to climb. The company’s total emissions footprint is now 7.8 percent larger than in 2019.
Across multiple pages of its website, Dentsu says that its operations are powered entirely by renewable energy. Energy data in Dentsu’s 2023 annual report, however, show that this figure excludes its operations in Japan, where the company is headquartered, and where only 0.4 percent of energy use came from renewable energy that year. With Dentsu’s original operating country included, only 37.7 percent of the energy used by the company came from renewable sources in 2023.
In its 2019 annual report, Dentsu defined greenwashing as the practice of using “unsubstantiated information or partial data to give the impression that products or corporate activities are more environmentally friendly than they actually are.”
5. Ignoring advertising’s role in boosting sales of polluting products
In 2021, Interpublic Group subsidiary Carmichael Lynch boasted about its success in boosting sales by U.S. oil and gas producer ConocoPhillips. Carmichael Lynch wrote on its website that its “Choose Go” campaign resulted in the company selling “40 million more gallons of gas in the campaign’s first five months compared to the year prior.” The post has since been deleted.
Campaigners argue that if ad and PR agencies take credit for increasing sales of polluting products, then they also bear responsibility for the associated emissions — and should therefore take steps to measure, publicly report, and reduce them.
Planet Tracker estimates that the “advertised emissions” attributable to the campaigns run by the Big Six on behalf of 39 of their biggest clients amount to more than 530 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year — larger than the UK’s annual emissions.
The Big Six, however, almost always omit these advertised emissions from discussions about their environmental impact.
WPP, Publicis Groupe, and Dentsu are all members of the United Nations (UN)-backed Race to Zero campaign, which focuses on rallying businesses to hit net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Race to Zero recommends that companies publish their advertised emissions.
So far, Dentsu is the only member of the Big Six to have done so. In 2023, Dentsu estimated that its advertised emissions were 12.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent – 32 times the emissions generated by running its operations. Dentsu says “these emissions remain the responsibility of clients.”
Instead of advertised emissions, the Big Six have focused on tracking the much smaller carbon footprint associated with placing ads — such as from the electricity required to run a Facebook campaign.
6. Running tokenistic ‘green’ campaigns
Last June, Londoners walking on Euston Road were greeted by a new mural — rendered with special paint designed to remove air pollution.
Announcing the mural’s unveiling, Dentsu, who created the “This Campaign Sucks” campaign, launched in partnership with the environmental nonprofit Global Action Plan, said: “Together we aim to tackle poor air quality in cities across the UK and Ireland – highlighting the links to health inequalities and the climate crisis.”
DeSmog has identified 30 contracts between Dentsu and fossil fuel clients from the last five years, including work for oil and gas producers TotalEnergies, Chevron, Eni, and Indian Oil. Burning fossil fuels causes over 60 percent of an estimated 8.3 million global air pollution deaths every year, according to a 2023 study in the British Medical Journal.
Lisa Graves, executive director of True North Research, a political and policy research firm, said that ad and PR agencies that work for clients in “destructive industries” may also find “some client to hire them to do something good.” This approach allows firms to take credit “only for the good and not the bad.”
Other Big Six companies have also won contracts from climate-focused groups while continuing to profit from lucrative relationships with fossil fuel clients.
In 2022, WPP’s Hill+Knowlton (now called Burson) was chosen by the Egyptian government to manage public relations for the United Nations climate conference COP27, held in Sharm El Sheikh. News of the contract prompted scientists to write the letter calling for the firm to cut ties with its oil and gas clients, including ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco, and industry group the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative.
The WPP advertising agency Ogilvy works with 15 oil and gas clients, including BP and the oil lobby group the American Petroleum Institute — more than any other agency, according to research by Clean Creatives.
There is no mention of Ogilvy’s fossil fuel work on its website. But Ogilvy and its parent company WPP do proudly show-off a campaign the agency made for Greenpeace. Dentsu also showcases its work for Greenpeace on its website.
Graves, of True North Research, said ad and PR firms have an ability to reinvent their image so that poor conduct doesn’t stick to them. The agency “can then claim that it’s somehow good on climate, even if it’s spent 20 years aiding the climate denial movement,” she said.
Shaping the narrative
The Big Six’s tactics are working.
Dentsu and Publicis Groupe, along with agencies owned by Omnicom and WPP, won prizes at the 2023 Ad Net Zero awards, intended to celebrate advertisers “who are helping to reduce emissions and pave the way to a net zero economy.” In the 2024 edition, WPP’s Wavemaker, and Omnicom’s EssenceMediacom and OMD — who held a combined 12 contracts with fossil fuel companies, according to Clean Creatives — all won awards.
The Big Six also rank highly in ethical investor scorecards, and Publicis Groupe, Interpublic Group, and Dentsu feature in the prestigious Dow Jones Sustainability Indices.
Narratives extolling the green credentials of the Big Six are also seeping into the advertising industry trade press, often unchallenged. In 2024, the magazine Marketing Week published a sponsored article by WPP agency GroupM about its efforts to reduce the carbon emissions generated by placing ads. The article did not include any reference to the agency’s advertised emissions — likely far larger in comparison.
In April 2022, The Drum published a fluffy Earth Day article on “how the world’s top holding companies are celebrating,” consisting of statements from Publicis Groupe, Interpublic Group, Omnicom, Havas, and Dentsu, describing how they are “investing in environmentalism.” The article did not mention the 201 fossil fuel contracts collectively held by these five companies, according to Clean Creatives.
Marketing Week declined to comment. The Drum did not respond.
Force for good?
There are signs, however, that the tide of opinion is turning.
Ethical investors are lobbying major agencies, including Publicis Groupe, to acknowledge — and work to reduce — the climate impact of their work for fossil fuel clients. More than 1,000 agencies — mostly smaller, independent ones — and over 2,000 individual creatives have now taken the Clean Creatives pledge not to work with fossil fuel clients.
When news broke of Havas’s 2023 deal with Shell, the Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty campaign terminated its contract with the agency. Havas’s pitch for further Shell work in 2024 sparked protests at Havas headquarters in London, and the subsequent loss of B-Corp certification for four Havas agencies further dented the company’s image.
As the Big Six have worked out, appearing green is good for business. If these giant companies made good on appearances, said Creatives for Climate’s Lucy von Sturmer, then the industry could become a force for good: “Imagine if we could use that amazing creative superpower to convince people, and to nudge them, and to mobilize them towards the regenerative future that we need.”
Additional reporting by TJ Jordan and Ellen Ormesher
This article was published alongside updates to DeSmog’s Advertising and Public Relations Database, where you can browse our research on the advertising and PR industry firms which have protected the reputation of their fossil fuel clients and created greenwashing campaigns to convince the public that climate change is not an urgent threat.
