Clean Creatives hands 'awards' to Edelman

Clean Creatives has unveiled its 2024 F-List, a total of 10 awards it is giving to agencies that it claims work with “fossil-fuel polluters”.

The campaign group has named Edelman the recipient of ‘The Biggest COP-Out’ award for its work with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).

Ogilvy won ‘The Richard W. Edelman Lifetime Achievement Award for Achieving Shortened Lifetimes’, on account of its work with Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, TotalEnergies, Castrol, Petrobras, Masdar, PTT and Adani Group, Clean Creatives said.

The ‘CEO Award for Contaminated Executive Operations’ has been awarded to Yannick Bolloré, chairman and chief executive of Havas, for “taking on the Shell contract” – a move that led Extinction Rebellion to protest at the agency’s offices.

Other winners include marketing and advertising agencies such as McCann, VML, Dentsu Mindstream Media Group and EssenceMediaCom.

Clean Creatives said its teams would be “working to deliver the awards to the agency winners in the coming days”.

Duncan Meisel, executive director of Clean Creatives, said: “We are giving out the F-List Awards because we wanted a chance to show exactly what makes fossil-fuel campaigns so bad for the communications and creativity industry.

“Whether it’s running into greenwashing complaints, producing some of the most cringe youth content ever, or simply betraying your employees, these winning campaigns show how fossil-fuel campaigns are bad for your image, and your agency.

He concluded: “The movement to ditch fossil-fuel clients is stronger than ever, and the arguments for sticking with these bad clients has never been weaker.”

Comedian Nicole Conlan, who hosted the F-List awards, said: “By now, everyone knows that Big Oil are the bad guys. But they couldn’t do their dirty work without marketing professionals to continue greenwashing their brands and convincing people we still need to rely on fossil fuels, locking us into high emissions for years to come.

“Agencies have a responsibility to stop working with the most evil people on the planet. Just because your business card doesn’t say Exxon on it doesn’t mean you don’t have oil on your hands.”

Last month, Clean Creatives celebrated 1,000 agencies pledging “no oil and gas clients”.

Shortly after, the group was criticised by the guest author of a PRWeek opinion column; Meisel responded in defence of Clean Creatives’ actions, rejecting a “student politics" jibe.