Spearheaded by campaign group Clean Creatives, a group of 26 B-Corp certified advertising agencies are calling on the brand to request immediate action to condemn agencies who are B-Corp certified but are working with fossil fuel companies.
The agencies, including Good Stuff Partners, Greenhouse Partners, A Little Better Co and more have signed an official complaint letter.
The letter comes after Havas signed a high-profile contract with Shell, “Havas, as a parent company of a network that includes B corp agencies, has agreed to become the main agency for Shell.”
“This contract will require work from certain B Corp subsidiaries in their network. Additionally, both the agency MSQ has been providing marketing services to Shell since 2022, and the agency Tam-Tam\TBWA has represented Petro-Canada from 2016 – 2022, while also maintaining B Corp status”
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The group’s demands include declaring and applying the same criteria to B Corp agencies with fossil fuel and high polluter clients. They are also calling for B Corp to do the same for parent companies of agencies with B Corp certification.
Speaking at a media briefing Clean Creatives executive director Duncan Meisel said he felt that B Corp continuing to certify agencies which work with fossil fuels was “cynical” on the part of agencies that “do the work”.
CEO and founder of Good Agency Chris Norman added: “It is a binary question and it doesn’t require what b lab is suggesting is a process that should take a year or more”.
He added that their aim was to make sure that B lab align with what we’re signing up to which is a commitment not to work with fossil fuels”.
Asked about what they would do should B Corp fail to take heed, Norman said: “We will become more unbearable to them. We believe in working within. We believe a lot of what they do is good but they need to respond to the community as well”.