10 Wins of 2022

As the end of the year approaches, we wanted to reflect on 2022 and share some of the amazing things Clean Creatives and our communities have accomplished. It can be easy to look the negatives, but there have been so many positives and we wanted to share those with the world. From smaller wins to larger accomplishments, there have been many reasons to celebrate. As we move into the new year we're thinking bigger than ever, and this is just the start.

1. 243 new agencies signed the Clean Creatives pledge to not work with fossil fuel companies. In other words, in one year we doubled the number of agencies refusing fossil fuel clients. THANK YOU to everyone who organized, advocated, and signed the pledge. We’re so grateful for you, and the change you are creating.?
2. We launched a toolkit for everyone inside agencies who wants to make change - and put in the hands of leaders worldwide. This guide is built on real-world advice from your peers in the industry who have figured out what works (and what doesn’t) when it comes to making change happen.?
3. We created the most-viewed and most-shared content of the Cannes Lions. Our team of young creatives took the Croisette by storm , staging activations, interventions, and provocations that helped make the industry’s climate footprint the biggest story of the Lions this year.?
4. In January, we shared a letter from 450 scientists asking the advertising and PR industry to end their relationship with fossil fuels. The message from these scientists could not be clearer: “To put it simply, advertising and public relations campaigns for fossil fuels must stop.” This letter was covered in the Washington Post, PR Week, PRovoke, and helped kick-start our year of making change happen.?
5. We flipped the script of industry awards — sought-after recognition for distinctive work — to awards no one wants to win as part of the world’s first greenwashing award show, the F-List Awards . The live-streamed show was hosted by Climate Town’s Rollie Williams and featured luminaries including US Senator Whitehouse, activist Bill McKibben, University of Oregon Professor Deb Morrison, and Slow Factory. We gave out 9 awards, including the Excellence in Science Fiction to BBDO and the Lifetime Achievement for Shortening Lifetimes to Edelman.
6. We released the most comprehensive list of agencies working for fossil fuels ever produced - the F-List 2022 . We found over 230 agencies worldwide that have worked with major polluters in the last 4 years, and we named every one of them here on Twitter. The report reached tens of thousands of people during NYC Climate Week, and kicked off conversations in Teams and Slack channels industry-wide.?
7. Clean Creatives South Africa launched! We were so happy to welcome the first ever national partner for Clean Creatives in South Africa . The team there has been rapidly moving the conversation forward with events during the Loeries award show, timely op-eds, and widespread outreach. We could not be more excited to see where they go next.?
8. We wrote a comprehensive study on the legal risks of fossil fuel advertising for agencies. The Smoke and Mirrors report showed how the hundreds of legal actions linked to climate change worldwide can create major risks for agencies tied to polluters. From regulatory actions, to legislative investigations, to liability suits, fossil fuel communications are in the legal spotlight, and agencies need to take heed. ?
9. Beep boop: for Earth Day we co-created the Greenwash Bot, a semi-sentient Twitter thread which automatically pointed out the ways that agency tweets about Earth Day were leaving a few things out of the picture. (Lots of our Twitter friends noticed).?
10. We won two Shorty Impact Awards for the F-List campaign , and our Executive Director Duncan Meisel was named on the list of Adweek’s Young Influentials 2022 , PRovoke Media’s Innovator 25 for North America , and Campaign Magazine’s Top 10 Trailblazers .?

And more generally in the industry, here are just a few top-level accomplishments for the year:

1. The first ever congressional hearings on fossil fuel PR signaled a major shift in the regulatory environment surrounding work for polluters. In 2022, members of the US Congress held two different hearings focused on fossil fuel PR practices, and released internal documents from campaigns on behalf of polluters. These hearings generated national news coverage, and set the stage for more rigorous regulatory action to come.?
2. The UN High Level Climate Champions released new criteria for the Race to Zero for service industries. Their new guidelines ask agencies to disclose what industries they work for, and measure the climate impact of the work they do for their clients.?
3. The world’s most authoritative scientific body focused on climate change named the PR and advertising industry as major blockers to climate action . Thousands of scientists came to an agreement that fossil fuel companies are using advertising and PR to sow doubt, and confusion about their role in the emergency.
4. Greenpeace turned the Cannes Festival of Creativity into a festival of conversations about fossil fuel advertising. They paddled onto beaches, walked onto stages, and climbed the Palais to make sure that creatives knew the damage that fossil fuel advertising is doing to the planet.?
5. The world’s largest PR firm, Edelman, dropped out of promoting the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline . The pipeline’s financer, Standard Bank, parted ways with Edelman, signaling that the pressure industry professionals are putting on CEO Richard Edelman to clean up his act is working.?

And we're just getting started ?? See you in 2023 to make an even bigger impact.