Environmental activist group Clean Creatives is once again calling out ad agencies that have contracts with fossil fuel companies in a series of billboards across New York.

Timed to New York Climate Week, city dwellers will be confronted with posters that, according to Clean Creatives, are meant to expose these contracts and serve as open letters to ad agencies working with fossil fuel companies. The backdrops of these posters are apocalyptic-like photos taken in New York in June when the city was blanketed in orange smoke from the Quebec wildfires.

Duncan Meisel, executive director, Clean Creatives, said the posters include “messages to advertising professionals who work at four specific agencies [Edelman; Interpublic Group of Cos’ McCann; WPP’s Ogilvy; and Publicis Groupe] who are some of the worst offenders on our list,” arguing that the conditions from the wildfires were partly due to “the work that your bosses are doing for fossil fuel companies.”

The posters come amid a larger report from Clean Creatives, called “The F-List 2023,” in which the group lists 500 global contracts that 294 different advertising and PR agencies are said to have had with fossil fuel companies in 2022 and 2023. According to the list, WPP holds the most contracts of the holding companies (55), then Omnicom (39), IPG (25), Publicis Groupe (11), Dentsu (five) and Havas (five), according to the report.

The posters will be strategically placed in popular spots around New York including in SoHo and Midtown, near where a lot of ad agencies are headquartered. The posters only target holding company agencies, but the larger Clean Creatives report claims that Pitch Digital is the independent agency with the most fossil fuel contracts (22).

Meisel said Stagwell was the only holding company that didn’t have contracts with a fossil fuel company, per the report. Three Stagwell shops are among the 730 agencies that currently have taken the Clean Creatives pledge to not work with fossil fuel clients, he added.

According to the report, Ogilvy was the holding company agency with the most contracts with fossil fuel giants (seven) including American Petroleum Institute, BP and Petrobras.

One of the posters that is targeted at Ogilvy reads: “Dear New Yorkers who work at Ogilvy, you can spot bullshit from a block away. You know that a subway coming in 5 minutes is really 15. You slip past street canvasses like you’re made of sand. But your employer Ogilvy is working for bullshitters like the American Petroleum Institute, Petrobas, and BP, who are misleading us about climate change.”

Agencies found by Clean Creatives to have at least six contracts include OMD, Hill + Knowlton, DDB and IPG Mediabrands, per the report.

The poster to Edelman reads: “Dear New Yorkers who work at Edelman, this was weird. New Yorkers didn’t always have to worry about wildfires. Or ‘100 year’ subway floods every year. Or worse. Your employer is working for fossil fuel companies Shell, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, TotalEnergies, and more. They’re causing these disasters.”

Edelman has been the subject of other Clean Creatives campaigns including at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in June, during which its activists pressured executives including CEO Richard Edelman over the PR firm’s continued work with fossil fuel clients. Edelman has drawn particular ire from activists because it said in early 2022 that it would part ways with clients that don’t adhere to its then-new environmental, social and governance guidelines (ESG), following what was described as a 60-day review of over 330 clients, but it has continued to work with fossil fuel companies including Shell.

Though the messaging on these posters seems rather scathing, Meisel said the campaign is meant to encourage these agencies to work with the organization on exiting these contracts and was not intended to be a “finger-wagging” tactic.

All of the posters end with this message to the agency’s employees: “It’s not your fault. But you can fix it, and we can support you.”

“Our experience has always been that people who work at these agencies, if they are aware of these clients, ultimately want to figure out a path forward that is good for everybody and the people,” Meisel said. “Then there are people who don’t know about it who are very grateful to have the information. Our goal ultimately with this is transparency.”

He said agencies often argue that they are working with fossil fuel companies to transition to clean energy but “every fossil fuel client has a plan to increase their production of fossil fuels by 2035,” so that argument doesn’t “hold up to scrutiny.”

A report from the International Energy Agency found that in 2020, the oil and gas industry as a whole spent just 1% of its capital expenditures on clean energy.

Meisel said, like employees, other clients of these agencies have a right to know about these fossil fuel contracts. If you’re a company that wants to “reduce fossil fuel use and your agency works with companies whose goal is to increase fossil fuel use, that’s a real challenge for you,” he said.

Ad Age reached out to all of the agencies and companies cited by Clean of Creatives shortly after the billboards were announced. 

“A small number of IPG agencies create marketing for carbon-intensive companies that have been clients for some time,” IPG said in a statement. “In 2022, we began to proactively review the climate impacts of prospective clients that operate in the oil, energy and utility sectors before accepting new work. Since that time and as a result of that policy, we have, on multiple occasions, turned down potential new business opportunities.”

Havas stated that it is “invested in supporting all companies in their communications provided that they are actively engaged in a transformation journey. Our goal is to involve our clients, talents, and suppliers in a responsible communications approach, and to raise the standards of the profession.” Havas also shared details on its efforts, which include a mandatory training program for employees “on ways to detect and avoid greenwashing, prioritize low-carbon impact campaigns and understand the impact of their work on consumer behavior,” measuring GHG emissions linked to the production and distribution of campaigns and raising awareness of their impact among clients as well as promoting “eco-designed solutions.” 

Omnicom declined to comment. Edelman declined to comment on the campaign but shared that it has incorporated its climate principles into its client acceptance process, discontinued work with some clients and turned down new opportunities that did not meet its standards. 

Nayantara Dutta, research director, Clean Creatives, said ad and PR agencies working with fossil fuel companies “use their language carefully” to discuss how they are carrying out their various sustainability efforts.

“They like to talk about their ambitions to be more sustainable, but we haven’t seen as much in terms of concrete commitments,” she said. “If there are concrete commitments, even those benchmarks are quite vague and our research leads us to believe that’s done on purpose.”

Dutta said Clean Creatives scoured various documents to uncover the contracts exposed in its report, including paid advertising disclosures, commercial credits, social media websites and company websites.

“There is a very significant amount of PR and advertising activity for the fossil fuel industry that exists even today, despite all of the public attention that agencies are receiving for their sustainability commitments,” Dutta said.