On fossil fuels, B Lab acknowledges that “fossil fuel and energy companies are disproportionately responsible for greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.”
As such, to be eligible for B Corp certification, fossil fuel companies must have “successfully transitioned their energy portfolio to be at least 50% carbon-free.” Beyond that, companies must not engage in certain banned practices related to extraction, lobbying and financial incentives, and they must be committed to a completely carbon-free portfolio within a specified timeframe.
Clean Creatives and the 25 agencies that signed the complaint letter argue that the same requirements should apply to clients of ad and PR agencies that are B Corp certified, given the role that marketers play in the public’s understanding of climate change and its drivers—and Big Oil’s history of misleading people through advertising, marketing and PR.
The complaint outlines specific requests of B Lab:
- Require that ad and PR agencies apply B Lab’s fossil fuel-specific certification criteria to their client rosters to retain or achieve B Corp certification
- Expand that criteria also to include the parent companies of B Corp ad and PR agencies (which would effectively revoke the certification of Havas’ four B Corp-certified creative agencies)
A spokesperson for Havas told Adweek via email that the holding company is “invested in supporting all companies in their communications provided that they are engaged in a transformation journey,” and that its commitment to sustainability “remains unchanged.”
“That a B Corp-certified agency would be providing marketing services to the biggest polluters on the planet [is] a very fundamental departure from the values and principles of the B Corp movement,” Duncan Meisel, executive director of Clean Creatives, told reporters at a briefing this week.
For signatories of the Clean Creatives pledge, learning that B Lab didn’t have a clear policy around ad and PR agencies working with fossil fuel clients came as “a real shock,” he said.
“It really deeply upsets me,” said Joss Ford, founder of U.K.-based B Corp agency Enviral, a signatory of the complaint. “The B Corp certification has been tarnished.”
B Lab’s central mandate
Critics of the perspective outlined in Clean Creatives’ complaint argue that in order to continue its work effectively, B Lab needs to keep its scope narrow, and that it doesn’t have the resources to enforce a rule that would revoke certifications.
They also argue that B Lab takes client relationships into its measurement score indirectly throughout the robust certification process, and cutting off the fossil fuel industry could prevent valuable energy transition work from happening.
Dept(R), a B Corp-certified tech and marketing agency based in Amsterdam, works with a number of fossil fuel companies—mostly local utilities—on energy transition work and technical services. If B Lab were to make the changes that the complaint is requesting, DEPT(R) may be forced to choose between that work and its B Corp certification.
“We want to work with energy companies when that positive reason exists (e.g., energy transition projects and projects that support critical infrastructure),” Pooja Dindigal, global head of impact for Dept(R), said. “We don’t work on advertising projects for these companies.”
