100+ creators, experts, and advocates demand Edelman drop all fossil fuel clients
This week, we joined a group of 100 creatives to ask the world’s biggest PR agency to drop Exxon Mobil as a client.
Edelman is the world’s largest PR firm. ExxonMobil is their client. Together they sell stories that destroy our health, our climate, our world. So we’re telling Edelman to drop Exxon. Edelman will be fine. Hopefully Exxon won’t.
We stand with 100+ other creators, experts, and advocates to say: #EdelmanDropExxon.
We are asking Richard Edelman to stop spinning green-washed stories and sabotaging climate policy. Fire your fossil fuel clients instead of helping them set the world on fire.
Read the full letter here.
The brand, marketing and advertising industry yields great power, and with great power comes great responsibility
The most creative minds have lent themselves too often to promote harmful and destructive practices. This has been going on for decades.
Advertising minds helped the auto industry to deflect responsibility for pedestrian deaths to the pedestrians themselves by inventing the term ‘jaywalking’. Advertising minds helped the oil lobby to turn the conversation on waste created by plastic disposables to a conversation on people’s bad habit of ‘littering’. They made smoking appear like a cool, healthy habit, long after scientists proved tobacco use had lethal consequences.
It’s time for all creative minds in brand, marketing and advertising to yield their power responsibly.
We want to see professional service providers drop fossil fuel clients in the same way as they have dropped tobacco industry clients - but we can’t wait the same number of decades for their conscience to kick in.
Is this a new call to action?
It is not. There have been many calls by creatives to creatives to yield their power responsibly.
First Things First Manifesto 1964
1964: Ken Garland and other designers publish the First Things First manifesto, calling on creatives to stop work for destructive business practices.
2000: Jonathan Barnbrook and others renew the call in an updated manifesto.
In March of 2021 the NY times reports: "A queasiness has set in among some people who have made ads promoting fossil fuels."
November 2021: #EdelmanDropExxon.
It's been a long walk, but let’s hope that we are turning a corner.
How can you get involved?
Make the #EdelmanDropExxon hashtag a trending topic on social channels like Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Feel free to use this text:
Edelman is the world’s largest PR firm. ExxonMobil is their client. Together they sell stories that destroy our health, our climate, our world. So we’re telling Edelman to drop Exxon. Edelman will be fine. Hopefully Exxon won’t.
We stand with 100+ other creators, experts, and advocates to say: #EdelmanDropExxon.
@RichardEdelman to stop spinning green-washed stories and sabotaging climate policy. Fire your fossil fuel clients instead of helping them set the world on fire.
https://cleancreatives.org/edelmandropexxon
Thumbnail image courtesy Kelly Sikkema