For more than a century, the fossil fuel industry has used public relations and advertising to influence the political system and bolster their public image. The history of public relations and fossil fuels is tightly intertwined. Ivy Lee, known as the Father of modern PR, and inventor of the first press release, got his start working for John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil, burnishing the company and Rockefeller’s public image. By the time the threat of global warming first became widely publicized in the 1980s, the fossil fuel industry’s PR consultants had nearly perfected their disinformation machine, using a wide variety of tactics from scaremongering to promoting their own experts, to questioning the science of climate change and lobbying against government action. Practices that still persist to this day.
Clean Creatives
For the past four years, Clean Creatives has worked to get the advertising and PR industry to cut their deep ties with Big Oil. Today, over 1,200 advertising and PR agencies no longer work for fossil fuel clients, and major advertising influencers and awards shows in the creative industry now actively champion the necessity to cut ties with the fossil industry. Clean Creatives has been a KR Foundation grantee since 2021, and in this newly-funded project they will build out their activities in four different pillars: 1) Host large creative activations at industry events such as Cannes Lions; 2) Expand their ambassador program, which main purpose is to host meetups and workshops for creatives; 3) Provide detailed research of the ad industry’s work for fossil fuel polluters; 4) Grow regional teams in the Global South.
