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If you thought awards season was over, think again.
Clean Creatives, the campaign pressuring ad agencies to drop fossil fuel clients, brought back its F-List Awards today—but it’s not one that most agencies would want to display in the lobby next to their Cannes Lions.
Edelman, Havas, McCann and Ogilvy were each “dishonored” by winning in one of 10 categories during the livestreamed award ceremony for work that the agencies have done for fossil fuel companies. Each winner has worked with a fossil fuel client within the last two years, according to Clean Creatives.
Launched in 2022, the award show uses humor, in-depth research and a touch of public shaming to highlight the ad industry’s power to influence consumer behavior and culture in ways that can either accelerate the climate crisis or combat it. After taking last year off, the event is back, hosted by comedian Nicole Conlan, a writer on The Daily Show.
The legacy of the carbon footprint
Award categories included The Richard W. Edelman Lifetime Achievement Award for Achieving Shortened Lifetimes, The DEI Award for Definitely Exploiting Individuals, The CEO Award for Contaminated Executive Operations and The Biggest COP-Out.
Ogilvy, winner in the lifetime achievement award category (named after Richard Edelman CEO of PR giant Edelman, who won the award in 2022), was highlighted for the work it’s done for companies including Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, TotalEnergies, Castrol, Petrobras, Masdar, PTT and Adani Group over more than two decades.
“Ogilvy made a lasting impact on climate propaganda by introducing the concept of the carbon footprint to an eager public looking to get high on the myth of personal responsibility,” Conlan said during the livestreamed event.
That campaign, created in 2003, shifted the blame away from oil and gas companies and onto consumers, explained author and environmentalist Bill McKibben, who presented the award.
“The carbon footprint is an effort to make sure that you misidentify the source of the problem,” he explained. “And you then spend your entire time trying to solve it in the least efficient possible way. Americans are individualists to begin with—most Westerners are—and so it’s an easy sell.”