Agencies and Activists Demand B Lab Strip Havas of Its Certification, Update Rules

Activist group Clean Creatives and 26 B Corp-certified agencies submitted an official complaint to B Lab this week in a move that formalizes a growing critique of the global nonprofit within the advertising industry.

In a letter, the group asks B Lab to update its certification eligibility rules, a routine process that it’s undergoing over the next year, to disqualify ad and PR agencies that serve fossil fuel clients.

The official complaint follows criticism of Shell’s media business review, culminating in a controversial win for Havas Media. Four Havas-owned agencies—Havas Immerse, Havas Lemz, Havas London and Havas New York—are certified B Corporations.

“We are deeply disappointed by B Lab’s inability to clarify their position on B Corp agencies that take on fossil fuel clients or any B Corp that works with fossil fuel clients,” Chris Norman, co-founder and CEO of B Corp-certified Good Agency, which first initiated the complaint against B Lab, said in a statement. “The current ambiguity, which has enabled Havas to become the main media agency for Shell, undermines the values and behaviors that B Lab claims to uphold.”

Signatories allege that by allowing agencies to achieve or maintain a B Corp certification while working on behalf of companies that make a majority of their profits from the sale of fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change, the group devalues the entire B Corp movement while contradicting the nonprofit’s own requirements for fossil fuel companies seeking certification.

Critics of this movement say that B Lab’s value lies in its narrow mandate to incentivize corporations to consider people and planet alongside profit, using a rigorous measurement system. By banning certain industry relationships outright, the group could prove less successful in its core mandate.

A spokesperson for B Lab Global said it is currently reviewing the four certified Havas agencies’ eligibility based on complaints and expects to conclude its initial review by late December. As part of its process for updating eligibility requirements, B Lab completed an initial round of public consultation late last year and is preparing for a second round in early 2024.

“We want to stress that we’re committed to following due process, which means that we’re not always able to make a quick decision when many would like us to,” the spokesperson said.

A call for clarity, consistency

The complaint focuses on updates to B Corp’s certification eligibility that B Lab made in 2020. It’s one of several updates that the nonprofit has made to its eligibility requirements over the years, which creates special rules around uniquely extractive, predatory, fraud-riddled or otherwise problematic industries. Aside from fossil fuels, it also has unique requirements for Swiss banks, Brazilian agribusinesses, debt collection agencies and prison operators, to name a few.

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 26 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.”

For Jonathan Trimble, co-founder and CEO of B Corp-certified agency And Rising, B Lab’s value is in the way that it tweaks the incentives of doing business.

“Multi-stakeholder management doesn’t mean good or bad,” Trimble said. “It just simply means the business reports to the different faculties, shareholders, employees, community and the planet alike in proportionate measure.”

For some, the importance of B Corp is being reconsidered.

“We’ve suggested to two or three of our clients that they should consider B Corp,” Norman said. Following Havas’ Shell account win and B Lab’s lack of clarity around whether Havas agencies can retain their certification, “[those clients are] pushing back at us and saying ‘Well, what does [B Corp] stand for now?’”

This article has been updated to reflect that 26 agencies co-signed the complaint to B Lab.