Episode 67
The FList 2023 - Creatives taking responsibility for people and planet
“There’s really no way you can say you don’t know this is a dangerous activity at this point”
Making a return to the podcast, we caught up with Duncan Meisel, founder of Clean Creatives, so we could talk about the newly published F-List.
For anyone unfamiliar, Clean Creatives, is a movement of advertisers, PR professionals, and their clients cutting ties with fossil fuels.The F-List is a body of research and report which documents agencies who choose to continue working with fossil fuel organisations despite the scientific consensus that what they do is destroying the planet. It really doesn’t get much clearer than that.
We dive straight into this conversation finding out what has been happening with the Clean Creative campaign, its progress and of course, that infamous F-List.
Duncan reveals that over 800 agencies have now taken the pledge including their first large agency (over a 1000 employees). When looking at the agencies who have made the bold commitment no to work with fossil fuel organisations vs, those who are on the F-List, Duncan points out, “there’s really no way you can say you don’t know this is a dangerous activity at this point” – the F-list is just highlighting to people those agencies who are choosing to ignore all the warnings.
The F-List has evolved over the last 3 years, with more focus on the data, the sources and as Duncan explains, they were able to do both a global and multilingual search this time. They also had a much shorter reporting timeframe, “this year we tried to be really precise and look for agencies that were doing work right now in 2022 and 2023, the hottest years in human history.”
We discuss the fact that despite all the evidence, the F-List agencies continue to try and defend their work, and the role the 800+ agencies committed to the Clean Creatives pledge have in telling their stories about change and progress. The more we share our work on the good stuff, the solutions and the opportunities around that the more we can work together to move away from those things that do the most harm.
This conversation is one not to miss, whether you work for an agency or with agencies, it’s important to be aware of the F-List and the work that Clean Creatives are doing.
For more information about Clean Creatives - https://cleancreatives.org/
And if you catch this podcast in time to join Duncan and the Clean Creatives team in London for their Happy Hour on the 31st October - there’s an invitation and more details to that event here.
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