Last month, the French media giant Havas was stripped of its B Corp certifications after signing a global media buying contract with Shell. Ali Lyon explores what the decision means for the industry
Sitting down for a set piece interview with Campaign magazine, Yannick Bolloré’s breezy mood belied the tricky circumstances in which his firm found itself.
The chairman and chief executive of Havas, the world’s fifth largest communications group, went into the interview with the gospel of adland facing a barrage of criticism, much of it from his own industry.
News of his group’s flagship media buying agency – also called Havas – winning a controversial £120m contract to place advertisements on behalf of Anglo-Dutch oil major Shell would have ruffled feathers whichever agency won it. But for Havas the situation had become especially thorny.
His was a company that, for the years preceding its pitch win, had enjoyed burnishing its sustainability credentials and espousing the importance of the advertising sector’s role in the transition away from fossil fuels. In 2020, the group published ‘Impact+‘, its sustainable development strategy to acknowledge the “key role” it plays in “the profound transformation that society is undergoing”.
But the jewels in the crown of Havas’s environmental proclamations were its B Corp-certified firms. Over the course of five years, four of its agencies had been awarded the accreditation, which means the companies held high environmental and social standards.
It was this conflict that annoyed other firms in the sector, prompting 22 other B Corp-certified PR and creative agencies to call for the Havas firms to have their accreditations revoked. It even resulted in protesters hosting a “die in” in Havas’s London HQ.
But despite the letter being made public a week earlier, Bolloré was sanguine in his interview with Campaign, telling the outlet: “We have to say we won’t participate in any greenwashing whatsoever and we will accompany [Shell] and help achieve their transition.”
When asked whether he feared any retrospective action from B Corp, he maintained that “as long as we are working on making things better, B Corp agrees that we can partner with those types of industries”.
Nine months on, however, and the media executive’s confidence transpired to be misplaced. Following a lengthy investigation, B Lab, the certification’s gatekeeper, announced last week that all four B Corp-accredited Havas agencies had been stripped of their certifications.
An industry divided
B Lab’s decision this summer was the catalyst for another round of heated discussion in communications circles, which is divided about how best to view the lucrative but problematic contracts on offer from major polluters with big image problems.
The industry’s environmentally progressive contingent argues that to work with oil majors and their associated industries is to ‘greenwash’ the reputations of a sector that has played an integral role in worsening the climate crisis.
Meanwhile, the sector’s more hawkish contingent believe, like Bolloré, that their communications acumen will be crucial in helping big polluters communicate their transition to net zero.
All of which, one senior executive at a top five PR agency says, is resulting in some uncomfortable dilemmas among the spin sector’s biggest beasts. “Ultimately, all agencies are hypocrites,” they said. “Because ultimately the clients with the deepest wallets, and the clients that are propping up big agencies are fossil fuel companies.
“Pretty much every [international] agency will have a fossil fuel company on its books. And the amount they are willing to pay will allow you to do everything else… You don’t get to have a sustainability team if you don’t have a fossil fuel company somewhere else in the agency.”
The tension has been particularly conspicuous at the world’s largest PR agency, Edelman, which has come in for particularly strong flack from campaigners who balk at what they see as the firm’s hypocritical position on climate.
The US-based outfit has an official position on climate change that has changed on several occasions in the face of criticism.
It has currently declared the issue of climate change to be “biggest problem we face”, but, according to the latest edition of the ‘F List’ – a list compiled by campaign group Clean Creatives that logs all the work agencies do with fossil fuel interests – it was found to be working with four oil majors. The revelation saw director Richard Edelman being the direct target of protests.
Step away from the industry’s big hitters, however, and agencies can find it easier to be more categorical.
Chris Norman’s B Corp-certified Good Agency is owned by its roughly 70 employees and bills itself as an “independent purpose-driven” firm. Norman, who was a signatory of the letter complaining about Havas’s work for Shell, says that his firm “turns down lots of work… and puts in a lot of investment” in order to maintain his B Corp status and embody what he sees as his firm’s ethical standards.
Despite acknowledging it is easier for firms of his size to be more forthright, he is eviscerating about the argument wheeled out by the likes of Bolloré and Edelman. “I think that everyone who says they are helping oil companies on their journey to net zero is an apologist for fossil fuels,” he tells City A.M.
“I think that everyone who says they are helping oil companies on their journey to net zero is an apologist for fossil fuels.”
“There is no evidence at all that they are turning away from fossil fuels. In fact, the opposite is happening.”
And in the case of Havas, it was the french giant’s B Corp status that stuck in the craw so profoundly. “There should never have been any doubt that an agency helping promote and support a fossil fuel company should retain its B Corp accreditation,” he says. “I just hope that this is now replicated as standard practice across all B Corp agencies.”
The Havas precedent
B Lab declined to comment, but it is understood that it is in the process of tightening up its entry requirements. For now, however, B Corp-accredited agencies are permitted to work with fossil fuel clients with a number of provisions, including a cap on the proportion of an agency’s revenue that comes from the sector, and the client in question has committed to be a net zero by 2050.
But Norman’s call for the Havas ruling to be carried through to all agencies might worry some other B Corp PR consultancies, including SEC Newgate UK, which was on the receiving end of a similar open letter from other B Corp PRs sent earlier this month.
The letter highlighted that SEC Newgate held PR contracts with 10 fossil fuels clients, including BHP and Chevron, both held with its Australian office, and the European energy trade body Fuels Europe, by its Brussels arm.
SEC’s position on working with fossil fuel firms is similar to the one Bolloré adopted in his interview, even if the company’s London arm does not have any work with major polluters.
“We do believe in the whole economy transition,” Andrew Adie, the UK office’s head of corporate reputation, says. “We do a lot of work with the green economy, which we’re really proud of, but equally the green economy is already green. We’re not going to get to net zero unless the rest of the economy follows suit.
“It comes down to the ethics of the business [you’re working with], and unfortunately we live in a world where everything we do is a conversation. You’re going to get called out for greenwash or pinkwash or bluewash…
“There’s a view that comms agencies just do the bidding of clients, and they broadcast out what they the client wants the world to here, but actually comms agencies don’t do that.”
SEC Newgate is not being investigated by B Lab. But regardless of any B Lab judgement that may or may not be on the horizon, the firm has already successfully navigated the first hurdle of any potential fallout: avoid sitting down with the industry’s biggest trade title to crow about how safe your B Corp status is before an investigation is launched.