3.1.1 The clients you choose to work with

Formal policy for contentious clients

The simple fact is that many advertising agencies, like all other service industries, work with clients whose business operations are known to directly harm the environment.

This is a contentious issue within the advertising industry. In our interviews, the two main reasons for continuing to work with clients whose products, services or operations have a detrimental effect on the environment were:

1. If it is legal, we will continue to work with them as we operate within a capitalist economy and if we don’t work with them, then our competitors will.
2. It’s better to work with these clients so that we can seek to influence them from the inside to reduce their environmental impact.

There are number of small independent agencies that have taken a stronger stance and refuse to work with clients in high-emitting and polluting sectors.

It must be acknowledged that it’s easier for small, purpose-driven organisations to take such a stance. For large, listed companies it can be more challenging – particularly if the boards of those companies do not agree that exclusionary policies should be put in place. There are two common reasons for board apathy on this issue:

• The board members don’t believe that environmental or social science should dictate who the organisation does business with (or simply do not believe the science).
• The revenue lost by opting away from working with contentious clients.

Recommendation

It’s not the role of the IPA to dictate to the industry what type of clients you can and can’t work with. But we do recommend that every company has a formal framework or methodology for assessing the ethical credentials of the clients they represent. At the lowest end this may simply be a cursory due diligence review of whether the client consistently breaches environmental and human rights law.

Currently, 59.8% of agencies [Source: Creatives for Climate Agency Ethics Survey 2024] do not use a set framework or methodology for assessing the ethical credentials of the clients they represent.

Policy for employee choice

Many of the agencies we spoke to have internal, normally unwritten, policies that allow individual employees to opt out from working on clients where their own values are tested – this might include high-emitting organisations like fossil fuel companies but could also include companies with operations in countries with questionable human rights records, or products that knowingly cause harm such as tobacco or gambling, for example.

Recommendation

To be a leading organisation we recommend that all agencies formalise a policy that allows employees to opt out of working on client campaigns where their own values are compromised.

It’s up to you as an agency to decide where to draw the line on this – whether it’s for your employees to decide what is acceptable, or whether you identify specific industries or products that employees can opt out from working with. Either way, the policy should clearly state that if an employee does opt out, it will not impact on the career opportunities of that employee within the agency.

Suggested resources

These resources can help you build a framework or methodology to determine if the clients you work with align with your sustainability aspirations (Passive, Participant or Pioneer).

• The Anti-greenwash Guide for Agency Leaders – provides some useful suggestions on questions and frameworks to develop a methodology for assessing clients.
• Creative Climate Disclosure – provides a suggested list of ‘high-carbon client’ sectors and ‘controversial’ sectors – see also the 2024 report from Elvis.
• Sustainability Communications Diagnostic Tool – you can use this tool to gain an understanding of where your clients currently sit in terms of sustainability maturity.
• Clean Creatives – a movement of advertisers, PR professionals and their clients cutting ties with fossil fuels.