Activists call time on brands that use ‘creativity for bad’

OVER the years, climate activists, from Extinction Rebellion (XR) to Greenpeace, have famously disrupted events at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. But in 2023, activists are set to highlight the climate emergency from inside the event.

Today, Ad Net Zero, an association dedicated to making the ad industry carbon neutral, is hosting a session on measuring and monitoring advertising’s carbon footprint. Let’s Take Responsibility for Advertising’s Role in a Net-zero Economy explores a new paper from Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, which sets out how and where advertising’s emissions occur, while looking at the power of aligning sustainable and commercial success.

On Thursday, Kantar and XR will challenge the world’s marketers to stop tinkering around the edges of the climate emergency in SM2030: Are You the Problem or the Solution?. The panel, which consists of Will Skeaping, a founding XR climate activist,

Jonathan Hall, practice lead of Kantar’s Sustainable Transformation Practice, and Preeti Srivastav, group sustainability director at Asahi Europe & International, will attempt to answer the question: what more do you need to know before you act?

Outside the conference halls, Amsterdam-based NGO Creatives for Climate is in Cannes to launch a new tool — the Greenwash Swash booklet — to name and shame brands who are guilty of the latest greenwashing techniques, including greencrowding, greenrinsing and greenshifting, or the practice of implying that the consumer is at fault and shifing the blame on to them.

‘Secret agents’ armed with the Swatch will identity shades of greenwashing by brands along the Croisette and upload the evidence on social media.

“Creativity for good means nothing if we do not rise as an industry to tackle creativity for bad,” said Creatives for Climate initiator and chair Lucy von Sturmer. “Standing against greenwashing is standing against tactics of delay and increasingly illegal brand behaviour.”

Tomorrow, Creatives for Climate teams with another climate-focused group, Clean Creatives, to host Tackling The Climate Crisis is Tackling the Talent Crisis. The aim is to share lessons on reskilling employees to attune brands to climate goals, and to show how upskilling for climate might build better agencies and brands. A booming sus - tainability market means there is also a business opportunity to empower employees to become “change agents”. The event is part of the Next Level Climate Summit, organised by Creatives for Climate in partnership with the Embassy of Dutch Creativity, which aims to assemble a forward-thinking climate agenda for the creative industry. Lending further climate perspectives is Scope3, an organisation dedicated to decarbonising media and advertising by measuring its emissions.

“Our goal is to help provide a package of ambitious climate ideas for brands and agencies to go a bit beyond the personal footprint, and think about cultural impact and shifting economies of scale,” said Duncan Meisel, co-founder and executive director of Clean Creatives. “We have a wonderful team of young creatives and creators, who are here looking for ways to talk about climate change and elevate the conversation about how to address working with fossil-fuel polluters.”