Companies worldwide are under increasing pressure to be transparent about their real environmental impact. When will the marketing industry take a closer look at its role in corporate greenwashing, though?

It’s nothing new

Greenwashing is older than I am. The term was first introduced in the early 1980s, but the tactics already existed in the early 1960s – ask anyone who’s seen Mad Men. Whereas in the 1980s, greenwashing still flirted with blatant lies of intangible corporations, today, things are a lot more subtle. Now that the climate crisis can no longer be ignored, every single brand feels a burning responsibility – not just the Shells of this world.

This desire for sustainability is partly voluntary and partly ‘motivated’ by regulation from official bodies like the British Competition and Markets, that published a ‘Green Claims Code‘ for companies in 2021. The motivation behind that? As much as 40% of the green claims made by companies turn out to be misleading. In short; today, we might see fewer blatant lies, but greenwashing is still 100% a thing, albeit more hidden. 

So far, the marketing industry has not really been under fire for its own responsibility for the greenwashing phenomenon. It does its thing and invariably disappears into anonymity when the going gets tough (and that happens a bit more often now that the earth is warming up at a furious pace). Where advertising traditionally stands for influencing the choices of consumers, that role now seems to be shifting to influencing the people behind the consumers. You could call it lobbying through advertising.  

It’s probable that the responsibility of communication agencies when it comes to greenwashing is greater than we dare to think

David Ogilvy once boasted of spending three weeks in a Rolls-Royce factory before writing one of the most legendary headlines ever: “At 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise in the new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock“. More than 50 years later, agencies still like to make an impression with an intense cooperation with their clients and a thorough knowledge of the business and the product they are helping to position on the market. Really strong long-term campaigns are often born when the brand and the agency are on the same page.  

Strangely though, these same agencies suddenly don’t seem to know their clients so well anymore when they make questionable campaigns about sustainability or promote a product that quite obviously doesn’t contribute any good to society – or worse.  

Let’s face it, we’ve all worked on something we had doubts about. Marketing follows an economic logic first, so there will always be a trade-off. Undeniably, the lion’s share of the responsibility lies with the founders, owners, boards of directors, and management of the producers and providers. But it seems like the marketing world is getting away with their part all too easily now.  

Which brings us to this: to what extent are they responsible too?

According to the JEP — the Belgian ‘Jury for Ethical Practices’ — advertising agencies have virtually no responsibility. Every complaint is taken up directly with the producer or provider. The advertising agency remains completely unaffected. This is not unique to the local JEP; it’s a worldwide phenomenon. You can Google-search ‘greenwashing’ and scroll through the classic cases of Chevron, Shell, Dupont, and many others: you’ll quickly notice that advertising agencies are always immune.   

However, the defense that agencies simply do what they are asked to do is difficult to substantiate. By definition, greenwashing is about greening the message rather than the product. And it is precisely the formulation of the message that agencies take care of. Communications agencies invariably seek the limelight when one of their campaigns rises above mediocrity, but they hide fearfully in the shadows when their ‘greenwashing’ campaign rises above the surface. This is not only a great pity, it is also a missed opportunity to become more sustainable as a sector.

Fortunately, the change is inevitable for three reasons:  

1. To attract creative talent as a sector, far-reaching transparency about its clients and its own way of working is essential. The brain drain of non-transparent agencies guilty of greenwashing is so big that they can no longer attract new talent. 
2. The new generation of customers also demands transparency. Companies that position themselves as sustainable cannot afford to work with an agency that maintains the system they are fighting against. You can hardly demand more transparency from your subcontractor in South-East Asia than from your advertising agency, can you?
3. In addition, governments are slowly but surely becoming more strict. In Amsterdam, for example, it’s no longer possible to advertise fossil fuels. We already see similar initiatives in France, Scandinavia and the United States. It’s becoming more difficult for non-sustainable companies to get their message across.  

To sum up, it is about time that the advertising world thoroughly examines itself. Opt resolutely for transparency. Futerra, for example, is a pioneer in the field of client disclosure reporting, whereby marketing agencies disclose their sources of income. To date, more than 300 agencies have adopted the idea. Why shouldn’t you do something similar? Or, if you’re on the client side, why shouldn’t you ask your agency about it?  

We’re not going to save the planet – but together, we can put greenwashing to rest.