WPP and Big Oil: promoting polluters
Giant fossil fuel companies are responsible for more emissions than any other sector on the planet. And, despite their green marketing and climate pledges, these corporations are not planning to turn off the tap: 96% of oil and gas companies are exploring and developing new reserves.
Fossil fuel companies are jeopardising health, nature and human rights worldwide. Despite this, the world’s largest advertising and PR company, WPP, is continuing to profit from promoting polluters.
In 2024, WPP had more fossil fuel contracts than any other advertising company in the world. According to industry group Clean Creatives, WPP and its subsidiaries held 79 contracts with fossil fuel clients from 2023 - 2024.
Among WPP’s clients are five of the world’s top 10 polluters: Saudi Aramco, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell and Chevron. Each of these firms are the focus of legal actions around the world, with claims against them including greenwashing, adverse climate impacts, environmental racism and human rights violations.
Above: During BP’s “Possibilities Everywhere” campaign by Ogilvy, a subsidiary of WPP, more than 96% of BP’s annual spend was on oil and gas. The advertising campaign was reported to the OECD in 2019 by law firm ClientEarth for corporate greenwashing. Photo credit: Emily Atkin / Heated.
Above: Shell’s “Cleaner Energy” ads by WPP agency Wunderman Thompson (now VML) were banned by the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in 2023 for greenwashing. The ASA said the ads were misleading given that “large-scale oil and gas investment and extraction comprised the vast majority of the company’s business model in 2022 and would continue to do so in the near future.”
WPP agencies have worked on rebranding fossil fuel companies like Equinor and BP with a fresh, clean, green image; lobbied on behalf of fossil fuel development; positioned polluting fossil gas alongside renewables; managed BP’s reputation through its catastrophic oil spills and greenwashed the public image of Shell and other big polluters.
WPP has marketed fossil fuels to youth audiences through gaming sites and influencers, and facilitated Olympic sponsorship deals to place oil and gas brands next to healthy athletes and in front of huge global sports audiences.
One of WPP’s top agencies, Ogilvy, had active accounts with at least 15 fossil fuel clients in 2024. Ogilvy’s relationship with BP is one example of how advertising and PR has likely helped to delay a clean energy transition.
BP commissioned Ogilvy to help it rebrand in 2000 through its “Beyond Petroleum” campaign. The rebrand sought to position BP as a “progressive” and “environmentally responsible” company, while helping BP to “transcend the oil sector” and “deliver top-line growth”. The campaign was shown to be successful in improving BP’s reputation, with a 2007 survey finding that 49% of consumers agreeing that BP had become “more green” in the past five years, and that BP was ranked as the most sustainable carbon major.
After more than two decades of Ogilvy’s assistance to BP to curate an image of environmental responsibility through advertising, PR and sponsorship deals, in 2024, BP abandoned its previously declared climate targets and announced expansion to boost its oil and gas output.
Why we’ve reported WPP to the OECD.
In a first-of-its-kind case, we allege that WPP’s work for fossil fuel clients is causing direct harm to the environment and human rights through promoting and greenwashing those clients.
We hold that WPP is acting in breach of Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct issued by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).
See our FAQs for more about the OECD, the Guidelines and the process of an OECD complaint. Please get in touch if you’d like more information.
Above: WPP agency Wavemaker’s “Human Energy” ad campaign, launched in 2021. At the time of the ad, 97% of Chevron’s annual spending plan to 2028 was in fossil fuels.
Wavemaker has held a contract with oil major Chevron since 2003. Wavemaker’s adverts for Chevron have been criticised for greenwashing and wokewashing to deflect attention away from Chevron’s continued polluting activities, including major fossil fuel expansion and poisoning communities of colour living near their refineries.
Why is WPP continuing to work for fossil fuel clients?
It certainly isn’t for lack of information. Data regarding the impacts of fossil fuel companies on global climate breakdown is readily available. Their catastrophic expansion plans are clear. Studies show that the clean energy pledges of Shell, BP, ExxonMobil and Chevron have never been met by action or meaningful investment - an industry-wide trend. Oil and gas producers account for only 1% of total clean energy investment globally.
It’s also clear that fossil fuel companies are using advertising to downplay the sector’s role in the climate crisis and to undermine climate regulation and policymaking. Subpoenaed documents have revealed that the fossil fuel industry has spent decades sowing doubt about the dangers of burning oil and gas through their advertising and PR, and deflected responsibility for climate change onto individuals.
Fossil fuel majors have known about the impacts of climate change for decades, and spend billions on deceptive marketing instead of investing in clean energy; often aligning their advertising with major political milestones.
WPP agency Ogilvy, at the time Ogilvy & Mather, invented the term ‘carbon footprint’ for BP. Following a tactic common to big oil advertising, the campaign shifted the blame for carbon pollution away from BP to individuals’ “daily activities - from washing a load of laundry to driving a car load of kids to school”.
WPP knows: leaked BP files
WPP can be under no illusions about the work they do for carbon majors. In one case, WPP received a briefing from BP to its creative agencies, including Ogilvy, Mindshare and WPP Team Energy, which firmly stated BP’s strategy to “invest in more oil and gas” before asking the agencies to position the oil major as a leader in the clean energy transition.
Above: The World Never Stops Moving (2023) WPP agency Wavemaker’s advert for Chevron, promoting oil and gas.
WPP: working for the fossil fuel lobby against the aims of the Paris agreement
WPP’s policy is to “not take on any client work, including lobbying, designed to frustrate the objectives of the Paris Agreement”.
If properly followed, this policy should exclude WPP from working with fossil fuel clients. Many, if not most, of WPP’s fossil fuel clients are not only expanding their fossil fuel operations but are lobbying against pro-climate policy and advocating for energy policies that would accelerate fossil fuel development.
WPP also continues to work for several fossil fuel lobbying firms, including the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), American Chemistry Council, American Petroleum Institute (API) and the Australian Gas Infrastructure Group, which advance the interests of oil and gas against the objectives of the Paris Agreement.
WPP subsidiary Ogilvy’s lobbying shop, Ogilvy Government Relations, has lobbied against pro-climate policies (such as methane fees and a windfall tax on oil companies) on behalf of API as recently as 2022.
InfluenceMap research has ranked API as one of the “most obstructive industry associations in the world on climate policy”. According to the research, since 2012 WPP has been paid $4,650,000 for services provided to API via Ogilvy Government Relations.
Climate change is a human rights issue
Climate breakdown threatens a range of human rights, including to health, life, water and sanitation and food.
In 2022, the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines ruled that major oil and gas companies, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell and many other WPP clients, have violated human rights in connection with their contribution to climate change.
In 2024, the UN Human Rights Commissioner advocated for an end to fossil fuel advertising to protect human rights, echoing UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who called advertising and PR agencies “enablers to planetary destruction” due to their work for fossil fuel clients, saying that the fossil fuel industry has “sought to delay climate action — with lobbying, legal threats, and massive ad campaigns. They have been aided and abetted by advertising and PR companies – Mad Men…fuelling the madness.”
How WPP’s fossil fuel advertising is holding back climate action
Five years after WPP agency Ogilvy’s rebrand of British Petroleum to Beyond Petroleum, 49% of consumers agreed that BP had become “more green”. Ogilvy has worked with BP for more than two decades, helping to curate an image of environmental responsibility through a full rebrand, reputation management, advertising campaigns and sponsorships. In 2024, BP abandoned its previously declared climate targets and announced that it was expanding its oil and gas output.
While contractual details between fossil fuel companies and their advertising agencies are difficult to find, it’s clear that marketing is designed not only to grow product sales but to protect companies’ reputation. Illustrating this is the increase in fossil fuel ad spend in response to negative media attention.
It’s also clear that fossil fuel marketing is not aimed solely at consumers, but to influence policymakers. Ad spend also increases during political attention on climate change.
In 2023, the UK ad watchdog, the ASA, banned ads for Equinor (made by McCann, with imagery from WPP’s Superunion) that promoted the oil major’s clean energy. In the ruling, the ASA cited Equinor’s defence, that “[the advert] did not advertise any consumable produce or service, and was not aimed at the general public, but at decision-makers and their influencers, a group that included politicians in government and opposition, as well as advisors and journalists.”
As fossil fuel majors use their political and public reputation, achieved through high spend ad campaigns, to make huge profits and escape stringent regulation, it’s impossible to ignore the impacts of global heating as extreme weather events hit all corners of the world. Those most vulnerable to climate breakdown are those with least responsibility for emissions.
WPP is soaked in fossil fuels - with fossil fuel interests on the company’s board, and more fossil fuel clients than any other advertising company. With other agencies listing fossil fuel clients as a reputational risk and reporting their ‘Advertised Emissions’, it’s time for WPP to demonstrate corporate accountability for the impact of their work on the climate. Not only their share prices but our health and planetary stability depend on it.
See our FAQs to discover more about our OECD complaint against WPP. Please get in touch if you’d like more information.
