Complaint letter to B Labs regarding B Corp status of agencies working for fossil fuel polluters

Clean Creatives and a group of agencies have petitioned B Lab to apply the same strict certification criteria to advertising and PR agencies as it does to fossil fuel companies, citing the conflict of interest when B Corp agencies support polluters like Shell and PetroCanada.

• Clean Creatives argues that allowing B Corp certified agencies to provide marketing and PR services to fossil fuel polluters undermines the core values of the Declaration of Interdependence.
• The complaint identifies specific instances of B Corp agencies or their parent companies working for fossil fuel entities: Havas (parent company) has agreed to be the main media agency for Shell, MSQ has provided marketing services to Shell since 2022, and Tam-Tam/TBWA represented PetroCanada from 2016-2022.
• The authors request that B Lab immediately apply the same eligibility criteria to B Corp agencies and their parent companies as those applied to fossil fuel companies, which include prohibitions on certain extraction and lobbying practices and a requirement for energy portfolios to be at least 50% carbon free.
• The document alleges that Shell has misled the public through greenwashing, citing a banned #PoweringProgress campaign and claims that actual spending on renewables is approximately 1.5% per year, contradicting its public image as a clean energy leader.

APA

Clean Creatives (2023). Complaint letter to B Labs regarding B Corp status of agencies working for fossil fuel polluters. https://cleancreatives.org/b-lab-complaint

Chicago

Clean Creatives. Complaint letter to B Labs regarding B Corp status of agencies working for fossil fuel polluters. 2023. https://cleancreatives.org/b-lab-complaint.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |author=Clean Creatives |title=Complaint letter to B Labs regarding B Corp status of agencies working for fossil fuel polluters |date=19 October 2023 |url=https://cleancreatives.org/b-lab-complaint |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{cleancreatives2023complaint, author = {{Clean Creatives}}, title = {{Complaint letter to B Labs regarding B Corp status of agencies working for fossil fuel polluters}}, publisher = {Clean Creatives}, year = {2023}, month = oct, url = {https://cleancreatives.org/b-lab-complaint}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }