Disrupting Climate Deception

Keith Zakheim 0:02

Welcome to the Age of Adoption podcast. I am your host, Keith Zakheim. Today, as we do with every podcast, we're going to ask our guests one question and one question only. What is your age of climate adoption? Stories A little bit about the Age of Adoption. We live in an era where all corporations and enterprises must rapidly adopt climate and sustainability solutions regardless of industry. Companies must transform their businesses to be become more climate

Keith Zakheim 0:32

sensitive and sustainable. My day job is CEO of the marketing and public relations firm Antenna Group. And from that vantage point I've experienced this transition from an age of innovation, an era in which technologists, entrepreneurs and investors focus on innovating climate and sustainable solutions, to this age of adoption which characterizes the world today. So if you accept the Age of Adoption hypothesis, then there's really only

Keith Zakheim 1:02

one salient question to be asked. What is your Age of Adoption story? A functional, thriving society needs institutions and.

Keith Zakheim 1:16

People that keep it honest.

Keith Zakheim 1:18

These are what Yuval Harari in his book Nexus refers to as self correcting mechanisms. In a democracy it could be the judicial system, the media and or civil society. They are the policemen and referees that.

Keith Zakheim 1:30

Keep us all honest and ensure we hew to the straight and narrow.

Keith Zakheim 1:35

My guest on today's episode of the Age of Adoption podcast, Duncan Meisel, executive director of Clean Creatives, is himself a self correcting mechanism for the marketing and comms agency world. His organization provides a pledge that agencies can sign that is a commitment to to reject collaboration with fossil fuel polluters as well as publicly targets agencies that, as Duncan has said, use PR and ad campaigns to do something bad every

Keith Zakheim 2:05

time an agency tries to do something good.

Keith Zakheim 2:08

Back with Duncan in a gif. Hey Duncan, welcome to the Age of Adoption podcast.

Duncan Meisel 2:15

Thank you Keith. It's great to be here.

Keith Zakheim 2:17

Yeah, Duncan, you do a lot of interesting work. You're definitely a thought leader. Some may call you a provocateur. To me you're a public advocate in the spirit of a Ralph Nader, keeping people honest, almost a policeman to make sure that those of us in the communications and marketing industry, we have a role in trying to reverse climate change, in educating the public around one of the most, if not the only existential issue of our day. And we need people like you to be doing that.

Keith Zakheim 2:47

Reading a book recently called Nexus by Yuval Harari. Really interesting kind of public thinker, public intellectual and the book is about in general, networks, information networks and kind of looking at the past and today. But one of the things he talks about is that healthy societies have what he calls self correcting mechanisms, Right. They're institutions, there are people, organizations that keep things honest. So if things stray, they can be put back on track. And so the media, for example, is a self correcting mechanism in a

Keith Zakheim 3:17

democratic society.

Duncan Meisel 3:18

Right?

Keith Zakheim 3:18

So if things start to stray, you hope the media is going to help self correct for that or the courts could be, or what have you. Anyway, I see what you're doing to a certain degree also as a self correcting mechanism that I think we all desperately need. So I thank you for that and I'm excited just to dig in a little bit about, you know, what it is that Clean Creatives do and how you got to where you are now. So please, floor is yours.

Duncan Meisel 3:39

Awesome. So Clean Creatives is a global movement of people in the advertising and PR industry working to cut ties with fossil fuel companies. We have a pledge that says I'm not going to work with the fossil fuel companies anymore. That can be signed by agencies or individuals. We also have a pledge for brands that hire agencies to take a pledge that says we're not going to hire agencies that have fossil fuel clients as well. And what we define as a fossil fuel client is any company that makes more than 50% of its revenue or spends more than 50% of its capital

Duncan Meisel 4:09

on fossil fuel projects or money from fossil fuels. Or if you're in the electric, if you're a utility generating more than 50% of your electricity from fossil fuels. So we're doing that kind of as a rough way to say, like, look, if you're still more than half into fossil fuels in 2025, you're probably moving in the wrong direction. And we need companies that are really strenuously working towards reducing our dependence on fossil fuels to get all the best communication support they possibly can. So the way

Duncan Meisel 4:39

we got into this, my background is in doing communications for climate NGOs. I worked for 350. Org, a global climate organization for many, doing everything from trying to stop pipelines, to pass the Paris climate agreement, to get a climate law in the us. And what you find when you do that work is that every time you have something, a really good idea, something you really want to have happen for positive impact on the climate, there's always these very well run advertising and PR campaigns for the bad guys

Duncan Meisel 5:09

to say let's actually do something bad in step, and that those campaigns really work. I think greenwashing really works. I think obstruction has been very effective on the part of the fossil fuel industry. And those things work because they have really excellent communicators on their Side, this is an industry with 100 years of PR experience and lessons built up that they are using to stand in the way of climate legislation, of companies with progressive climate policies, of any sort of

Duncan Meisel 5:38

competitors to their business, to be fair.

Keith Zakheim 5:40

Also to us who maybe try to counter that, counter those wins. The reality is ignorance is bliss.

Keith Zakheim 5:46

So they have the advantage now, really.

Keith Zakheim 5:48

They have the advantage from the start. Right, because human nature is to bury your head in the sand and not to, you know, the Inconvenient truth. Great title for what Al Gore did, because that's true. It is an inconvenient truth for most people. So if you're fighting on the wrong side of this, you have the advantage.

Keith Zakheim 6:06

It's, you know.

Keith Zakheim 6:06

Right. Like we have to fight against that heuristic human nature around Ignorance is bliss.

Duncan Meisel 6:12

I think they do have that advantage, but they also have a pretty big disadvantage, which is their product is not particularly popular. People don't like pollution. If you ask people, would you rather have clean air? Would you rather have clean energy? People would say, yeah, I actually really want the good stuff. Which is why so much of their communication focuses on doubt. It focuses on, well, this stuff isn't reliable. It's too expensive. They're not saying solar panels are bad for the environment. They're saying this thing you like is probably not realistic. And so that's sort of like. I think that feeds into

Duncan Meisel 6:42

the inertia that we're talking about is like, well, the status quo. You can sort of see it. It's concrete. I know my car works. It's probably like, whatever. And this new stuff, who knows how that's going to go? They really rely on that sense of uncertainty. And. And so, like, I mean, but I don't know, like, the people doing those campaigns are people like you or me. They're, you know, we started Clean Creatives because the agency working for the American Petroleum Institute in 2020 was based in Austin, Texas, where I live. And I know a bunch of progressive young people in

Duncan Meisel 7:12

Austin, Texas, who would work at an agency like that. And I guarantee you they're not excited about working for the American Petroleum Institute. They see it as a conflict of interest for their values. So we're trying to reach people in the industry who are good communicators, who do have those values, give them a platform and the tools they need to advocate for not working with polluters anymore. Because I think a world in which, like the oil and gas companies in particular and the utilities have less of that PR and communication muscle behind them is A world where it's easier to build all the things we need to solve

Duncan Meisel 7:42

this problem.

Keith Zakheim 7:43

Interesting. I'm just curious before we get to the question of the day. So you do a lot publicly creative and interesting and provocative. Do you also engage in kind of behind the curtain backroom conversations with agencies that you're calling out and they will send you a note, hey, Duncan, you're killing us here. Can we talk? And I'm just curious in terms of like, what are some of, without cynicism, like, what are some of the rationalizations of these agencies? Who. You're right.

Keith Zakheim 8:13

Like, you know, I know some of these people, they're good people. Yet, you know, so what do you hear from those agencies?

Duncan Meisel 8:19

It's a mix. You know, one of the things, I think the most depressing answer for a lot of people is they're climate doomers. They're people who don't believe the problem can be solved.

Keith Zakheim 8:28

Correct.

Duncan Meisel 8:29

And I've never met more cynical climate doomers than people who work at fossil fuel PR agencies. The first thing out of their mouth is like, we can't solve this, I might as well make a buck.

Keith Zakheim 8:39

Oh, so it's not deniers. I'm sorry, it's doomers. That's a distinction. Interesting. Okay.

Duncan Meisel 8:44

And I find that particularly depressing and I don't think it's honest. I think we can solve this problem. I think a lot of people are reassuring themselves with that, that they don't have responsibility because it's just out of their hands. But for the people who aren't in that position, I think it's a very misleading message that people think that they can help. They think that they can go in and help these companies communicate their way out of an old business model into the new one. Which is a very comforting idea for someone who's great

Duncan Meisel 9:13

at their job. The idea that you could use your skills to help I think is very important, but there's just not a lot of evidence that that's worked. I don't think you actually see the commitment from the top of the fossil fuel companies to actually make that transition. And running an agency is hard, I don't need to tell you that. And sometimes they have pre existing commitments, long term relationships, they just don't have a plan to get out of. And they're just sort of like flummoxed by the idea that it could of how to start.

Duncan Meisel 9:43

And so what we really encourage people to do is to make a plan to say like, by this date we are actually going to be out of this and gradually make that transition. This is a lot of other growing industries, as you know, that are displacing fossil fuels that are just, or just in like some sort of conflict of interest with them, like working for an insurance company these days. You are going to have a lot of problems with the fossil fuel polluting business model that is actually really hurting your other clients. So we think just like you make a plan, you get started and once you

Duncan Meisel 10:13

begin to break down the problem into its specifics, I think people are able to move a little quicker. But it's a bunch of fear. I mean I live in Texas. I grew up with the idea that the fossil fuel industry was a source of infinite wealth and power. And that's a very deeply embedded idea and not true anymore. These people have. There's a time limit to these business models now, but it's hard to shift off of that assumption, I think.

Keith Zakheim 10:39

Yeah. One more question about this and I promise we're at the age of adoption question. So now let's just shift to the brands that are, that are hiring agencies that have not divested. What are they telling you? Especially the brands that are sincere in transforming their businesses, their business operations, their supply chains, their energy makes, like sincere. Yet some of their vendors, including comm shops are not. What do they tell you?

Duncan Meisel 11:07

It is something that I think is still new. I think this is an idea that's still sinking in. We've been working as clean creatives for three or four years now. Procurement is an area that moves slowly and has lots of rules associated with it. So we've talked to some of the very big companies in the world and they just have a procurement list that's been approved and that's all they can work off of. But for us, we're really trying to highlight the places where there's conflicts of interest. So like State Farm had an $8 million ad

Duncan Meisel 11:37

buy at the super bowl they were going to make, but then a lot of their customer base went up and went up in flames. In California at the beginning of the year, they had to cancel that ad. That company that runs, that ran that ad has Exxon as a client. Exxon was in California saying we need to, you know, we, we're not going to take responsibility for this. Running ads saying that, you know, we should not pass a bill to make polluters pay for the damages they've done. Like, you know, state farms ability

Duncan Meisel 12:06

to advertise is being directly undermined by one of their, the other client of their ad agency.

Keith Zakheim 12:13

You're connecting a Lot of these dots. Interesting.

Duncan Meisel 12:15

We're trying to connect the dots. And if you are a clean company, if you are a company that works in clean tech or, you know, there's a lot of, like, clean cosmetics or home care or something like that, where you have a, like, very green, sustainability focused message and you hire an agency that has fossil fuel clients, I can't guarantee it. I can give you a pretty strong assurance that they are taking the creative and the strategy and the audience targeting they're using for your brand, and they are bringing it across the hall to the fossil fuel client and they're

Duncan Meisel 12:45

saying, we know how to reach green consumers. Let us tell these environmental weirdos that you're actually doing great things for the planet. There is a transfer of knowledge across the hall that actually is undermining the strategy and making it easier to greenwash. You're actually giving them the tools to greenwash their products. They get that playbook to use consumers.

Keith Zakheim 13:07

Yeah, that makes sense.

Duncan Meisel 13:08

So we're really trying to draw out those specifics, and it's actually really easy to implement. If you're a company that's making these hiring decisions. It's just a question on your rfp. It's like, do you have fossil fuel clients? Yes or no? You know, you're in the conversations. Would you be willing to sign a pledge that says you won't work with fossil fuels? And if you have a good product and you have a strong brand, it really moves quickly. Agencies are excited to do this if you give them the reason to do it. And we also have 1300 agencies that have signed a clean, creative pledge that would love

Duncan Meisel 13:38

to work with you.

Keith Zakheim 13:39

Yeah, absolutely. All right, so the name of this podcast is the Age of Adoption Podcast. And that's because we ask one question that excites some of our guests, and he puts the fear of God onto others. That's a joke. What is your age of adoption story? And I'm just gonna mention one thing. Those of us have been working in this space for 15, 20 years. There's been ups and downs, challenges and opportunities and celebrations and commiserations. There's no question that whenever Inauguration

Keith Zakheim 14:09

Day was, from that day, this industry is under fire. There are significant political headwinds that are facing us. And it's a shame because the last two or three years, we felt we had tailwinds and an environment that was welcoming and was going to ultimately provide what we needed to hopefully undergo widespread transformation. That's not the case today. So when I ask you your age of adoption story, I know, that's a more complex question now than it may have been two, three months ago. So, anyway, Duncan, what

Keith Zakheim 14:39

is your age of adoption story?

Duncan Meisel 14:42

The way I think about the moment we're in is that the urgency we have does not come from politicians, doesn't come from scientists, it doesn't come from even activists like me. It comes from the planet. That is the fundamental problem that we have. And it's never been hotter, it's never been more dangerous, and it's never been more visible that this is a problem we have to solve now. And I think when you we take a step back into the fundamentals,

Duncan Meisel 15:13

we have technology that works. We have a global population that is more aware of this problem than they've ever been. We have, you know, twice as much capital going into renewable energy than fossil fuel these days. There's a lot of very strong fundamentals. And I think it's important to just, like, sit back with the big picture a little bit and remember, politicians can say a lot of stuff and they're going to move quickly and they're doing real harm. And I don't think we should pretend that the road isn't harder with someone like

Duncan Meisel 15:43

that, with someone like, with the current leadership we have. But the reason we have to do this comes from the planet. And that planet is changing in a way that is going to make life inhospitable. And so I think if we stay in touch with that, then I think there's an opportunity for progress. And there's always ebbs and flows. You've been in this long enough. You remember the beginning of the Obama administration, we had the first Trump administration. And every time after the climate Bill failed in

Duncan Meisel 16:12

2010, people thought the Democrats would walk away from climate change forever. It would not be an issue for another decade. Under the first Trump administration, that was a hugely threatening moment. And each time an engaged global public opinion got up and said we actually need to solve this problem and did the work necessary to push it back onto the political agenda. And for the people who are in the position of trying to develop new technologies, build new markets, be an advocate. You just have to remember

Duncan Meisel 16:42

that these ebbs and flows are inevitable. There was never a smooth. Of course, the true love never did run smooth. And in these moments, you have to focus on finding strong allies, finding the people who are still in it, working with them to communicate to the story, to the public, because if you don't tell people, they'll never tell you. And we have to keep communicating and we have to keep building because the Momentum will shift back. It's too urgent not to. And a lot of the companies we work with in Clean

Duncan Meisel 17:12

Creatives, in the ad industry across the economy and more in general, they really got engaged in this issue in 2019 because of the global climate strikes. I think we have to remember that who was the president then? It was Donald Trump. And governments failing to act on this problem doesn't decrease political engagement on it. It actually increases it. Their failure to act is what's going to increase public sentiment and concern. And so I think we have to keep our eyes

Duncan Meisel 17:42

on that prize. And I think with that in mind, there's still huge opportunities to come. And the people that are working now to build plans, to get ready to think about the next phase are going to be the best position when the pendulum swings back, because it will.

Keith Zakheim 17:58

Yeah, I think that's right. Just from a tactical perspective, are you changing how you're, how you do things in this environment? Anything changing there or is it.

Duncan Meisel 18:07

We're really focusing on the materiality of this problem. Like, we're really trying to zero in on, like, I mean, that State Farm example for me was really striking. You know, I was like, oh, this is literally a place where a huge chunk of ad revenue disappeared because of the failure to confront climate change. And I think telling those stories is very important. And you can't sell shoes to someone whose house is on fire. This is like, a lot of stuff is going to fall apart here. Global GDP could be cut in half this century

Duncan Meisel 18:37

if we don't solve this problem. And I think keeping people focused on that material problem is the real key.

Keith Zakheim 18:45

Yeah, well, that makes a lot of sense. Duncan, once again, thank you so much for, first of all, doing what you're doing and kind of creating these guardrails in the industry that I work in. It's super helpful and continued luck and success and what you're doing and Clean Creators is doing and look forward to seeing you again soon.

Duncan Meisel 19:02

Thank you so much. Same to you. I'm very enjoyable to chat.

Keith Zakheim 19:06

The Age of Adoption podcast is where CEOs, investors, entrepreneurs and policymakers share their climate and sustainability business transformation stories. You can find find Age of Adoption Podcast episodes on your favorite podcast apps, including itunes and Spotify. The Age of Adoption Podcast is brought to you by Antenna Group. If you have a great Age of Adoption story and want to share it with the world, then Antenna Group is the integrated marketing and public relations

Keith Zakheim 19:35

agency for you. We partner with companies big and small, from Growth Stage to Fortune 100, to tell the story. Their climate and sustainability stories to key audiences and stakeholders, helping companies build brands and sales funnels. Antenna group is the OG of climate and sustainability PR, having worked in the space since 2005. If you're interested in learning more about Antenna Group, please visit our website at www.antennagroup.com. shoot us an email at info@antennagroup.com or ping us on LinkedIn.

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