Don’t be alarmed if a secret agent butts into your conversation at Cannes Lions. Creatives for Climate’s secret agents intend to hijack meet-ups, shifting the conversation to climate action within advertising instead. They will be armed with the greenwash watch toolkit and are inviting you (individuals, agencies and brands) to become a secret agent of change.
Their toolkit is the Greenwash Swatch, a paint swatch booklet created by think tank, Planet Tracker, that identifies an increasingly complex greenwashing landscape, including new techniques used by brands such as greencrowding, greenrinsing, and greenshifting.
The booklet fits into handbags and pockets and is designed to be pulled out by attendees to identify examples of greenwashing at any moment, providing a simple and provocative way to fuel conversations about brand accountability online. The #greenwashwatch will hijack online conversation and create a counter narrative.
Initiator and chairwoman, Lucy von Sturmer, stated, “Creativity for good means nothing if we do not rise as an industry to tackle creativity for bad. Standing against greenwashing is standing against tactics of delay and increasingly illegal brand behaviour. Unfortunately, as more agencies and brands jump on the ‘green wagon’, we expect to see a TONNE of criminal behaviour on the Croisette this year.”
To recruit more agents to join and spread the idea further, Creatives for Climate is partnering with Clean Creatives to launch the Change Agent Happy Hour on Tuesday June 20 from 19:00-20:30, where it will be issuing an additional 100 toolkits to attendees to inspire collective action within professional organisations and across broader networks.
Creatives for Climate has also partnered with the Clean Creatives Climate Summit at the Embassy of Dutch Creativity and will be hosting a panel titled Tackling the climate crisis is tackling the talent crisis on Tuesday June 20. This panel will feature a broad range of people from across the industry – brand representatives, agency leaders as well as grassroots activists and entrepreneurs on the ground – exploring questions such as, can solving the climate crisis solve the talent crisis? Can upskilling for climate build better agencies and brands?
The Cannes initiative builds on the release of the Creatives for Climate’s landmark Greenwash Watch Course, launched at Cannes in 2022. The training is a cross-industry effort created in collaboration with industry experts such as professor, Gill Wilson, and marketing expert, Alex Weller, from Patagonia to rapidly scale the industry’s ability to challenge briefs, identify greenwashing, and deliver projects with real impact.
The Greenwash Watch agents’ will be rewarding those that use the Greenwash Swatch tool online during Cannes Lions week with free access to the Greenwash Watch training programme. The aim is to bridge the gap between advertising and action, recruiting attendees and their businesses to become Greenwashing ‘secret agents of change’.
You are invited to:
Wednesday 14 June – Creatives for Climate’s first birthday party [Book now]
Tuesday 20 June – Tackling the climate crisis is tackling the talent crisis: how reskilling for climate can build better agencies and brands [Sign up to the summit here]
Tuesday 2 June – Change Agent Happy Hour at the Embassy of Dutch Creativity, Cannes Lions, 19:00-20:30. Sign up here.
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