‘Better to be inside the tent’: Reasons for working with fossil fuel
Rupert Price is well aware he was invited on stage at Mumbrella’s Commscon last Thursday to be “the villain in the piece.” As chief strategy officer of DDB Group, Sydney, he was part of a lively panel discussion that tackled the question: ‘Is big fossil fuel the next big tobacco?’
“We have some fossil fuel clients and some other clients that probably have some morally questionable commercial intentions,” Price admits, although he stresses that working with such clients isn’t “a decision that we would necessarily make today”.
“There’s a couple of factors at play here,” he says, singling out ExxonMobil as an example of a fossil fuel client. “One is it’s a legacy issue, so they’ve been in the UK for many, many years, so this is an issue that’s evolved.” The other is that, given their lot — it’s a multi-national client of an international corporate — his local team chooses to effect change from within.
Rupert Price
“My view is that it’s better to be inside the tent pissing out, rather than outside the tent pissing in,” he explains, after warning the audience of the graphic nature of this particular metaphor.
“What I mean by that is, I think we can be a positive influence on the conversation inside the conversation, rather than be outside the conversation where we’ll have little or no influence.
“As an advertising agency, and particularly my role as a strategist, my job is to bring the consumer opinion and the consumer voice to the table. Obviously, in the case of fossil fuels, it’s difficult, it’s challenging, because you’re talking about vast sums of money, and you’re talking about systemic processes that we all live within, frameworks that we live within, and so it is challenging, but I think we can do our bit to help.
“It may not seem that influential or that significant in terms of the size of the overall problem, but I think we still have a role to play, and I don’t want to step away and say, ‘it’s not my problem.'”
Hannah Moreno, founder and CEO of Third Hemisphere, agrees this approach can, in theory, work.
“When you talk about systems, how do we change systems? We make current decision-makers, who set up those systems, positioned to be untenable for them not to change,” she explains.
“So as comms professionals, we have incredible power to influence the narrative en masse by the news media, or by the public culture through advertising, whatever the form is.”
When the narrative is changed “at a societal level”, Moreno says, “politicians need to start listening – because if their position on fossil fuels is completely untenable to their constituents, they’re going to get voted out. Whether they care about the climate or not, it doesn’t matter.”
She continues: “Whether they care about the climate or not, it doesn’t matter. So, if we are able to influence society at large to care about something, it can then influence the legislature, and then they make the rules that the business has to abide by.
“Suddenly now we’re not having to live in this world where fossil fuels are everywhere, plastic straws are everywhere, plastic bags are everywhere, and we’re having to make individual choices. You have a new environment that you’re working in. I think we have an enormous power to do that.”
Hannah Moreno and Belinda Noble
Belinda Noble founded Comms Declare in 2020 to promote climate action in the communications industries. By both calling out and educating those who work with climate polluters, she also acts to change the industry from the inside.
But, unlike Price, she stops short of believing that working with the companies can impact change.
“Who here knows of one fossil fuel company that’s actually changed?”, she asks the audience. “We’ve known about climate change for 50 years.”
She notes just one company who has made a substantial change in the time, Ørsted in Demark – who used to be responsible for a third of the country’s emissions, and, since a 2008 pivot, is now on target to be net zero by this year.
“So how much impact are we actually having?”
Despite this stance, Noble is optimistic that the societal tide is changing, despite a recent governance reversal in the US.
“I think we have to remember that 80% of Australians are really concerned about climate change,” Noble says. “So, no matter what’s happening in the States, it’s important we do remember that people here really care about climate, they actually do.”
She says this knowledge, rather than knee-jerk US policies, should guide our climate communications.
“Lean into the things that people care about, and to the things that they might lose when climate change gets worse,” she explains.
“I think if you’re specific, if you’re personal, and you trigger feelings of loss aversion, you’re going to cut through, and you’re going to have success.”
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Fossil fuel companies are all dropping their net zero promises and doubling down on short term profits. Ad agencies are doing a pretty bad job of “influencing from within”.