In November 2021, the world’s largest public relations agency was facing a public relations crisis. 

Tax filings showed that Edelman, a firm that claimed to be committed to climate action, was taking millions each year to create slick marketing campaigns for the world’s biggest climate polluters and their extreme anti-climate political lobbying arms.

CEO Richard Edelman was forced to address the growing controversy. In a call with employees, he announced the company would undergo a 60-day review of all its clients “to make sure they are environmentally responsible.” 

Fifty-three days later, in January 2022, Mr. Edelman announced the results of the review–but made no commitment to end contracts with any fossil fuel industry clients.

Instead, Mr. Edelman said the firm had identified 20 “emission-intensive” clients with whom to begin discussions regarding a “litmus test” for sustainability. If clients couldn’t meet that test, he pledged, the firm would walk away from them.

One year later, the question remains: Has Edelman actually dropped any of its clients? Or was the whole climate review process merely an exercise in PR?

In today’s newsletter, we’ll shine a light on Edelman’s quiet attempts to quell outrage over its fossil fuel clients.

A controversial client, quietly dropped

One of the reasons Edelman undertook a climate review in the first place was to deflect criticism over one client in particular: the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, or AFPM.

AFPM is a trade association representing about 300 U.S. oil refiners and petrochemical companies, including Exxon and Chevron. It is among America’s most hardline anti-climate policy lobbying groups, and has provided funding to climate denial organizations.

The outrage started when a Buzzfeed News investigation revealed Edelman had taken $4 million in 2017 to clean up AFPM’s image. In December, a HEATED investigation revealed that from 2015 to 2020, the firm took a combined $20.2 million from AFPM.

The relationship continued in 2021, according to AFPM’s latest tax filings, obtained by Grassrootbeer Investigations and provided to HEATED. The year of its internal review, Edelman took an additional $1.8 million from AFPM. 

Sometime that same year, however, it appears the longtime collaborators parted ways. The revelation is buried at the bottom of an E&E news article from June 2022, where AFPM spokesperson Ericka Perryman said it “decided to let our Edelman contract expire at the end of last year.” 

Neither Edelman nor AFPM returned HEATED’s requests to confirm whether the internal review was a factor. But either way, the result marks the end of some of the firm’s most controversial—and potentially damaging—work.  

The lasting impact of greenwashing trade groups

HEATED reviewed data from AFPM’s tax filings dating back to 2012, and found that Edelman has taken nearly $30 million from the group in total. That matters, because according to new research, trade associations like AFPM have been some of the most underestimated and effective players in delaying climate action—and their preferred tool to do so has been PR.

“They are enormous actors. And nobody really writes about it,” said Robert Brulle, visiting professor at Brown University and lead author of the study. “If we want to have accountability for climate disinformation and climate obstruction, we have to include trade associations as a major player.”

The study, released last month, reveals that trade associations engaged on climate change–including industries like renewable energy, oil and gas, and utilities–spent $3.4 billion to influence politics from 2008 to 2018. Advertising and promotion was by far the largest share of those expenses—accounting for 64 percent, or $2.2 billion. 

Of all the types of trade associations in the study, oil and gas trade groups like AFPM were the largest spenders on PR, shelling out more than $1 billion over the decade. 

The research indicates that PR created on behalf of oil and gas trade groups has directly contributed to some of the most significant climate policy defeats in American politics.

As an anonymous vice president of government affairs told co-author Christian Downie, “When the [Waxman-Markey] climate change bill came up in 2009 it was a priority issue for our organization. We did a national campaign, and it was very effective.”

It’s possible, even likely, that Edelman created some of that PR; after all, Edelman was the highest-paid PR agency by the American Petroleum Institute at the time, which funded campaigns in opposition to the bill. “They are the number-one-employed firm for the fossil fuel industry sector,” said Brulle. “[There’s] just no comparison.” 

That’s why activists—though they’re pleased to see that Edelman has dropped one major fossil fuel trade organization—aren’t convinced the agency has really cleaned up its act. It has not taken responsibility for this work, or dropped the majority of its high-polluting clients.

"It's encouraging to see Richard Edelman recognize that [his] polluting clients are doing immense damage to the planet and Edelman's reputation, but they are not taking the issue seriously enough,” said Duncan Meisel, director of the Clean Creatives campaign, which seeks to convince creative professionals to stop working for fossil fuel clients.

“Edelman continues to work for multiple AFPM members, such as the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation and Shell,” he continued. “If AFPM is too dirty for Edelman, those clients should be dropped immediately."

The dirty work Edelman continues to do

Richard Edelman begs to differ with Meisel. In a May 2022 interview with PRWeek, he said the firm had “resolved our portfolio issues” surrounding climate change. 

He also said the climate review last year included 20 “high-emitting” clients—but as of the article's publication, the firm only had 18. Edelman declined to name the two dropped clients, citing confidentiality agreements. He also didn’t name the remaining 18.

Confidentiality agreements are routine in the PR industry. But for Meisel, the secrecy may indicate that Edelman wants to keep its doors open to the world’s biggest polluters.

“They want to keep getting contracts in those industries, and they don't want to look like they're unreliable to future clients,” he said. “They're going to keep working with Shell. They're going to keep working with Chevron. They're going to keep working with Aramco in some capacity.”

In fact, The Guardian reported last month that Edelman signed $9.6 million in deals with the Saudi government, which controls the highest-emitting oil corporation in the world. 

The Guardian @guardian

The American PR firm helping Saudi Arabia clean up its image

theguardian.comThe American PR firm helping Saudi Arabia clean up its imageEdelman signed $9.6m in deals with the Saudi government over the past four years to sanitize the Islamic kingdom’s image...

12:30 PM ∙ Dec 22, 2022

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Edelman’s past work has also likely had a lasting effect on public climate perceptions. In the past decade, the firm has held multi-million dollar contracts with the American Petroleum Institute, the National Mining Association, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, and the Edison Electric Institute. The firm managed a 2012 nationwide campaign to support oil drilling, worked with TransCanada in 2013 to advocate for the Keystone XL project, and under its previous subsidiary, Blue Advertising, produced award-winning campaigns for API and American Iron and Steel Institute.

Edelman’s refusal to acknowledge the harmful impacts of such work leads Christine Arena, a PR executive and former vice president for Edelman’s sustainability practice, to believe the internal review was simply greenwashing.

“It has tried to position itself as a leader in climate communications at the same time that it is continuing to represent these clients,” she told HEATED. “In my view, this is not a firm that walks its talk.”

“Sprinkling sand in the gears until the machine breaks down”

Arena resigned from Edelman in 2015 after it became clear to her that her team’s work would always have less clout than its fossil fuel work. 

“The priorities of the agency were going to be driven by those big spending clients, not the clients that are working on sustainability reports,” she said.

But that’s no longer the case for the whole PR industry. “I'm really encouraged by the kind of culture shift that's happening,” said Meisel. 

According to Meisel, 485 agencies have now signed his group’s pledge promising to never create marketing for the fossil fuel industry. That’s more than double the number that had signed last year. 

Those 485 agencies may only account for a small percentage of the entire PR industry. But Meisel said he believes the steadily increasing number is driving conversations that industry leaders–including those at Edelman–can’t ignore for much longer.

“The real impact of the campaign is sprinkling sand in the gears until the machine breaks down,” he said. “I think it's going to be a slow trickle–and then it'll be an avalanche.”

Got any tips about Edelman, or other PR firms’ work for fossil fuel interests? Send us a tip: emilyatkin@heated.world or asamuelson@heated.world.

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