Climate activists occupy WPP’s HQ to demand global ad giant cuts its ties to Big Oil
June 25, 2025 by Extinction Rebellion
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The activists, from climate campaign group Cut The Ties to Fossil Fuels, also call on Government to ban fossil fuel advertising
Today (25 June), climate activists have taken over the headquarters of advertising agency group WPP, occupying the lobby and dropping a huge 15m banner on the Thameside embankment, stating: “WPP are Climate Criminals, Ban Fossil Fuel Advertising.”
In front of the building a grim reaper figure is sitting on top of a steel oil rig, attended by the Oil Slickers street theatre group, while others are staging a ‘die in’, their bodies wrapped in shrouds emblazoned with logos of WPP’s ‘Big Oil’ clients and the world’s biggest plastic polluter Coca-Cola, together spelling out the message that WPP’s insistence on promoting fossil fuels in a climate and ecologic emergency makes them accomplices in the extinction of life on earth.
WPP owns around 90 advertising agencies, employing 13,000 people in 112 countries, making it the world’s largest ad agency group. It has the most fossil fuel contracts on
Clean Creative’s F-List, with at least 79 contracts in 2024. This is clearly at odds with WPP’s own sustainability policy which states that it will “not take on any client work, including lobbying designed to frustrate the objectives of the Paris Agreement”. In fact WPP promotes several fossil fuel lobby groups and has a client list that reads like the Who’s Who of climate destruction including Adani, BP, ConocoPhillips, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco, TotalEnergies, SLB (Schlumberger), Shell (since 1929) and many more.
One WPP agency enlisted social media influencers to promote TotalEnergies’ controversial East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline, even as anti-pipeline campaigners suffered beatings and arrests by Ugandan police.
WPP offers greenwashing training so their employees can “make effective green claims that are not misleading in any way” and runs tokenistic ‘green’ campaigns as reputational cover, enough to win prizes at the 2023 Ad Net Zero awards, despite working on more fossil fuel contracts than any other advertising group in the world.
It doesn’t have to be this way. With CEO Mark Read set to leave at the end of this year it’s time for WPP to change direction, stop being the industry’s dinosaur and join Clean Creatives, a fast growing movement of over 1,000 advertisers, PR professionals and their clients, who are cutting their ties with the fossil fuel industry and truly committing to a sustainable future.
WPP can no longer ignore the science. The writing is on the wall. Climate change is accelerating, with 2025 experiencing some of the hottest global temperatures ever recorded,leading to more and more extreme weather events this year, including longer and more intense wildfires, stronger hurricanes, faster glacier retreat, severe flooding, and drought and crop failures. Climate breakdown is not some vague and future threat—it’s happening now and it’s intensifying, pushing the boundaries of what we’ve seen in past decades. Cut The Ties To Fossil Fuels calls on WPP to stop enabling the fossil fuel industry and cut its ties NOW.
Taking action today Freya Chambers, 27, from Oxford said: “Working with Big Oil to increase emissions in a climate and ecological emergency is clearly immoral, yet WPP chooses to be complicit in causing existential harm to people and planet. We are here to demand that WPP ceases all work for fossil fuel companies, its lobbyists and the major plastic polluters. We join international calls for a complete ban on fossil fuel advertising”.
Dorothea Hackman, 73, a retired lecturer from Camden, also present at the protest, said: “The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called advertising and PR agencies ‘enablers to planetary destruction’ due to their work for fossil fuel clients. He said the fossil fuel industry has ‘sought to delay climate action with lobbying, legal threats, and massive ad campaigns. “They have been aided and abetted by advertising and PR companies – Mad Men fuelling the madness.’ We couldn’t agree more, which is why we have come to WPP, the advertising industry’s worst climate criminal, to demand it Cuts its Ties to Fossil Fuel.”
Please support the newly independent Cut the Ties to Fossil Fuel campaign here: https://chuffed.org/project/cutthetiestofossilfuels