Experts debate whether repeal of Havas B Corp status represents tokenism or real progress

This decision followed a sustained pressure campaign from Clean Creatives, a coalition of advertising professionals advocating for industry divestment from fossil fuel clients. The campaign urged B Lab to investigate Havas after it secured Shell’s account in September 2023.

Clean Creatives’ official complaint to B Lab, signed by 27 other B Corp certified agencies, called for an immediate investigation into Havas and other accredited agencies with ties to the fossil fuel industry. Then, pressure intensified in June when UN Secretary-General António Guterres highlighted advertisers’ role in the climate crisis.

These combined pressures led B Lab to investigate Havas and five of its agencies, ultimately resulting in the revocation of their B Corp certifications. The investigation concluded that Havas’ actions “constituted a breach of the B Corp community’s core values,” even though ”the Certified B Corps are not directly involved in providing services to [Shell],” reads B Lab’s statement.

Duncan Meisel, executive director of Clean Creatives, praised B Lab’s decision in a statement shared with The Drum. “Creative agencies should not be working for the companies destroying the planet. I want to thank B Lab for doing the right thing and revoking certification for agencies that promote fossil fuel polluters,” said Meisel. “They listened to the dozens of B Corps who spoke out about this and took the right steps to protect their community from agencies that wanted to use certification as a cover for greenwashing.”

In response to the decision, Havas released a statment, communicating that it cooperated fully with B Lab while protecting client confidentiality. Although its implicated agencies (Havas London, New York, Lemz, and Immerse) were not directly involved with Shell, Havas accepts the ruling and will lose its B Corp certification.

The company added that its “commitment to sustainability remains unchanged,” and it remains “focused on progressing towards the highest levels of social and environmental performance, with more to come in the coming months and years.”

Shell did not respond to The Drum’s request for comment.

The authority of the B Corp certification, debated

Industry experts are divided on the removal of Havas’ B Corp status.

Some see the move as a sign that the ad industry is moving toward a cleaner future. As Callum Jackson, strategy lead at Shape History, a social impact communications agency, puts it: “Our industry needs to put its money where its mouth is when it comes to going green. We’ve all seen the fallout from agencies losing their B Corp status. Why? Because you can’t claim to be eco-warriors while cozying up to Big Oil. That ship has sailed.”

The global crisis created by climate change, Jackson argues, demands more aggressive approaches. ”Half-measures won’t cut it anymore,” he says. ”To maintain the integrity of accreditations like this, we have to clamp down on grey areas.”

Others who work at B Corp-certified companies underscore the responsibility that comes with the certification. The certification, says Hannah Williams, impact and sustainability manager at online advertising comany Good-Loop, “signifies a company is operating in the best way it can and is prioritizing the triple bottom line in every decision. We are legally required to consider the planet and the people that live on it at an operational level. It’s written in [B Lab’s] Articles of Association.”

Williams goes on to argue that if B Lab took a more lax approach to enforcing these principles, “the power of the certification would become muddied and diluted and would no longer signify the best in class.”

Chris Norman, founder and chief executive of Good Agency, another B Corp-certified creative agency, argues that there “should never have been any doubt that an agency helping promote and support a fossil fuel company should retain its B Corp accreditation.”

Although Havas is now facing the fallout, B Lab, too, may see its image impacted. In Norman's perspective, the time it took for B Lab to remove Havas’ accreditation has been “damaging to B Lab’s reputation, and undermines confidence in the accreditation,”

Nonetheless, he admits he is ”pleased that there is now a precedent that establishes this principle.”

However, some industry leaders have taken a different stance, alleging that B Corp certification is itself a flimsy concept.

Tom Rayner, chief executive officer of Sillion, a consultancy that helps companies, governments and NGOs transition toward more sustainabile practices, suggests that the certification represents empty virtue signaling.

“B-Corp status is worn as a badge of integrity, but its qualifying criteria are mostly toothless governance hurdles,“ he says. “We all know plenty of morally dubious agencies that have achieved it.“

“Until that changes,“ Rayner says, B Lab and the certification program “will continue to face these contradictions.“

His advice to marketers and advertisers? “Stop worrying about badges – we all know which work we should be saying yes and no to.“

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