Ogilvy's Clients Just Received a Golden Ticket to Ogilvyland

Five major Ogilvy clients received golden tickets yesterday morning—but they won't get them into Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Instead, the tickets promise entry into Ogilvyland: a satirical fossil fuel funfair dreamed up by activists at the climate campaign group Serious People. The hand-delivered package also included an "oilypop" and a letter to each company's leaders, highlighting the conflicts between their own sustainability goals and the work that Ogilvy does for fossil fuel companies. "Ogilvy's worst nightmare is some of their big clients with with big commitments to sustainability just asking some questions," Jamie Inman, co-founder of Serious People, told ADWEEK. "All we're asking is for some of those clients to have a private conversation with Ogilvy." Building Ogilvyland Serious People built a website for Ogilvyland that launched on Oct. 3, and has been rolling out LinkedIn posts with details about the funfair throughout the month. The group also sent emails to hundreds of Ogilvy clients, inviting them to the satirical amusement park, and signing the emails as WPP CEO Mark Read. Attractions (none of which are real, at least so far) include Coal Mine Mountain, Rising River Rapids, Net-Zero Slowllercoaster, and an oil-slicked slide called Pipeline Plunge. Mark Read’s Magic Show, which is advertised with a headshot of the exec photoshopped into a magician's costume, claims to show him making employee opinions magically align with his own by using an “unemployment wand." Ogilvy directed ADWEEK to an excerpt from WPP's sustainability report, which includes guidelines for working with energy clients: "We believe it is essential that the communications of energy companies are truthful, fair and accurate. We require that rigorous standards are applied to all content we produce for our energy clients, as we do for all clients, and seek to fairly represent their actions and commitments at all times. Our policy is not to take on any client work, including lobbying, designed to frustrate the objectives of the Paris Agreement." Activism begets activism Oli Frost, climate-focused creator and co-founder of Serious People, came up with the idea for the campaign after reading activist group Clean Creatives' 2024 F-List. "We've seen people use the F-List in all kinds of ways—as a screen in procurement, an informational tool for students, and more—but Ogilvyland is probably my favorite so far," Duncan Meisel, executive director of Clean Creatives, told ADWEEK. "Sometimes you just need to laugh at the absurdity of working for so many polluters while the world is overheating." The annual F-List uses publicly available documents to expose advertising and public relations agencies' relationships with fossil fuel companies. The goal is to highlight the impact that ad agencies have on the climate crisis through their clients, and then pressure those agencies to drop polluters. According to Clean Creatives, Ogilvy had 15 fossil fuel contracts in 2023 and 2024, tied for the most with McCann Worldgroup. A spokesperson for Ogilvy clarified that seven of those contracts are serviced by OGR, formerly Ogilvy Government Relations, which split from Ogilvy in 2011. OGR is still owned by WPP, but operates within the holding company's specialist communications division. The other eight fossil fuel contracts that Ogilvy held between 2023 and 2024 include Adani Group, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, Africa Oil Week, BP, Petrobas, Petron Corporation, TotalEnergies, and Vitol. For each contract, Clean Creatives identified three pieces of evidence: news stories, LinkedIn posts, and public filings. "Our internal goal is do some reputational damage to Ogilvy," Frost said. Ogilvyland, the manifestation of that goal, is "a celebration of the brave, warm world that Ogilvy's clients are building." But if it seems like Frost and Serious People are letting McCann off the hook by focusing on Ogilvy—that's not quite accurate. Frost spearheaded a separate project last year with activist group Glimpse that targeted McCann. The campaign included a fake agency called Atmospheric and used similar stunts and LinkedIn posts to highlight the agency's work with Saudi Aramco. The strategy of naming and shaming seems to be gaining traction on LinkedIn, but it's unclear if the strategy could lead major clients to drop Ogilvy over its fossil fuel connections. "It may capture attention, it may break through clutter," said Christie Nordhielm, marketing professor at Georgetown University. Research shows that negative messaging often leads to inaction rather than action, she explained. "Any moves towards cynicism risk people shutting down, counter arguing, or becoming defensive." Still, this kind of activism could eventually reach a tipping point for Frost's followers. Each of these actions could have a cumulative effect that leads people to reconsider working with the agencies that Serious People is targeting, Nordhielm suggested. Traffic to the Ogilvyland website spiked into the thousands in the hours after the package stunt, Serious People's Inman said. Frost's post has more than 500 reactions, including a like from Haleon, one of the Ogilvy clients that received a golden ticket. "Transparency is the starting place for action on climate, but people don't always love reading reports," Meisel said. "Putting all of the data in an adventurous format like Ogilvyland is a great way to get heads to turn."

Sustainability News

Ogilvy's Clients Just Received a Curious Package: A Golden Ticket to Ogilvyland

The 'fossil fuel funfair' is the work of climate activists protesting the agency's relationship with BP and others

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