+++ NEW CAMPAIGN +++ LEGAL WARMING. YOU’VE BEEN WARMED. +++
We crashed Advertising Week Europe 2025 to warn the ad industry about legal warming, the hot new trend in climate litigation.
Legal warming is like global warming, but with lawyers.
As climate court cases against the marketing strategies of major polluters hot up, ad agencies risk getting dragged into the storm. We’re seeing rising chances of forced disclosure, liability and even criminal charges.
Watch our latest video and visit our website.
The legal forecast
A French prosecutor is investigating an oil and gas company for potential criminal infractions relating to greenwashing. McKinsey is now the subject of a claim for damages for climate harms brought by a county in Oregon for its alleged coordination and participation in disinformation campaigns to downplay or deny the causal link between oil and gas companies and extreme weather disasters. Mass regulatory events like the EU investigation into airline greenwashing claims tend to attract the attention of the claims industry.
Ad execs hoping that the political shift in the US relieves pressure to take climate risks seriously should note that the Supreme Court has just rejected a bid to throw Democratic state lawsuits out.
Unlike Advertising Week Europe, who did in fact, throw us out.
Maintaining social licence
A 2002 paper from the London School of Economics, describes corporation executives increasingly discussing “the importance of operating in accordance with their ‘social licence’, meaning that they are constrained to meet the expectations of society and to avoid activities that societies (or influential elements within them) deem unacceptable”
Today, agencies working on fossil fuels, plastics, airlines, cruise ships, SUVs, fast fashion and other high polluting industries cannot claim ignorance of the environmental harms of these clients.
For these clients, the need to maintain social licence has mutated, becoming a euphemism for the need to appear to be taking environmental and climate harm seriously, in spite of the truth.
And increasingly, that’s a legally risky place to operate.
Advice for ad agencies
If these briefs land on your desk, think long and hard if they are worth the downside they bring.
Johnny White, a lawyer at ClientEarth says,
"The ad industry is sleepwalking into a new era of climate legal risk.
As lawsuits and investigations escalate against big polluters’ PR tactics, agencies are liable to be implicated —running a risk of forced disclosures, liability and even criminal charges.
High-carbon advertising is now a legal red zone."
