After months of investigation, 4 businesses inside Havas, a French public relations firm, have been stripped of their B Company certifications because of the firm’s relationship with Shell.
B Company certifications, issued by the nonprofit B Lab, signify that an organization has met sure requirements round environmental, social, and governance practices. The requirements are supposed to present that an organization is purpose-driven, and that companies may be “a force for good.”
The 4 businesses that misplaced their B Company certification are Havas London, Havas Lemz, Havas New York, and Havas Immerse. (Havas is without doubt one of the world’s largest communications corporations, with greater than 10,000 staff and 100-plus artistic businesses, in addition to a number of divisions). The investigation by B Lab was prompted by complaints from different communications businesses after Havas Media, a division of the corporate, gained a contract with Shell. (Havas Media was not a licensed B Company; now that its sister corporations have had their certification revoked, different entities within the Havas group are additionally ineligible to certify, per B Lab.)
The investigation discovered that Havas’s actions breached the B Company neighborhood’s core values, a B Lab spokesperson stated in an e mail. “Whereas the Licensed B Corps usually are not straight concerned in offering companies to the consumer, Havas’ construction and use of a standard model identify throughout a few of its businesses implies that your complete group is in the end required to earn certification, per B Lab guidelines; this locations the group’s actions in scope for this investigation.”
Clear Creatives, a marketing campaign calling on promoting and PR businesses to refuse to work with fossil fuel companies, led the backlash in opposition to Havas. “Artistic businesses shouldn’t be working for the businesses destroying the planet,” Duncan Meisel, govt director of Clear Creatives, stated in a press release. “I wish to thank B Lab for doing the appropriate factor and revoking certification for businesses that promote fossil gas polluters.”
Clear Creatives and 27 B Company-certified communications and promoting businesses submitted an official complaint letter to B Lab in October 2023, which prompted the nonprofit’s investigation. “Havas has cooperated all through B Lab’s investigation and accepts the ruling; nonetheless, they’ve resolved to not undertake the remediation actions required to keep up certification,” the B Lab spokesperson stated.
A Havas spokesperson confirmed that the 4 businesses will stop to be B Company-certified however stated that the corporate’s “degree of dedication in direction of sustainability stays unchanged,” citing its latest receipt of the Gold Medal by EcoVadis, a sustainability scores supplier, and its Havas Carbon Influence Calculator, which has been deployed throughout all of its businesses.
Clear Creatives has additionally known as out 5 different B Company-certified communications businesses for having fossil gas corporations as shoppers: Edit, SEC Newgate, Tinkle Communications (a Havas subsidiary), Complete Media, and MSQ. (SEC Newgate has said its U.Okay. arm is the B Company-accredited company, whereas the Clear Creatives report focuses on one other SEC Newgate subsidiary that has lobbied on behalf of fossil gas corporations in Australia.) Meisel despatched a letter on these findings to B Lab in July 2024. B Lab’s course of is to finish an preliminary evaluate of complaints inside 90 days. Although Tinkle is a Havas subsidiary, it was not a part of the sooner criticism or inside the scope of this B Lab investigation.
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