Ex-WPP president awarded Foreign Office oversight role
A former president of major advertising company WPP has been appointed as non-executive director on the Foreign Office supervisory board. Karen Blackett will now have influence over UK foreign policy, raising questions about the political influence of the ad industry.
WPP is the world's largest ad firm and has long acted as a facilitator for the fossil fuel industry. In 2024, WPP agencies held 79 active contracts with fossil fuel companies, more than any other ad firm.
In February this year we submitted a complaint to the OECD alleging that WPP's ongoing representation of fossil fuel clients, and clients in other major polluting industries, was in breach of OECD guidelines for corporate responsibility. These internationally respected guidelines aim to protect human rights and the environment from the impacts of corporate activities.
The appointment of Blackett to the Foreign Office supervisory board therefore represents a huge coup for polluting industries, who now have a sympathetic voice championing their interests in the driving seat of UK foreign policy.
Buying influence, harming health
Polluters use advertising to launder their image. Fossil fuel giant BP has long employed WPP agency Ogilvy to provide PR, notoriously giving the world the idea of the personal carbon footprint to shift blame for the climate crisis from BP to individuals.
WPP’s work to promote health-harming polluters goes beyond fossil fuel companies. WPP’s clients also include fossil-fuel financiers like HSBC, the Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase. Together these banks have poured billions into fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement. Big plastic polluters, too: marketing by WPP’s agencies Ogilvy and Mindshare have boosted sales of Dove products even as Dove is accused of producing 6.4 billion single-use plastic sachets per year. Almost all of these end up in the oceans, in landfill or being burned, contributing to air pollution and microplastic pollution.
Notably, of the other three non-executive directors on the Foreign Office supervisory board, one (Jon Watts) previously worked for JP Morgan and another (James Bilefield) worked for Unilever (of which Dove is a subsidiary).
The work of WPP’s agencies for polluters like these represents the immense power corporations have to shape our perceptions of them: from health destroying to “body positive”; from climate wreckers to “leaders of the green transition”. That power can now also influence the “strategic direction” of one of the most powerful government institutions in the world.
“Not just a side hustle; it’s a strategy”
In 2024, UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres called advertising and PR agencies “enablers to planetary destruction” due to their work for fossil fuel clients, saying that 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.”
More recently, MPs for the very first time debated a ban on fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship, motivated by a public petition signed by 110,000 people demanding such a ban. Ahead of the debate, more than 100 advertising agencies and media organisations representing £920 million in the UK economy, including The Guardian, OLIVER and Lucky Generals, signed a letter supporting a ban.
The nomination of Blackett flies in the face of both public and industry opinion. It weakens the UK government’s ability to lobby other countries to reduce their emissions to tackle the climate crisis, and it makes it unlikely that we’ll see climate justice form part of our foreign policy any time soon.
During the parliamentary debate on fossil fuel advertising, Jacob Collier MP said that fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship “is not just a side hustle; it is a strategy.”
He said: “fossil fuel advertising is not just a matter of a few billboards here and there; it is increasingly a co-ordinated strategy to build trust, shape culture and delay structural change.”
Regardless of their personal motivations, for Blackett and others with strong ties to polluting industries and the ad agencies that promote them to sit at the helm of the Foreign Office is part of that strategy.
Breaking the power
Our complaint to the OECD is a milestone in the effort to hold WPP accountable for their promotion of pollution through decades of work for the likes of BP, Unilever and JP Morgan Chase. We also continue to push for a tobacco-style ban on fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship to ensure that this deadly industry no longer holds sway over our lives.
Find out more about our complaint against WPP here.