ISSUED BY CLEAN CREATIVES SA

Clean Creatives South Africa is excited to launch the Creative Cleanup 2024 Young Creatives Challenge (formerly known as the Clean Creatives Schools Challenge). The challenge is an invitation to South Africa’s young creatives to join Clean Creatives SA in putting pressure on The Loeries to stop awarding creative work for the fossil fuel industry. Some creatives are unaware that they are directly connected to speeding up climate change by creating and building false perceptions for fossil fuel companies.

If The Loeries stopped awarding fossil fuel creative work entries, they could go a long way to helping us foster a more responsible and climate-conscious creative community.

The fossil fuel industry (think Total Energies, Shell, Sasol, BP, Engen, Astron Energy (previously Caltex)) knows the impacts of their emissions and continues to use the creative industry to greenwash and distract the public from their gross environmental and human rights violations. The creative industry’s marketing for fossil fuel companies does some of the most damage in hampering authentic efforts to stop climate change. We need to make creatives aware of their involvement in greenwashing, and conscientise those who are already aware.

Not only are advertising companies greenwashing for fossil fuels – but the industry’s leading award shows are actually giving top honours to this misleading creative work! This shows how out of touch many people in the advertising world are with the climate crisis. We want to create a conscience for creatives, and this would be well supported if work like this was not rewarded. It’s crucial that The Loeries recognises and addresses its role in accelerating climate change by not awarding, celebrating and showcasing this work on such a giant scale.

Clean Creatives South Africa is the local chapter of a global movement of over 1,000 advertising and PR agencies which have cut ties with polluting fossil fuel companies. Be on the right side of history and join other South Africans in the creative industry by signing the Clean Creatives pledge to decline future work with fossil fuel companies.

Though some fossil fuel companies have made a commitment to adhere to the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5°C by 2030, a lot of the world’s giant emitters are still pursuing polluting gas, oil and coal endeavours. Not only does this renew their commitment to the harmful fossil fuels that speed up climate change, but also causes thousands of avoidable deaths to people and biodiversity, and are the reason why small communities are displaced for profit.

Creative Cleanup 2024 Young Creatives Challenge

We hereby invite entries from 18 – 25 year old creatives to submit work to encourage Africa and the Middle East’s biggest and most prestigious advertising award event, The Loeries, to no longer award fossil fuel work entries from the creative industry. Creative Cleanup 2024 entrants will design a poster or posters to be displayed outside The Loeries 2024 venues to compel them to stop awarding work for the fossil fuel industry. These young creatives, and future ad talent, will add their voice to appeal to the conscience of the advertising industry to see it transformed for present and future generations.

The posters will be strategically placed in full view of those attending the event and will hopefully compel The Loeries and creative industry to:
●  Stop working with fossil fuel companies.
●  Have a conscience about working with fossil fuel companies.

Applications close 01 September 2024 at 23h59 and the full brief can be accessed here.

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