Cannes Lions might be famed for its glamour and awards, but the event can also serve as an opportunity to engage with brands and creatives through disruption. At this year's event Creatives for Climate will be taking over La Croisette to try and tackle greenwashing directly at the source.

As Creatives for Climate launch new tools to empower changemakers to combat greenwashing, secret agents are set to roam La Croisette with the new ‘greenwash watch toolkit’. The secret agents armed with the tools and information to act are set to interrupt rosé-fuelled conversations to force brands and agencies to face the topic of climate action and responsibility within advertising head-on. 

As part of the campaign, the NGO has launched a practical toolkit ‘The Greenwash Swatch’ which has been designed into a paint swatch booklet that fits easily into pockets and bags. The guide contains details of the framework created by think tank Planet Tracker. The framework identifies an increasingly complex greenwashing landscape, including new techniques used by brands such as greencrowding, greenrinsing, and greenshifting. 

The toolkit design enables it to be pulled out and referred to at any time and gives attendees the ability to identify examples of greenwashing. It helps to fuel conversations about accountability, by empowering people to have the facts to hand. 

“Creativity for good means nothing if we do not rise as an industry to tackle creativity for bad.” explains Initiator and Chairwoman Lucy von Sturmer. She continues: “Standing against greenwashing is standing against tactics of delay and increasingly illegal brand behaviour. Unfortunately, as more agencies and brands jump on the ‘green wagon’, we expect to see a tonne of criminal behaviour on the Croisette this year.”

During the festival, Creatives for Climate is partnering with Clean Creatives to launch the Change Agent Happy Hour on Tuesday 20th June, where it will be issuing 100 toolkits to attendees. The gathering aims to boost momentum and recruit more agents to join, to inspire action within organisations and across the wider industry.

A panel session will also take place on the same day titled ‘Tackling the climate crisis is tackling the talent crisis’ which sees Creatives for Climate partner with the Clean Creatives Climate Summit at the Embassy of Dutch Creativity. The panel will consider questions including: can solving the climate crisis solve the talent crisis? As well as asking can upskilling for climate build better agencies and brands?

This action builds on the release of the Creatives for Climate’s Greenwash Watch Course, which launched at Cannes in 2022. The training is a cross-industry effort created in collaboration with experts such as Professor Gill Wilson and marketing expert Alex Weller from Patagonia to scale the industry’s ability to challenge briefs, identify greenwashing, and deliver projects with impact.  This year will see The Greenwash Watch agents’ reward those that use the Greenwash Swatch tool online during Cannes Lions week with free access to the Greenwash Watch training programme.

Outside of the event to bolster further support #greenwashwatch is set to hijack online conversation and create a counter-narrative from people to brands to further add to climate conversations and enable a direct discourse with brands.  

As the industry gears up to celebrate its successes and share in creativity, engaging in some tough conversations and treating Cannes Lions as an opportunity to do better is what will lead to a more sustainable industry of the future.