Can an ad agency truly hold clients to account on sustainability, as so many claim? This account from Polina Zabrodskaya, a former creative partner at AMV BBDO embroiled in an employment tribunal against the agency, casts doubt.
As a child, I thought black snow was normal.
I was born in Tula, an industrial city south of Moscow, in one of Russia’s most polluted regions due to its two hundred factories. These factories didn’t try to contain the damage. The air was thick with vanadium pentoxide, a toxic carcinogen. Vanadium sludge sat out in the open, seeping into the soil and water.
Officially, the pollution didn’t exist as there were strict regulations and giant fines.
On paper, the factories complied.
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But black snow is hard to hide.
And the strangest part?
Nobody seemed to mind. The contamination was obvious, but we lived on as if it weren’t real, as if the factories were poisoning someone else.
There were no protests that I remember.
No big headlines.
No outrage.
The factories provided jobs, and jobs are good. If people got sick, it was down to genetics, bad luck, or poor lifestyle choices.
Grass was green, the sky was blue, and the snow was black.
Don’t think about it.
Watch some TV.
Dizzy? Get headaches? Go play outside, get some fresh air.
Decades later, I found myself in a completely different world. In it, I had to deal with the very same cognitive dissonance.
I was a creative director at AMV BBDO, and for the most part, I loved it. I loved the people, the work, the rosé-fuelled nights at Cannes parties. For a girl from Tula, it was a dream.
One day, a brief landed on my desk: a global sustainability campaign for Mars. I looked into its claims, and what I found looked disturbing.
It claimed ‘100% responsible’ cocoa while child labor remained a documented issue in its supply chains. It built coral reefs that spelled ‘Hope’ to sell cat food, as industrial fishing wiped out marine life.
I told my bosses we shouldn’t be making these claims. They told me to stop digging. I then raised concerns with Mars. And then I was suspended. After that, staying didn’t feel like an option. Something in me broke.
There’s a difference between truth well told and a lie well hidden.
Guinness’s ‘Good Things Come to Those Who Wait’ is creative storytelling. But for Sheba, ‘More Coral Today, More Fish Tomorrow’ seems like sleight of hand.
There’s no single big lie – just dozens of softer, polished distortions, repeated until they feel true enough. Promises instead of results. Metrics that track effort, not impact. Targets so vague and distant that by the time they’re missed, no one responsible is around to answer.
If Sheba is ‘committed to 100% sustainable fish,’ why is it sourcing it from MSC-certified fisheries, when reports show that over 80% of this fish is caught using environmentally destructive methods?
If Galaxy really uses ‘100% responsibly sourced cocoa,’ why does a CBS News investigation show children as young as five working on these farms? And just why are we still making ads for their chocolate that show West-African children happily running to school?
What am I missing?
And if I am missing something, why am I not allowed to discuss it with clients directly? If we in advertising can’t call out greenwashing without risking our jobs, who will?
It’s not ignorance.
It’s denial.
Supply chains are complex, yes, but not more complex than an 80-page brand strategy. It takes one Google search to learn that third-party certifications like Rainforest Alliance and MSC are weak and unreliable. And yet, we treat them as sacred because these certifications give us just enough plausible deniability to keep doing what we do, while being paid what we’re paid.
It’s really difficult to get people to understand something when their salaries depend on them not understanding it.
We’re in the middle of an environmental crisis. Forests are vanishing, oceans are dying, child labor is rising, and my industry is making award-winning ads that say: Don’t worry. We’ve got this under control. There’s hope. Here, buy some premium cat food that restores corals.
Admitting reality would mean facing the obvious: the primary logic of a corporation is profit. The pledges and the campaigns exist to legitimize that logic, to make the unacceptable look acceptable, to fuel shareholder returns while the planet burns.
If a company’s supply chains aren’t sustainable, its sustainability campaigns aren’t just misleading, they’re harmful.
The snow is black.
Zabrodskaya is a former creative director at AMV BBDO. An employment tribunal will hear her case today, Thursday, April 24. She alleges “harassment and discrimination” after attempts to raise concerns.
Mars refused to comment on the “internal employment dispute” at AMV BBDO, according to the Financial Times. It did point to its large investments in ESG and its plan to cut greenhouse gases.
AMV BBDO elected not to comment on an active case.
Polina is fundraising for legal representation here. She also invites the industry to report greenwashing cases at Climate Whistleblowers.