Story at-a-glance
- Advertising agencies wield great power over public opinion, and prosecutors are increasingly starting to look at PR firms’ roles in cases where corporations are accused of serious malfeasance or fraud
- Hundreds of climate-related court cases are now looking at the role advertising firms played in greenwashing
- We’re seeing a similar trend happening in the drug industry, where ad agencies are starting to be held to account for the “legal lies” they spin on behalf of their clients. In February 2021, McKinsey & Company, a management consultancy firm, paid $573 million to settle a case in which they were accused of complicity by giving marketing advice to manufacturers of opiates, which have killed more than half a million people
- May 6, 2021, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey sued Publicis Health, accusing the company of “collecting more than $50 million in exchange for marketing schemes to get doctors to prescribe Purdue’s opioids to more patients, in higher doses, for longer periods of time.” Publicis tried to have the case dismissed, but failed
- Aside from hiring big advertising companies to push their wares, drug companies keep the truth from being known through the use of fact checkers
Continue reading “Advertising Business Linked to Deaths and Greenwashing”
