CLIMATE activists occupied the headquarters of advertising agency group WWP today to demand that the company cuts its ties to big oil.

Protesters from Cut the Ties to Fossil Fuel entered the lobby of the building, while a grim reaper figure on top of a steel representation of an oil rig was placed outside the building and a die-in took place.

Taking part in the action, 27-year-old Freya Chambers from Oxford said: “Working with big oil to increase emissions in a climate and ecological emergency is clearly immoral, yet WPP chooses to be complicit in causing existential harm to people and planet.

“We join international calls for a complete ban on fossil fuel advertising.”

Dorothea Hackman, a 73-year-old retired lecturer from Camden, said: “The UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres called advertising and PR agencies ‘enablers to planetary destruction’ due to their work for fossil fuel clients.

“He said 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 – madmen fuelling the madness.’ We couldn’t agree more.”