Action 1 aims to reduce emissions from the operations of advertising businesses. It calls for agencies and marketing services companies to annually measure consumption data, for example, electricity usage, business travel, waste production, so you can reduce your operational carbon emissions.
Science-based targets such as SBT commitments in line with the Paris Agreement are now mandatory for all Ad Net Zero global supporters. For local supporters, the setting of public science-based carbon reduction targets, as well as the calculation and reporting of annual emissions, is now also compulsory.
According to the Ad Net Zero report two emissions sources usually predominate:
Some advertising agencies, along with businesses in other parts of the advertising ecosystem, have already taken significant steps to reduce operational emissions. Those that have driven new behaviours in their companies, and in some cases achieved ISO 14001, BCorp or equivalent recognised standards, report competitive advantage, higher employee morale and financial savings as a result.
Learning from those who have made the most progress, and to generate a collective drive towards Ad Net Zero requires our supporters to:
For more information and advice, please download our Action 1 Plan.
All agencies and production companies – with client support – will be encouraged to commit to reducing emissions from advertising production. AdGreen, an advertising production sustainability initiative, is one example of how Action 2 can be implemented. It provides information and tools to support the industry in this transition, including a carbon calculator and sustainability training.
Like other aspects of advertising, motion and stills advertising production can be carbon-intensive processes, particularly location shoots with high levels of travel, hospitality, and complex supply chains.
Launching AdGreen
One example of an initiative developed to reduce emissions from advertising production is AdGreen. It launched in September 2020 and helps the advertising industry to eliminate the negative environmental impacts of production, enabling the production community to measure and understand waste and carbon impacts, empowering them to act for zero waste / zero carbon. Provided free at the point of use to the advertising production community, the project comprises of a carbon calculator, training, resources, and renewable energy and offsetting programmes. AdGreen is predominantly funded via a levy on production spend, which is paid by participating advertisers.
AdGreen is based in the UK but with global ambition to enable the industry, wherever the activity is, to act for a sustainable future.
AdGreen’s First Annual Review
New data, published in AdGreen’s first Annual Review, highlights the huge opportunity for carbon reduction in the process of ad production around the world. Analysing 515 projects from 87 companies, the findings show that travel and transport activities across all projects accounted for the highest percentage of emissions (62.4%), followed by energy and fuels (24.6%), and materials (12.4%).
The report shows the opportunity for advertisers, creative agencies, and production companies to increase data analysis, collaborate more closely and adopt new, more sustainable approaches to content creation. Significant changes to ad operations are crucial for the industry to meet its net zero target.
AdGreen’s bespoke carbon calculator tool, created in partnership with industry stakeholders, enables advertising agency and production teams (‘contributors’) to collaboratively log their production activities and see where practical changes can be made to reduce a project’s carbon footprint. It also allows the related parent companies, production consultancies, brands, and brand parents (‘reviewers’) to explore and analyse footprints for all projects within their campaigns. Later, users will be able to generate reporting data, which can be used to inform larger company-wide reporting.
Find out more about AdGreen’s resources here.
Media agencies, media owners and clients will be encouraged to work together to develop and implement lower carbon media plans. Ad Net Zero is collaborating with GARM and the WFA to develop a consistent data framework and methodology to calculate the emissions from media planning and buying.
The weight and media mix chosen for a campaign can make a big difference to its carbon footprint. Advertisers and their media investment advisors need to be well informed so they can plan their schedules with their environmental impact in mind.
In March 2023, Ad Net Zero joined forces with WFA’s Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) to launch a fast track workstream to identify a standard framework for measuring the carbon emissions from media campaigns. This aims to bring together the best thinking from across the industry into one common framework by benchmarking the current carbon measurement and estimation practices to identify common definitions and measures. By establishing consistent data inputs across all media channels, this will help to facilitate accurate reporting of the carbon emissions from media.
While this work continues, it’s important to provide information to the industry on how we can all take action now. To do this, Ad Net Zero and GARM have published a ‘Guide to Sustainable Media for advertisers’, which can be quickly implemented to help reduce the environmental impact of media plans. This also complements the work completed by IAB Tech Lab in its Sustainability Playbook, which can be viewed here.
In addition, the IPA Media Futures Group, which represents the UK’s major media agencies has asked its members to adopt its Climate Charter. This includes a carbon calculator for media planners and a database holding information on media owners’ sustainability and climate credentials. By signing up to the Charter, media agencies and their clients are taking a significant step towards addressing the advertising industry’s direct climate impact of running campaigns, and to help the industry decarbonise.
We believe the answer to decarbonisation is a combination of gaining a better understanding of what we can all do today, while working together as an industry to achieve our longer-term net zero goals.
Action 4 of the Ad Net Zero plan challenges industry awards bodies to ensure that the sustainability credentials and climate impact of campaigns inform judging.
In 2023, sustainability criteria were introduced into every award entry at Cannes Lions. Ad Net Zero will work closely with the Cannes Lions team, to help analyse award entries and see how and where the industry is taking steps to be more sustainable.
Action 4 also encourages organisers of events and conferences to put sustainability at the forefront of planning, seeking in particular to curtail long-distance travel, where possible. We have partnered with isla – dedicated to supporting the events industry’s transition to a sustainable future.
Awards
The advertising industry is social and thrives on coming together, for example, around industry awards nights. These perform a valued role in a healthy community of like-minded professionals, promoting excellence and stimulating competition, for creativity and effectiveness. There are some awards for ‘green’ campaigns although these are limited. In most instances, awards for environmentally positive advertising are rolled into a broader ‘social good’ or ‘social purpose’ category, separated as niche and lower down in the hierarchy of importance.
As part of Ad Net Zero, we would like to see more informed and rigorous awards for advertising work with a proven positive impact on environmental sustainability.
When it comes to the coveted ‘grand prix’ awards, juries are seldom invited to consider the likely carbon impact of the advertising they are evaluating. We challenge the awarding bodies to introduce that thinking into their judging criteria. Campaigns that clearly encourage wasteful, extravagant and irresponsible behaviour in the context of the emissions that accompany it should not be celebrated as examples of excellence in advertising.
It’s been a great development to see that, for the first time in 2023, the Lions team has included a sustainability question on the entry form for every award. This data will be used to provide a benchmark report year-on-year for how the industry is making progress on embedding sustainability into its work.
To help identify best practice and examples of sustainable campaigns, the Campaign Ad Net Zero Awards were launched in 2022 to recognise the businesses, organisations, and individuals who are leading the way in reducing their carbon footprint and contributing to the global effort to combat the climate emergency.
As the world continues to face the devastating effects of climate change, it’s essential that we take action to reduce our environmental impact. These Awards aim to inspire others to do the same by showcasing the innovative and effective measures being taken to achieve net zero emissions within adland. You can view all the winners from the 2022 awards here.
Events
For many organisations, events are important new business opportunities. But they can generate substantial carbon emissions, often unnecessarily or wastefully, and could be conducted in more climate-friendly ways. In order to meet the ambitions of Ad Net Zero, it is important that we take into account the climate impact of our industry events.
We have partnered with isla – an independent, non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting the events industry’s transition to a sustainable future. All Ad Net Zero members are entitled to a discounted membership of isla. In the UK, please contact hello@weareisla.co.uk for more information.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of industry events have been conducted entirely virtually to great success. The future of events will, similarly to the way we return to work post-pandemic, most likely be a combination of online and real-world activities. With that in mind, there are ways event organisers can help our industry minimise emissions. As evidenced by the operational carbon footprint of agencies in Action 1, international travel is a big contributor to carbon emissions. Reducing the need for delegates to fly to industry events through utilising a hub-and-spoke approach, with events taking place at regional, local levels could significantly reduce emissions. If your team must be at an event think about the mode of transport you will take. For example, we have encouraged UK industry professionals to join us in taking the ‘Advertising Express’ train from London to Cannes. Utilising facilities and contractors that exercise high sustainability standards can also make a big difference.
We firmly believe the advertising industry’s brilliant creativity should be used to drive positive change, in every sector of the economy. Action 5 is focused on harnessing advertising’s power to support behaviour change. Initiatives like #ChangetheBrief are recommended to provide advertisers with more sustainable solutions to their campaign briefs.
The Campaign Ad Net Zero Awards were set up with a wide range of categories to honour our industry’s best work in tackling the climate emergency. In 2023, the UK Grand Prix was won by ITV and eBay for their partnership on Love Island. You can view all the categories and winners here
Advertising’s influence on the wider world is a hugely important pillar of Ad Net Zero. Our ambition is that agencies and their clients should increasingly work together to use advertising to promote more sustainable choices between competing products and services, to back innovations that deliver greener solutions to people’s needs and desires, and to persuade people to adopt behaviours that reduce carbon emissions.
Research from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and Kantar suggests 64% of consumers say it is businesses’ responsibility to solve climate and environmental issues, 68% of employees say organisations should step up when governments fail to fix society’s problems and nearly half (49%) of investors would sell their investment if a company does not sufficiently address Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues.
Sustainable Marketing Approaches
We need a determined effort across the board to influence the policies and decisions of advertisers toward more sustainable marketing approaches. One such effort is #ChangetheBrief, an initiative created at Mindshare and promoted to the wider industry by the Purpose Disruptors. Acknowledging that agencies – strategic, creative and media alike – have a duty to serve their clients to the best of their abilities, #ChangetheBrief mandates that, when briefed by a client, agencies present an additional response that encourages a sustainable behaviour or attitude in the client’s audience.
Our industry produces work that connects with millions of people every single day, providing useful information on all aspects of the way we live our lives. Everybody working in advertising can make a genuine contribution to this effort. We believe this is a powerful reason for people to work in advertising, to grasp the opportunity to make a real difference.
Agencies and other marketing service companies can go further: they can decline to work for clients whose businesses or policies they feel conflict with their own principles. Some do. But constructive engagement, using their influence and relationships to create strategies, campaigns and media plans that not only can reduce the carbon impact of the advertising itself, but also inspire consumers to make more sustainable purchasing and lifestyle decisions, is something all agencies can do.
In addition, we recommend anyone thinking about how their advertising campaigns can include sustainability messages to first complete our self-diagnostic tool and identify where they are as a business in terms of sustainability maturity. With permission from Meta and Accenture, Ad Net Zero has reproduced their sustainability communications diagnostic tool in this short guide – download it here.
Avoiding Misleading Environmental Claims and Greenwashing
As brands increasingly promote more sustainable produces and services, it’s important our industry understands the regulations surrounding this. Each country has different rules on making accurate environmental claims and Ad Net Zero has global training to help you understand the terminology, rules and regulations.
In terms of the regulation of advertising in the UK, CAP codes and ASA regulation already cover the need for clarity, substantiation and evidence for environmental claims. Guidance on environmental claims can be found via the ASA website, and the regulator is also reviewing how consumers understand the terminology ‘net zero’ and ‘carbon neutral’ – helping consumers understand substantiation of claims.
Also in the UK, the CMA has published a Green Claims Code, outlining, for example, how relevant claims must be truthful, clear and evidence-backed – while avoiding important omissions; making fair and meaningful comparisons; and considering the full lifecycle of a product. The CMA also offers a useful checklist and a more detailed guide, in a consumer context.
Another valuable place to start is the Global Guidance on Environmental Claims published by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), the global marketing trade body, in April 2022.
Working with Government
There is also a role for our industry to work with Government to the same end. The challenges posed since the COVID-19 pandemic has meant advertisers across the board have adapted their campaigns. Not only did advertising during this period reflect difficult national circumstances, but it also reinforced the Government’s key public health messaging.
This begs the question how can advertising work with the Government on an even bigger societal issue – that of the climate emergency?
Since the launch of Ad Net Zero, industry representatives have met with officials from UK Government Departments, Cabinet Office and opposition parliamentary offices, in order to establish a collaborative partnership going forward. For example, the inaugural Campaign Ad Net Zero Awards were judged by Alex Sobel, the UK’s Shadow Environment Minister and Chair of the Net Zero APPG.
Celebrating our industry’s best work
The Campaign Ad Net Zero Awards were launched in 2022 and return in 2023. The awards reflect the Ad Net Zero Action Plan, with Actions 1-4 recognising the leading examples of sustainable best practice in the industry, while Action 5 looks at the work which is leading the way across all areas of the economy.
Examples of last year’s winning campaigns and all the categories can be found on the Campaign Ad Net Zero Awards website here.
