Sustainability

The Leadership Position

The advertising industry working across all scopes to bring emissions in line with the Paris Climate Agreement, to limit warming to under 1.5 degrees centigrade, and regenerate our natural environment. The content we create, the media we place, and the organisations and processes which govern them are sustainable. The advertising industry has the power to lead positive behavioural change and promote information integrity around climate science and action.

“We must fight the coordinated disinformation campaigns impeding global progress on climate change, ranging from outright denial to greenwashing to harassment of climate scientists”
Antonio Guterres – UN Secretary General

The Commercial Impact

• 64% of consumers say they try to buy brands that act responsibly, even if it means spending more.
  
  
• A third of consumers claim to have stopped purchasing certain brands due to a lack of visible commitment on these issues.
  
  
• Three in five people agree if businesses in their country don’t act now to combat climate change, they will be failing their employees and customers.
  
  
• Sustainability ranks as the second most important challenge for the digital ad ecosystem, behind measurement and followed by viewability.
  
  
• Over half of Gen Zs (55%) and millennials (54%) say they research a brand’s environmental impact and policies before accepting a job from them, 16% of millennials say they have already changed job or sector due to concerns around climate and 25% of Gen Zs and 23% of millennials sharing that they plan to do this in future.
  
  
• WFA research identifies that marketing often lags other areas within businesses on sustainability.

Taking Action: Six Essential Steps

This Guide is designed to be used alongside the CAN Guiding Principles. Please complete the Principles before implementing Guides.

1. Organisation

• Comply with all existing and upcoming legislation, including the Green Claims Code and Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
  
  
• Create a plan for Net Zero, including, if possible, board level commitments which encourage all leaders to be accountable for increasing sustainability.
  • • Set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which are regularly reviewed against business objectives.
      
      
    • Set a plan for continuous improvement, and reporting on impact
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• Check if advertising, content and media are considered in your Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) or Net Zero commitments.
  
  
• Consider the balance of your investments.
  • • Avoid the say-do gap – align reported intentions with direct
      action
      
      
• Sign up to Ad Net Zero and get your team to take the Ad Net Zero Essentials certificate.
  • • • • Ad Net Zero award winners are a great source of inspiration
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• Obtain the Carbon Literacy Project certification.
  
  
• Look into obtaining a B Corp Certification.
  
  
• Join the Race to Zero campaign.
  
  
• Consider sustainable accreditations and partnerships with civil society organisations to share best practice and lessons learned.

• • • You can also list these on your website. See how SSE have done this here.
      
      
• Consider creating your own internal sustainability training.
  • • For agencies, this could include educating clients on sustainability.
      
      
    • Include the universal climate misinformation and disinformation definition.
      
      
    • Train teams on greenwashing and ensure legal compliance to all legislation including ASA ‘Environmental Claims’ CAP code and the CMA guidance.

2. Briefing

For Brands:

• Ensure sustainability is part of your procurement and request for proposals (RFPs).
  
  
• Ask your agencies who their other clients are, in particular high carbon clients including fossil fuels.
  
  
• Include Advertised Emissions in your Scope 3 reporting and seek to reduce them.
  
  
• Join the #ChangeTheBrief Alliance, to promote more sustainable choices and behaviours.
  
  
• Consider using a third-party tool to assess the state of sustainable behaviours from suppliers, centralise all supplier information regarding sustainability.

For agencies and consultants:

• Ask clients for their plans for Net Zero.
  
  
• Check your creative work reflects the climate reality of today and shows sustainable behaviours.
  • • Check whether the message of the campaign aligns or conflicts with the main (material) impacts of the brand
      
      
    • Consider Materiality.
      
      
    • Check for greenwashing in line with existing and upcoming legislation.
      
      
• Reduce emissions from media as much as possible.
  
  
• Consider that AI and emergent technologies are hugely carbon intensive:
  • • Prioritise carbon-optimised, high-performing media options where possible.
      
      
    • Ask partners and vendors to ensure low waste, check that they run their servers on 100% renewable energy sources.

3. Production

• Ensure production processes and all events and other activities align with the highest standards of sustainability, and reduce impacts where possible, using carbon calculators.
  
  • • Study the Ad Net Zero Sustainable Production Best Practices.|
      
      
    • Reduce filming locations.
      
      
    • Cut down the length of ads to decrease emissions during placement
      
      
    • Minimise flying, prioritise sustainable forms of travel.
      
      
    • Minimise the use of generators and using green power where possible.
      
      
• Estimate and seek to reduce carbon emissions from proposed production.
  
  
• Consider not-for-profit carbon offsetting solutions instead of commercial ones.

4. Content

• Check that sustainability claims are robust, truthful, accurate, clear and consider the full life cycle of the product or service.
  • • Refer to the WFA guidance on making credible environmental claims.
      
      
• Promote sustainable behaviours and minimise polluting or environmentally harmful behaviours within your creative.
  • • Explore how you can inspire behaviour change through initiatives such as Ad Net Zero’s Every Brief Counts.
      
      
    • Consider green claims as compliance and think about how you can influence non-traditional green audiences to consider green behaviours as the leadership position
      
      
    • Avoid showing gratuitous overconsumption of goods.
      

5. Information Integrity

• Support media outlets and platforms that bolster information integrity around climate science and solutions via your media spend.
  
  
• Remove climate words from blocklists.
  
  
• Consider donating to causes through your media investment:
  • • Options include programmatic tools such as Good Loop, WeAre8, TheGoodNet, or influencer and creator collaborations who donate a percentage of their fees.
      
      
• We recommend avoiding appearing next to content which does not comply with the Climate Action Against Disinformation universal definition, of climate mis and disinformation, and to use this definition in policies and procedures.
  • • • • Review brand safety settings and blocklists as well as demand-side platforms (DSPs) and supply-side platforms (SSPs) for the abov
          
          
        • Check CAN’s Information Integrity & Hate Guide for more information, as well as the IPA Media Climate Charter’s guidance on brand safety.

6. Climate Literacy

• Read the Good Life 2030 report from Purpose Disruptors.
  
  
• Read the AdGreen Resources Guide on reducing production emissions.
  
  
• Consider using a platform such as Zellar, to calculate and reduce your carbon footprint.
  
  
• Read the World Land Trust offsetting programme.
  
  
• Read the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and Scope3 report on how to reduce marketing emissions while driving growth.
  
  
• Read up on the European Commission code of practice on disinformation.
  
  
• Consider working with the Supply Chain Sustainability School to help make your supply chain more sustainable. Recordings from a programme run for an energy company can be found here.
  
  
• Train your team in climate science, climate literacy and sustainability from outside of advertising. Some suppliers include Small World Consulting and Project Drawdown.
  
  
• Read how to ensure climate conversations are inclusive from Global Action Plan and Virgin Media O2.
  
  
• Stay up to date with the latest sustainability news via the Outrage and Optimism podcast and industry newsletters from reputable outlets such as edie.

Key Definitions

Climate disinformation: The Climate Action Against Disinformation universal definition defines climate mis and disinformation as content which:

• “Undermines the existence or impacts of climate change, the unequivocal human influence on climate change, and the need for corresponding urgent action according to the IPCC scientific consensus and in line with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement;
  
  

• Misrepresents scientific data, including by omission or cherry-picking, in order to erode trust in climate science, climate-focused institutions, experts, and solutions; or
  
  

• Falsely publicises efforts as supportive of climate goals that in fact contribute to climate warming or contravene the scientific consensus on mitigation or adaptation.”
  
  

Materiality, According to Deloitte:

“Materiality assessments are a methodology often used by companies to identify the sustainability challenges that they most need to prioritize. These help companies understand the impact of their business activities on the environment, society, and economy, and inform their decisions on how to manage and disclose these impacts.”

Sustainability: In 1987, the United Nations Brundtland Commission defined sustainability as:

“Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”