Agencies including IPG Mediabrands, Omnicom Group, Publicis Groupe, BarkleyOKRP and Serviceplan Group are leading programs to make marketing more sustainable.
Climate change remains a big issue for brands and agencies as they evaluate the carbon footprint of their marketing investments.
Younger generations want the companies they buy from to meaningfully contribute to improving the environment. To woo these customers, brands have to show that they are considering the environmental impact of everything they do—from the events they host to the products they make to the carbon emissions released from their digital media buys and everything in between.
Some agencies have introduced programs to help clients become more sustainable and communicate those efforts in a way that avoids consumer claims of greenwashing. Certain shops have also introduced programs to make their operations more environmentally friendly, as sustainability is a talent recruitment and retention opportunity. A Deloitte study found that more than half of Gen Z and millennial workers research a potential employer’s environmental impact and efforts before accepting a job there.
Ad Age asked various agencies and holding companies to provide information on specific sustainability programs, and also received guidance from Ad Net Zero, an industry group seeking to reduce advertising’s carbon impact. Below, we outline five standout programs and tools ad agencies have introduced that are helping make internal operations, or those of their clients, more sustainable.
Publicis Groupe’s No Impact for Big Impact (NIBI) is a training program for employees and clients that provides sustainable solutions to improve day-to-day business operations. It covers eight areas including responsible marketing and communication, responsible production, responsible media, responsible data and AI. The training is offered on its AI talent management tool, Marcel, where 900 clients have been trained, according to a holding company spokesperson. As part of the training, client and agency teams go through live workshops together.
“This part is the most important one because everyone is all aligned behind the same goals,” the spokesperson said. “The media side, which is very fragmented, is the most complex because we need strong actions taken by all media players.”
NIBI was developed by Publicis France and is being expanded to other European markets. It builds on Publicis Groupe’s carbon calculator, ALICE (Advertising Limiting Impacts and Carbon Emissions), which was launched in 2017 and allows all employees to evaluate their client work to find more sustainable solutions. These efforts can be applied in 100 countries across creative and production, media and digital, data, tech and events, according to the spokesperson.
The spokesperson said the fifth iteration of ALICE will be launched in January 2025 and will integrate the Global Media Sustainability Framework—new standards for measuring ad carbon emissions that were unveiled by Ad Net Zero and the World Federation of Advertisers’ Global Alliance for Responsible Media (now defunct) at the 2024 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.
Read Ad Age’s 2024 Cannes Lions coverage here
Omnicom Group’s Environmental Data Platform (EDP), created by the holding company’s management consulting agency Credera, helps it track and reduce carbon emissions from its offices and facilities. It consolidates relevant data and resources into one platform that then links to an external carbon calculator.
The platform has allowed the holding company to collect “more specific, accurate data with a clear audit trail,” an Omnicom spokesperson said. It’s one of the tools that Ad Net Zero praised as a standout.
The spokesperson said that EDP has allowed Omnicom to measure results quarterly. The holding company was previously calculating carbon emissions manually, which was “very time-consuming.” The platform has been successful in “creating efficiencies and time savings that can be better used for actions that mitigate environmental impact,” the spokesperson said.
IPG Mediabrands’ Climate Action Accelerator Program (CAAP) supports more sustainable media-buying decisions by the media agency network’s clients and media partners. It’s another tool that Ad Net Zero pointed to as one that is moving the sustainability needle.
CAAP helps clients in four areas: carbon emission measurement, as well as allowing them to analyze and report their carbon footprints; Scope 2 emission reduction and a shift to renewable energy through a partnership with digital energy management firm Schneider Electric; carbon removal efforts through partner Carbon Direct, which provides carbon management services; and marketing investment decisions that are backed by Cornell Engineering’s climate research.
An IPG Mediabrands spokesperson said CAAP is part of IPG Mediabrands’ larger Climate Action Marketplace, which allows clients to run video or display campaigns using tech from SeenThis, a content delivery firm promising maximum performance with minimal emissions. The marketplace provides quicker ad-load times, which achieves improved ad performance and a 40% reduction in carbon emissions, the spokesperson said.
Serviceplan Group, the Munich-based global independent agency network that houses creative shop Pereira O’Dell, offers Good Line Bundles to clients, which help them implement sustainable solutions across marketing efforts. The agency and clients map out goals and work together to achieve them. Good Line Bundles can help brands with reputation management, reduce emissions on production shoots and reach audiences on digital and social platforms efficiently with low carbon emissions, among other benefits.
An agency spokesperson said its most popular bundles include services for sustainable value proposition, sustainable communication, sustainable reporting and publishing, and sustainable production. As customers become increasingly wary of greenwashing and are more willing to call brands out for misleading sustainability claims, sustainable communication has to be done with care and purpose, the spokesperson said.
For client Jack Wolfskin, Serviceplan Group created a sustainable communication plan that sent personalized brand messaging with references to its sustainability approach to different test segments. The agency tested the sustainable-focused communications against generic product messages for Jack Wolfskin and found that the tailor-made sustainability messaging led to increases in credibility of up to 11%, in favor of 20%, in relevance of 24% and purchase intent of 18%, the spokesperson said.
BarkleyOKRP, formed by the March merger of independent shops Barkley and OKRP, provides training for brands to communicate sustainability efforts in a way that avoids greenwashing complaints.
The agency, a certified B Corp. company, provides this training to clients and other brands through an alliance with the Association of National Advertisers. The workshop helps brands develop an environment, social and governance (ESG) strategy, tailor messaging around those efforts, and identify key audiences to which to communicate ESG initiatives.
BarkleyOKRP said developing these ESG strategies is a business imperative—it pointed to its 2022 research that found 96% of consumers support brands that take action on ESG and 78% of employees want to work for purpose-led organizations that take action on ESG.
