Sustainability in Advertising Production: Actions Today for a Habitable Tomorrow

Sustainability is one of the most important considerations of our time. As carbon emissions continue to pollute our air, global temperatures respond accordingly – destroying our glaciers and disrupting our planet’s life-sustaining ability to circulate our oceans and atmosphere correctly.

Without change, land, food, and water scarcity will disrupt the lives of everyone on earth. There simply is no further debate to be had; we are now on the precipice of the world’s largest preventable humanitarian crisis.

The advertising industry has a colossal role to play in the mitigation of climate crises. Yet, each year, the advertising industry produces thousands of tons of carbon emissions and waste (which you can probably attest to if you’ve ever been on-set). From the very messaging within our advertisements to the actual methods of production, this industry is a carbon-emitting powerhouse in a position of unequivocal power. We have the capability to usher forth the unprecedented industrial and societal changes needed to live in a healthy future.

APR sits at the intersection of marketers, agencies, and production partners; consequently, we have a bird’s eye view of the tremendous waste associated with production. With our key partners, we are pushing for sustainability practices throughout all verticals of production.

However, we’ve found that a lot of brands are still uncertain about the particulars involved with sustainable advertising. To clear up some of the more common questions and concerns, APR convened a panel of sustainability experts in a Virtual Town Square on January 27, 2021, including experts from AdGreen, Green The Bid, Sky.

Here are their key takeaways:

3 Pillars of Support

To create a habitable future, the operations of every business – regardless of industry – should be geared towards net-zero carbon emissions by 2030. APR has identified three intersecting pillars of support necessary to meet that goal. They are:

• Industry-level participation

• Financial commitment

• Education and consumer buy-in

Each pillar holds loads of information to unpack in order to better understand how net-zero carbon emissions are functionally possible.

Industry-Level Participation

The very first step in solving any existing problem is the proper identification of every issue at play. This is certainly true for sustainability in advertising, where carbon emission data is the foundation for proper treatment. Unfortunately, that data still isn’t widely accessible.

As Kat Friis from Green The Bid states, “Historically – as an industry – we are not so great at sharing information.” Yet, sustainability requires transparency; without the proper baselines to work from, advertisers will continue stumbling in the dark as we try to address a seemingly immeasurable problem.

Fortunately, there are organizations actively working together to create a holistic picture of the carbon emissions produced by the advertising industry. Green The Bid in the U.S. and AdGreen in the U.K are creating frameworks for carbon emission measurements and calculators. As of today, however, there is no single entity or repository in place to consolidate global data. This creates the all-too-common issue of information silos, significantly hindering progress along the way.

As you can see, there are challenges from square one of this journey. Thankfully, these initiatives continue to refine their measurements while increasing global participation – but they cannot complete their work without the unfiltered contributions of everyone in this industry.

“We want to harness the progress of other companies through pre-competitive cooperation,” Kat Friis continues, “and be transparent when we stumble so that others do not make the same mistakes.”

Financial Commitment

Lofty goals and corporate statements won’t solve this problem alone. Financial commitment is required to successfully implement new policies and sustainable processes. Naturally, this is where concerns begin to arise. “What does sustainability in advertising look like? What are the resulting costs? Can we afford to switch?”

Jo Coombes from AdGreen offers some insights on where marketers should put their efforts. “Historically, there has been a lot of concern around waste….things like single-use plastics and water bottles on set, etc. While these measures are very important, there is a massive iceberg hidden underneath that we must pay attention to. We’ve found that travel and energy are much more significant issues. In fact, travel seems to account for about 40% of the carbon emissions in our industry.”

This is where financial commitments to sustainability can begin creating budgetary offsets. In our present COVID-19 landscape, for example, travel and overhead costs have already been reduced, yielding immediate financial savings, while providing significant reductions in carbon emissions.

However, these gains can quickly be lost. Jillian Gibbs, founder of APR, reminds us that, “As things begin opening up again, many people in the industry are hoping for a return back to normal. Instead, now is the time for us to pause and figure out if we can continue to operate more efficiently.”

By shooting locally, sending fewer people to set, and working remotely, the move toward sustainability more than pays for itself. However, there are even more immediate and significant savings to be unearthed in the move toward sustainability.

Kat Friis elaborates this point by showcasing photos of leftover metal tubing created for an Old Navy commercial. This metal tubing would have cost approximately $5,000 USD in dumping fees, alone – not including the union labor required to break down the tubing in the first place. Instead, a truck and driver were hired for $500 USD to take the metal tubing to a local public school, where it was then repainted to create durable, colorful slides for the school’s playground. As a result, the studio received a taxable donation worth nearly $65,000 USD.

Fiona Ball from Sky Group’s Bigger Picture offers an additional example of the potential savings inherent in the move toward sustainability. Regarding Sky’s studio, Fiona states that “We used to go through 3 million non-reusable drink containers in cafes….which was a huge cost to the business. So, we decided to give away aluminum water bottles and hot drink containers while removing all of the single-use plastics from our site. As a result, the cost for distributing all of these reusable containers paid for itself in just three months.”

Ultimately, every expert was in consensus that financial savings are best realized during the planning process. By pin-pointing some of the “baked-in” emissions included within your production during the planning process, you’ll be in a much better position to respond with sustainable alternatives.

Education and Consumer Buy-In

Ongoing education and client buy-in is the final pillar of support required to meet net-zero carbon emissions. Although education and client support are listed last here, it is important to note that these pillars intersect with one another rather than follow a chronological hierarchy. For example, you cannot have industry-wide participation without an educated industry, and you cannot implement financial commitments without client support.

However, education is one of the most crucial components of successful sustainability initiatives. At Sky, Fiona Ball shared that they engage their production personnel in mandatory training coined “Carbon Literacy Training.” This training enables all members – from crew to leadership – to learn how they can implement sustainability throughout their unique areas of production. In fact, it is even a point of honor throughout Sky’s work culture; individuals who show an exemplary commitment to sustainability are distinguished as “Net Zero Champions.”

So, where can you begin seeking training and educational resources for your own organization? Both AdGreen and Green The Bid offer consulting, training, and additional resources for brands seeking to move toward sustainability. For those operating within the U.K., Albert already has a working carbon calculator, which AdGreen is utilizing as a framework to improve upon.

And when it comes to consumer buy-in, we’ve found that transparent sustainable practice is a growing imperative. After all, many consumers are very conscientious about the environmental impact of the products and services they purchase. In fact, 80% of citizens across the globe are more willing to choose brands that engage in sustainable practices – and 70% of those people are even willing to pay up to 35% more on average for eco-friendly brands.

Concluding Remarks

Sustainability in advertising and production should no longer be a “nice to have.” Marketers, agencies, and production partners must move toward sustainable practices – in front of and behind the camera – or risk falling by the wayside to the brands that do. And regardless of financial or strategic benefits, sustainability is simply the only ethical decision if we hope to live in a habitable world in the near future. But there is a silver-lining; now, more than ever, there are resources available to brands undertaking a sustainability strategy. Traci Dunne and Carol Pock from APR remind us “not to be intimidated by this task. Everyone is going to be starting at different points in their journey – and that is OK, so long as you are starting.”