“We’ve seen an uptick in awareness,” John Osborn, director of Ad Net Zero’s U.S. chapter, told Adweek. “Advertisers are ultimately going to be really important in terms of shaping the movement in the industry in the U.S. this year.”
Osborn highlighted the work that Ad Net Zero has done alongside groups like AdGreen and GARM toward codifying the measurement of carbon emissions generated by advertising production and media. While agencies like GroupM and Dentsu have well-established carbon calculators to estimate climate impact, standardizing measurement will allow Ad Net Zero to measure overall industry reductions.
Despite pressure from groups like Purpose Disruptors and Clean Creatives, Ad Net Zero has declined to push member agencies to end work for fossil fuel clients, and hasn’t yet formed a working group on the final step of its action plan in responding to climate change, which is to “harness advertising’s power to support behavior change.”
The rise of behavior change marketing
But as greenwashing and emissions reporting regulations take effect—and young consumers demand less talk and more action from brands—advertisers will require their agency partners to both understand those regulatory changes and to create work that inspires behavior change.
Several brands that Futerra works with have piloted lower-impact, refillable or reusable alternatives to their main product. But people haven’t gotten on board. While Townsend declined to name those brands to protect client confidentiality, many major CPG companies have launched a series of alternatives with less packaging or more climate-friendly products, but which fail to displace consumption of the original product or gain significant market share.
That’s understandable, she said, if the marketing strategy doesn’t shift to accommodate different goals.
“It’s not purpose marketing. It’s not sustainability marketing. It’s behavior change,” Townsend explained. It requires “helping the consumer change her behavior around that product, understanding what her behavioral barriers are [and] telling her the benefits that can help overcome those behavioral barriers.”
Purpose Disruptors published its first report on advertised emissions—which estimates the carbon impact generated by the increase in sales due to advertising—in 2021. The following year, it published an update that highlighted the impact that agencies could have by shifting their work from high-carbon industries to low-carbon or climate-friendly industries. By limiting work for sectors like automotive, fossil fuels and beef while diversifying client portfolios with sectors like clean energy, plant-based foods and refillable CPG alternatives, the industry could half its advertised emissions within a decade, it claimed.
