[ad_1]
A new training and certification program from the nonprofit Institute for Advertising Ethics (IAE) aims to guard against industry greenwashing—in exactly the forms that it exists today.
The online course, Green Shield, which is free to take and can be completed in less than an hour, is the first ad industry-focused training to incorporate social science research on climate-related communications.
With input from academics, agencies, brands, activists and regulators, it focuses on the concepts underpinning modern greenwashing, such as paltering, over-indexing and astroturfing.
While numerous climate initiatives exist within the ad industry, what has been missing is “a single universal framework [with] scientific consensus that people could use to check themselves and protect themselves,” said Andrew Susman, president of the IAE. “What we’ve tried to do is to make that science accessible to the professionals who are making the decisions.”
This week, Susman gave a presentation on IAE’s general certification—a broader ethics-focused course that includes Green Shield—to 100 of P&G’s agencies and external business partners, a majority of which expressed interest, he said.
As more governments consider regulations around greenwashing and climate litigation ramps up in the U.S., the legal risks of greenwashing are only expected to increase and likely extend to brands’ agency partners.
Modern greenwashing isn’t just climate denial
Over four modules, the course highlights three main categories of greenwashing: factual omissions, factual distortions and denial.
The basis for the categories is drawn from academic research stemming from the Climate Social Science Network at Brown University and the work of Melissa Aronczyk, media studies professor at Rutgers. While the course content was developed by the IAE, it worked with a wide range of advisors with representation from the Better Business Bureau, Omnicom, Havas, MasterCard, Microsoft, P&G, as well as advertising lawyer Jeff Greenbaum and former FTC employees.
