Climate-conscious age is ‘opportunity’ for advertisers to spur positive change

Advertisers must avoid being defensive about the climate crisis and use their influence and expertise to encourage more sustainable consumer habits, the head of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) said on Friday.

Stephan Loerke, chief executive of the Brussels-headquartered industry group, said marketers who viewed the push to reduce carbon emissions in terms of “limitations” imposed on their activities were unlikely to be part of the solution, but that those who champion sustainability could have an important role to play.

Brand marketers are “in the business” of driving behavioural change and can help bring it about on the sort of scale that will be required to contain global warming, said Mr Loerke, speaking ahead of a meeting of national advertising industry councils in Dublin.

“We want them to embrace the climate agenda as an opportunity,” he said. “This is going to profoundly change the environment that marketers operate in, in the future.”

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Mr Loerke said it was “absolutely fair to say” that some approaches to marketing – which has more traditionally sought to increase consumption levels – would be off-limits in a more climate-conscious age.

Responsibilities to planet

“We talk about having a licence to operate,” he said. “There is no God-given right to advertise. Society can withdraw that licence to operate at any time.”

The Irish advertising industry earlier this year joined the UK-originating Ad Net Zero campaign, which urges advertisers to consider their wider responsibilities to the planet when creating ads.

Representatives from 18 national industry councils attended the event, hosted in Dublin by the Association of Advertisers in Ireland (AAI) for the WFA, which represents the companies behind 90 per cent of global marketing communications spend – a sum estimated at more than €900 billion a year.

The meeting also came at a time when advertisers are paying more attention to diversity and inclusion on their teams to ensure the messages they produce are “in sync” with society. “It requires the industry to look at itself in the mirror,” Mr Loerke said. “If we preach diversity, we need to practise it ourselves.”

Digital transformation was high on the list of talking points. Digital advertising accounts for more than half of global ad spend and growth in its share of the market is expected to accelerate, reigniting concerns about how advertisers can protect the reputation of their brands online.

Impact on society

It remains “absolutely toxic” for brands if their ads appear next to inappropriate content, Mr Loerke said, but some progress had been made on this brand safety side of the equation, “not enough, but we are heading in the right direction”.

Platform safety questions relating to the long-term impact of various apps on society is “not necessarily a debate for brands to be having”, he said, but brands do have a responsibility to avoid unintentionally funding dangerous and harmful content.

Work has also been done in recent years – through a global initiative called the Coalition for Better Ads – to eliminate “the most annoying” digital ad formats known to disrupt users’ experience of being online.

Mr Loerke said he was “not sure”, however, if perceptions of online advertising had radically changed and that more data was needed.

“I still don’t think the digital ad experience is where it needs to be. I think there is more to be done.”