Wednesday, January 09, 2008

UK's largest advertisers call for greener agencies

In May 2007, the COI called for agencies to improve their environmental credentials or risk being axed from their roster. In October, Procter and Gamble announced a sales target for environmentally improved products.

Many advertisers are reviewing the way they source materials, promote their products and dispose of waste, partly to win consumer approval, and partly to appease regulators and reduce future energy costs and taxation.

Some agencies may be responding faster than others, but there is a lot of action as companies recognise it will save them money in the longer term.

To assess how agencies are responding, Marketing has teamed with the Ethical Reputation Index (ERI) to publish the UK's first Green Agency Index which will ask 140 of the UK's top agencies to report how they are reducing their environmental impact. Invitations to participate were sent out to agency CEOs on Tuesday 8th January and results are due back by 21st January.

The results of the ERI Green Agency survey will be published in Marketing magazine in the coming weeks, and will be on hand to help clients and advertisers to choose their agencies based on a similar footing.

What do you think - is the communications industry is responding as fast as clients and consumers want?



4 comments:

Smithylad said...

It's easy to doubt the reasons that companies embrace green methodologies - for financial reasons, for publicity etc - yet often beneath the surface of these corporations are real people who are genuinely concerned for the environment and who are clever enough to dress their arguments up in corporate-speak in order to enact the changes they want to see made.
The report you write about is a very useful step in reminding companies of their environmental obligations and that there is an up-side to going green, (and a down-side in not going green). It also gives those concerned individuals in these companies leverage to drive home a green agenda.

Pandect said...

Good question Karen. I think the best agencies will be the ones who respond the fastest. They'll be the agencies who understand that green issues are now a business opportunity like any other, albeit an opportunity with a different outcome. On that point, there's a new book out called "Top Ten Investments for The Next Ten Years", written by Jim Mellon, a hardcore financier, and interestingly even he lists green tech as one of the places to keep your money over the next decade. It's because we've barely begun to scratch the surface of this issue. Sometimes it feels like green campaigners are cresting the trend wave, but actually they've only just begun.

klara said...

Just wanted you to know that I uploaded a post of yours
on http://sustain.newsladder.net/ ....similiar to Digg but centered around
sustainability...
and do you know about climate counts....rates companies by their true carbon foortprint!

bye!

Julian Friedland said...

Hi there! I like your blog. I teach business ethics and have my own blog on that too. I'm linking to yours. You might check mine: www.businessethicsmemo.blogspot.com

also, you might enjoy this op-ed of mine published today in the local Boulder paper on responsible shopping:

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2008/apr/27/the-responsible-shopper-as-do-gooder/

Best,
Julian