Traci Dunne, Global Director of Industry Relations at Advertising Production Resources, shares how an increased focus on environmental sustainability reporting can drive a reduction in production emissions.

At APR, we support marketers to transform and optimise their content production ecosystems. Alongside the more traditional areas we are asked to support on, we have seen an increased interest in environmental sustainability reporting, and an ambition to embed more sustainable production practices.

While there may be an organisational desire to implement sustainable practices, in reality most brand teams are at the beginning of their sustainability journey. Often lacking the capabilities or knowledge around how to get started, brands are turning to partners who can help them navigate this new area of corporate responsibility.

A large part of a consultant’s role is to help our clients move past theory and put learning into action. Most importantly we must also be able to measure the results and provide a clear assessment of where progress is being made, and the further work required. For many brand teams, taking on the challenge of creating a carbon reduction strategy on top of an existing workload is impractical. We step in to join the dots between corporate sustainability targets set at an organisational level, and what the marketing and production arms of the organisation can do to practically support them.

Data is a key component of any reduction strategy, and this is where the AdGreen carbon calculator plays a pivotal role. The ability to measure the various activity areas of a production, and analyse the impact, is what will enable us to drive fundamental change. We advocate for the use of the calculator across our client base to provide us with the data we need to create a roadmap, but to also drive that crucial behaviour change amongst brand teams and their creative partners.

For organisations to meet their Net Zero targets, scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions need to be measured, reported, and validated. As production consultants we see it as our role to ensure clients are aware of their responsibility for their scope 3 emissions, which includes marketing and production, and to help them take a considered approach to tackling them. We believe the key is to start gathering data as early as possible, both in the context of individual productions but also as an organisation; those who have embraced the use of the calculator at this early stage will be able to access the data they need to report on their carbon footprint, and more importantly will be able to demonstrate reductions as a result.

As consultants we can also bridge the gap between our clients and AdGreen supporting the implementation of calculator usage across brands, markets, and creative agency partners. Through a combination of anecdotal feedback from partners and personal involvement in measuring campaigns, we can support the team as they make improvements and adjustments to optimise the user experience across their production eco-system.

Increasing the number of projects which are measured (and completed) in the calculator will provide a more representative and robust dataset for the production community, which is what will allow us to make informed change. It is our collective responsibility to provide the individual campaign and project data which will come together to show the bigger picture. Our hope is that data capture for production will ultimately become second nature to agencies and production companies, but we are cognisant of the fundamental changes required of us all which will have a significant impact on traditional working practices. We are here to support this industry-wide transition to a low carbon future.

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Creating a more sustainable world is one of Diageo’s key ambitions as part of our ESG action plan, Society 2030: Spirit of Progress. To be in a position where we can drive this agenda, we need to understand what our existing impact actually is. AdGreen’s carbon calculator is a critical tool that we’ve begun to embed across our business to help us understand what our Scope 3 carbon impact is across our creative productions. With APR as our partners, we’ve started to baseline our existing emissions and to use that to begin to apply reduction targets. Whilst we have much more to do on addressing our emissions, the carbon calculator has firmly supported our drive to delivering more sustainable creative productions.

David Akeredolu, Global Lead – Creative Production at Diageo

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