SUMMER 2022 / REAL-LEADERS.COM 77 LEADING LEADERS Climate Action As the world’s “architects of desire,” the advertising industry — criticized by some as complicit in greenwashing campaigns and for promoting excessive consumption — could play a major role in driving greener choices. How business and leaders are impacting the planet — climate action, life belowwater,and life on land Right now, advertising “is too often selling destruction,” says Solitaire Townsend, cofounder of Futerra, a creative agency focused on sustainability. Whether promoting continuing use of fossil fuels or flogging other high-carbon, planet-endangering behavior such as throwaway fashion. The good news for ad agencies, she says, is that many people want to switch to climate-smarter choices but are struggling to find them or figure out how to make needed changes. “One in five young people across the world think we can no longer do anything to prevent climate change,” she says. “This is a huge concern.” Ben Page, CEO of Ipsos MORI, notes that to encourage action on climate change, “we need to focus on solutions more than terrifying people about an existential threat.” A revamp of advertising could help promote the message that change is possible and popularize low-carbon choices, whether electric cars or sustainable clothing, Townsend says. Traditional marketing, which focuses on “selling more crap to more people,” needs to give way to advertising that helps that new generation of more climateconscious consumers make smarter choices, she adds. One way to trigger a shift among advertising firms would be to create a new metric that tracks emissions associated with purchases driven by ad campaigns, says Jonathan Wise, co76 MONEY 77 CLIMATE ACTION 78 SOCIAL IMPACT 74 INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY 79 INVESTING founder of Purpose Disruptors, a group of ad industry insiders pressing for change. Some financial firms, for instance, now monitor their “financed emissions” or the greenhouse gases associated with the loans and investments they make. Major banking group HSBC, among others, has committed to achieving netzero financed emissions. Wise thinks advertising firms should adopt a similar metric that he is developing for advertised emissions, combining advertising spending, the resulting increase in sales, and the carbon intensity of the product or service sold. Ad agencies could then lower their score by, for instance, persuading traditional automotive clients to spend more on promoting electric vehicle sales or getting burger chains to tout their tasty plant-based burgers. “This is the magic of advertising — to draw the future forward and create demand for these low-carbon alternatives,” Wise says. n Laurie Goering is climate editor at the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Become an Architect of Desire: Why Your Marketing Efforts Should Glamorize Climate Solutions
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