London, UK – Global marketing insights company WARC has partnered with top advertising organizations LIONS and the UK’s Advertising Association to launch the WARC Sustainability Hub, a one-stop resource to help marketing practitioners worldwide tackle the challenges and find innovative ways to implement more sustainable actions to address the climate crisis.
WARC said the new hub is in response to the ongoing global mission of reaching net-zero by 2050, and to lead in empowering the marketing industry to be aligned with the said mission. Environmental and social organizations all over the world, such as the United Nations, have been pushing for the coalition to achieve net-zero emissions in order to manage global warming and keep the global temperature rising above the safe threshold of 1.5 degrees
The new WARC Sustainability Hub brings together a curated collection of content including best practice, effectiveness case studies and thought leadership. Additional resources will be curated from Ad Net Zero, a UK industry-wide initiative led by the Advertising Association, the IPA and ISBA, to reduce the advertising industry’s carbon impact.
Paul Coxhill, CEO of WARC, said that as an industry, advertising and marketing players should not only take the lead in helping change consumer behaviour but also need to look at “own conduct.”
“To kick-start the launch of this Sustainability Hub, we are delighted to release the WARC Guide to Net Zero Marketing, freely available to all, to help cut through the noise, by providing actionable sustainable marketing best practices to start addressing this global emergency,” said Coxhill.
Stephen Woodford, chief executive of Advertising Association, commented, “The challenge of climate change requires collective action, not just in the UK but around the world. This new Sustainability Hub will help advertising practitioners reduce carbon emissions and produce work to support more sustainable ways of living.”
To launch the Sustainability Hub, WARC has also recently released the WARC Guide to Net Zero Marketing. The report provides a roadmap to help the industry drastically reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions it produces, and achieve a net-zero target.
The Guide contains a compilation of recent industry research and features contributions from more than a dozen industry experts from across the world. It presents frameworks to help marketers drive behavioural change, features examples of brands showing climate leadership, and practical advice on how to avoid the perils of greenwashing.
Lena Roland, author of the report and managing editor of WARC.com, said, “The global marketing industry is well-placed to help in addressing the climate emergency, given its position at the intersection of several business disciplines with a major environmental impact. But reducing carbon emissions requires systemic change, including rethinking how adverts are made and taking a lean approach to media planning”.
The report is available for download on WARC’s website. In addition, a series of podcasts on the topic will also follow, which will be available to listen to on all major platforms, including Spotify, Apple, Castbox and RadioPublic.
