An Inside Look at Advertising’s New Sustainability Standards

We recently sat down with the team leading the development of the GARM sustainability framework to hear how its being applied in the real world and where it will go next. The lively discussion at Cannes looked at the inclusive process that brought more than one hundred industry representatives together to create the framework’s flexible and modular first version.

In addition to the key components of the framework and how they were decided, the conversation answered the number one question on everyone’s mind — what will it take for people in the advertising industry to go from good intention to positive action?

This discussion dives deep into helpful topics for any company interested in measuring the carbon output of their advertising including:

• How the framework is designed to easily work with the huge variety of marketing channels and strategies in use today.
• What leading advertisers are doing to get started quickly and effectively.
• Plans to ensure that the framework is able to ladder up to corporate emissions reporting standards for any organization looking to achieve net zero.

Check out the entire recorded conversation or read the transcript below:

Gabi Kay: I'm excited today to speak with Rob Rakowitz from GARM and Anthony Falco from Ad Net Zero about the new sustainability framework.

We’re so excited that the framework is in existence, but it is still quite new. For some people, for our own partners and for the industry at large, more background about this framework with GARM and what it means and where it came from is needed. Anthony, do you want to tell us a little bit about the impetus for it?

Anthony Falco: Ad Net Zero represents companies from across the ad ecosystem. And what we heard from our supporters, is that it came from two places:

First, it came from the brands that support Ad Net Zero who were saying that there was no real consistent measurement. They were working with multiple partners, be they media specialists or media agencies, and the values that they were getting were wildly different, sixfold actually. And at a country level we heard twenty-fold difference in some of those measurements.

There's a need for consistency. And I think we've increased reporting requirements. There's a need for accuracy as well. Values that can be used in their sustainability reporting. So that was one very important part of this.

Then on the other side, with the media owners that are part of our community, and media owners, trade associations, who we spoke to were saying that they were getting bombarded with requests for different data from all over the industry. And it was confusing.

It was also a bit alarming because they were being judged potentially in very different ways. The values that were being created around the carbon emissions associated to their activity was going to be wildly different as a result. I think there was also a lack of trust that was developing within the requirements or the request for data that were being asked.

There was a sense that there was a need for standardization, how being judged against each other, or maybe other channels. For us, that was the impetus. How could we correct both of those by creating one standard measurement for brands? While also creating trust from media owners to start finding that data and supplying it with confidence that they were going to be measured correctly.

I’ll say two more things as well.

In that panel yesterday, I heard Meta say that from their point of view, with one standardized way of requiring that data and then being judged with after supplying that data, they're now going to push that into their product development. That’s excellent because before then, they were going, “well, what can we do with this? You know, there's 50 different versions.” This is now in their pipeline for development to work out how they can start.

The other thing which I thought was interesting from a brand perspective is LVMH said that with this framework and these formulas, they now feel they can go out to the media owner and say, “we now want this information from you because we know we're going to get it back in a consistent way.”

Hopefully people are going to be more receptive because they’re going to be consistently judged. I thought there were two breakthroughs.

Gabi Kay: It's very, very exciting to hear. I think that consistency is the thing that everyone has been waiting for as you said. Coming back to what it looks like to have that consistency, that would be the frameworks themselves, specifically the channel frameworks. Rob, do you want to tell us about what's involved in those frameworks, what those boundaries are and how that has gone together?

Rob Rakowitz: I think it's important because when you put yourself in the shoes of an advertiser, there ae multiple channels, multiple markets and then levels of sophistication underneath each of those. What we did is we looked at it and we said, how can we be fair across each channel.

That's why we have frameworks that can play to all channels in all markets. Quite literally, the same framework that's used for digital. It's used for out of home. It's used for cinema. It's used for all six major channels, and we were able to come into a place where this is the standard journey that an ad message will take.

Now, does that vary? And have we customized it by channel? Yes, absolutely. I think some of the things that people have been able to point out and bring into the conversation.

What we've been able to do is say, there's creation, distribution and consumption. Now there’s one fundamental framework to agree on.

Then we've talked about the levels of data in terms of getting closer to activity-based media product level. Data is where we all collectively believe we should go next. We've also talked about embedded admissions and have aligned on a recommendation from an industry best practices perspective that can drive some consistency.

Between the standard journey and the major phases, we have some really good global principles that can be applied across multiple channels. Each channel will have variation based on buying methods. For instance, we know that print right now is not sold programmatically, but we know that digital and out of home are, so we have a freedom within a framework.

It’s like Legos with bricks that can be used modularly with the user in control. If you're the advertiser, if you're the agency, or if you're the media seller, you say, “this part of the formula, or this part of the framework, is relevant.” That flexible framework is what makes it great.

Gabi Kay: I think that it's really important to have something adoptable across the industry. And so that's a valid point. The other thing that I wanted to talk about is what you alluded to earlier when you were saying about how, within the individual frameworks for individual channels, there is some distinction and that there's been an enormous amount of input from the industry as a whole to ensure that that information was carried across properly.

There have been companies involved in this process. Do you want to talk a little bit, Anthony, about what it looked like to have that level of socialization?

Anthony Falco: Yes, and I think you could make that probably 150 or 200 with the Quick Action Guide last year, which is where it all started, where we tried to give information to the industry on things that they could do already to reduce those emissions.

From the start point, I think you'd agree, Rob, it was how to get to this point to feel like it was owned by the industry. We wanted to make sure there were as many handprints were on this piece of work as possible. The more people who feel that they've owned it contributed to it, believe in it, the more likely it is to be adopted across the industry.

We started by understanding exactly what was in the industry and we, we sent out an RFI to a lot of the companies within the industry who had their own calculation tools. There are methodologies that underpin that. And we supplied that to a working group, blinded, which was important.

Nobody saw where these frameworks or methodologies came from. They were very much there to start the conversation, to take the best parts, fuse the bits together, learn from, add to the various methodologies that were being put in place.

We also wanted to establish the boundaries of exactly how we were going to measure and what was included. There was that RFI initially and then in all, there were six working groups that were set up with metrics and methodology being the cornerstone for that one group. Others were for data access data collection, transparency, audit and verification, and monitoring.

We wanted to know how to see what's working, what's not, who's adopted it, who hasn't. The methodology working group then came up with a recommendation, which was shared with the steering team . The steering team was formed mainly from WFA supporters, global advertisers, and a couple of big trade associations who looked at the recommendations that were being provided by the working group under the watchful eye of Mr. Bill Westcott and his CSG's climate science experts, to make sure that we were also applying the best climate science.

That work was then shared with our community including the extended Ad Net Zero community and to the GARM community. The group was growing, and we were trying to get more hands, more influence, more involvement as the project went on. The initial working groups were WFA and Ad Net Zero global supporters. Other companies like Scope3 in the latter stages were plugged into that as well, quite deliberately to use their expertise.

And then from there those frameworks were socialized with the industry more broadly through trade associations that represented a specific channel, international global trade associations and some of their main supporters, as well as the media specialist solutions (providers who would come in again with that technical expertise to see if it looked right).

We were challenged and modifications were made. Formulas were written off the back of that, and the last part of that process, those formulas were sent out to the industry again, to that technical group of people to be able to then comment, fine tune, to get us to two days ago when that document and those formulas were released.

It was a very big project across a hundred companies. I certainly felt it was brilliant. There’s a small nucleus, which I think was important to make quick progress. But the nucleus grew and grew and grew and grew connecting more people with the direction of travel and for contributions along the way.

We hope it leads to mass adoption. Again, voluntary, we know that. It's a word that Rob and I say all the time. It is absolutely voluntary and as you said, the first iteration. But we want you all to pick it up, play with it, learn from it and tell us what you found out, basically.

Gabi Kay: You mentioned the first iteration and Rob, I regret putting this question here now because this is probably not the question that you want to answer having been through the year that you have been in building this work, and it's not your only job.

This is the first iteration, and this is an iterative process, and the framework is going to grow and expand and become more and more mature over time -- what do you see as being the next iteration of this or will be in the next iteration?

Rob Rakowitz: It’s about making sure that every channel has the right resources. The next iterations are going to be around how to plug data gaps. We are looking at creating an understanding on data governance, and where to look for data. Audit and verification is going to be really important because these are large organizations that need to report up these numbers into a Chief Sustainability Officer, and that goes into either an SEC facing report or European Commission. It really becomes quite serious.

Audit is going to be a next round. It will take some iterations to figure out things like, where does that sort of audit get focused in? But I do think that the next waves are going to be the missing bits for those formulas as well as data guidance for some of the channels.

We will also be listening for feedback from advertisers, agencies, specialists like Scope3 and then media sellers, just figuring out if this is easing anxiety or creating anxiety. If there are areas that are creating anxiety let's figure out what’s not working and reconsider.

One of the important things is that what we have now in is an observation and a buildup of a voluntary industry framework based on best practices that works. That's great. Best practices evolve over time. The idea of continuous improvement and listening for marketplace feedback is going to be important.

We've already kicked off a transformation on data. I was just in meetings earlier today and you just heard people being able to share some of the metrics that they had. I'm keen to listen and see if people are concerned about “wave 2.” It’s about learning to surf, and just going from wave to wave.

Gabi Kay: That's very big of you. To continue to keep taking it on and we have huge appreciation for the fact that you've taken on labor here in being able to push this.

Rob Rakowitz: When we started out our journey on responsibility, I had a plan and it started out in brand safety because there was a real imminent danger. Some of those things that we've looked at in terms of illegal and illicit content, but sustainability is another big area of imminent danger. It is also long-term danger. Being a parent of two young kids, you wonder about the world that you're going to leave them.

Gabi Kay: That brings me into a personal question for both of you because I think that you find that with the amount of work that's involved in really tackling this, like not just having it be a piece of content or a workshop, I think there has to be a level of commitment that's very personal.

I know for myself, it's my children. There was a point five years ago where I just felt very strongly that it was not their fault. They hadn't asked to be born, the idea that we were going, “well you're the next generation, we're really sorry we messed up, here you go.”

We are at the point where we had the most influence and the most power, we probably have in our careers at this age that we should be doing something with it. I wondered with you both, what is it that keeps you up at night, but also like, what keeps you perpetuated in getting this work done?

Anthony Falco: Yes, children are everything aren't they? I'm sure we'd all say the same thing. I have three children who are growing into adulthood. And absolutely, it's to try and create a better future for them.

One level down, which is where my fear is not obviously that's the outcome that we don't want to happen, obviously a world that is very different from today, but I think my fear is the lack of engagement from other people.

The sessions we do like this, you're talking to yourself. The room is largely full of people who already believe, who want to make it a bit better, but they want to learn a little bit more to be able to move their organization and organization a bit further.

But we're largely talking to the same very small group of people. It’s influential people, but a small group. I look at that in my own social circles and friendship groups. It's reflected in the industry in a similar way outside of my work. And I don't know how you feel, but both my wife and I work in sustainability related jobs.

And you start talking about this within a friendship group and you can see their eyes glaze over. They don’t know how to contribute, or don't want to hear the things that they should be doing because maybe they feel guilty.

And I see the same here, walking around Cannes and meeting people. People I haven't seen for a while as what I have been doing, and I saw I’m working for Ad Net Zero. Some have heard of it. Lots have. Some haven’t. It can become awkward, and you're sort of going, oh crap, they want me to change the subject.

Those ingrained behaviors, that small group of people that needs to be expanded dramatically at speed. How do we change that? I think we're talking to them. All of us are talking to each other and the industry and citizens and consumers in the wrong way.

At Ad Net Zero, we're working on behavior change and around how the messaging around behavior change builds as well. How we might create positive messages, aspirational behaviors. It's not easy, and I think that's the worry. You know, we're running out of time.

It's my kid's future. And we're nowhere near bringing enough people along with us.

Gabi Kay: We need speed and scale.

Anthony Falco: We do, and we need something that resonates. We're not connecting with people. Even our friends, we're not connecting in the way that they go, I get it, I'm going to do that because that sounds like a good thing, or a cool thing, or a better thing, or exciting. We don't get any of that, I don't think, with sustainability. Yet.

Gabi Kay: Yet. Well, it depends how much people are educated and how much they understand. The work that I did when I was at Green the Bid and then being here at Scope3, I've been pleasantly surprised, especially the brand level, to your point, at just how when you find those committed voices in brands, they are very serious about it.

Rob Rakowitz: Yeah, and I would say I'm in this because I know the future that I want to leave my kids. I think everybody operates from there. That’s a human insight. But I'd sort of say what, for me, the motivation is to your point, is to spark the conversations. There is a video out on YouTube, which talks about leadership and a guy is doing a funky dance and then everybody follows it. It’s about how movements are created because there's a behavior that's inspiring.

I think that this industry is awesome. I think that this industry has the brightest, the most committed people. And when they're pointed in the right direction, everything is solvable. Everything is solvable. That to me is the beauty of this, which is you give folks a framework, you give the brightest minds in the industry the power to understand and the opportunity to make decisions. And it's an opportunity because everything is voluntary.

You give them the opportunity to make decisions, and you will be wowed by the positive intent that humanity has. This is about really giving everybody the opportunity and the visibility to make those right decisions.

We did that with brand safety and we're doing it with sustainability. Fundamentally it is the right thing. You eliminate asymmetry in the marketplace. You create perfect visibility. This industry has introduced a lot of opaque practices, and part of that has been done because the technology is a commercial interest. But now what we're able to do is shine a light on the data, the flows, the content, whatever it happens to be. Whether it's brand safety or sustainability. The voices that we have connected with here this week, and in our work in the last 16 months, it's been such a breath of fresh air, a ray of light.

It's about just making sure that, people have a framework that can make independent decisions, but the industry will move in a common direction. And I think that's what's super interesting. And to me, that's what's inspiring about this work.

Gabi Kay: I think it's interesting that you say that because you are essentially talking about transparency. That the transparency just makes it so much easier. You let the light in. And I think that for us has been a very strong piece of the motivation of Scope3.

We have an open-source methodology for that very reason because we want that transparency to be out there in the industry. You don't have just to bring a full circle to your original impetus with the brands, like not knowing what's going on, not knowing where these companies’ numbers are coming from. By having the framework, by offering up that transparency we go from black boxes to glass boxes.

Anthony Falco: Transparency creates trusted measurement. Measurement is the start of the change, because then where you focus that attention, you broaden accountability.

Gabi Kay: Shared responsibility is the answer, the collaborative process. I just wanted to go with one last question before we open the floor: what is the call to action that you want for our audience from this conversation? Rob Rakowitz: The first thing is knowing where you are on the journey and being able to understand where sustainability fits into media. A lot of marketers are going to start having that conversation and with marketing and media as part of it.

We have trailblazers who absolutely understand it and have a driver analysis in terms of understanding their organizational footprint across marketing, media, and individual channels, but many others are not there yet. The first thing is to just pick up the framework, start having conversations internally, get the boardroom to align with the engine room, meaning the media nerds.

Then you've got to start having those conversations outside and make sure that there is value chain alignment, and alignment with the agency, key markets, key channels, making sure that everybody is pointed in the right direction.

A lot of people are picking up the wrong end of the stick on this thing and saying someone is going to get caught could be cut from a plan because their CPM is too high. They're thinking with that old school mentality. That's not what this is about. It's about taking proper stock and then everybody's pursuing reductions. Media is media.

At the end of the day, we believe that this is about reaching consumers and driving business impact with sustainability. We talk about media impacts with sustainability, and I think that's the big thing here. Look, review it, have the conversation, prioritize it, make sure you have value chain alignment and start the benchmark. Then cut out the meaningless calories in terms of carbon where you can find them.

Anthony Falco: To add to that is to interrogate what that methodology is. Ask what is underpinning the data and the advice that you're getting from your partners as a brand. Make sure you know where the data's coming from, the sources that are being used, the methodology that you're creating those numbers. Again, it goes back to the transparency point of view and make it part of the conversation

Allie Keith: Where do you see good pockets of success? Are there brands that we should be talking to as part of the WFA? Who do you feel is not just leaned in the most, but where are you seeing the pockets of excellence?

I want to be able to bring those people into my organization as the media nerd and educate our marketers, which I'm already starting to do, because it's not that they don't care. It's just that they don't think about it, and they don't know. It's only when you start explaining some of the things, and they're genuinely quite horrified. But then it's about how do you turn that into action?

Also, how do you get ESG teams inspired by this? You know, in comparison to tomato farming. My contribution to carbon saving is not going to get them wildly excited, but it all helps. And is there a way as part of the framework we can help them with packages of who to go and talk to internally?

How do you set targets for media or marketing production? I know how to do it for tomatoes and water and printing and things like that. But how does that work?

Rob Rakowitz: Really good question. The organization is saying every department has a role to play in sustainability. And if you immunize it, then shame on you.

That's the behavior that we've seen, which is the differentiation between I've got an enterprise sustainability objective and then each department has a contribution into it versus a behavioral encouragement to ask -- basically the jet JFK parable, “Ask not what the country can do for you, but you can do for the country.” I think that's the important thing here, which is that sensibility of saying: what's my responsibility?

We have identified a set of behaviors that some of these trailblazers have, and I do believe that is that sort of sense of front-line ownership. It’s about saying, “I need to start asking how my agency can help, and I need to start asking my media partners. Are you guys in on the journey, too? where are you? How can you help me on my journey?” It's like asking for help from your chief sustainability officer, from your media agency, COE of sustainability, and then your key partners. Whether it's your media trading partner or whether it's, you know, a media sustainability specialist organization like Scope3. It's just about asking for help.

Brian O'Kelley: I need some help. Bridging the gap from corporate carbon accounting and CSRD and other regulations to this framework is not going to be easy. We talked about this yesterday. That partially because of materiality, sustainability leads aren't sure that this matters.

I'll give you an example of Microsoft. When we proposed this, we tried to combine the SRI, Scope3 and Group M frameworks and said, look, take whatever you want. They're all basically the same thing. We wrote a 20-page position paper to the Microsoft sustainability team. And they said, “This is awesome. We'll get back to you in 2025.” That was last year.

I think we're in a much better position as an industry now. But I don't think we're all the way there. No one yet has proven that you can take this framework and plug it into a regulatory compliant carbon accounting process. And I feel like that is an example, or a set of examples, we need to bring back.

I think your marketer question is critically important. How do you help marketers get this? But if we could have a procurement work stream of how to help procurement people figure this out. I know the WFA has a procurement forum or sourcing form. If we could get that group to really understand this framework and get blessed, that'd be huge. We can do that.

Rob Rakowitz: What the industry hasn't heard in terms of us making the sausage was that the CSEG, the client science expert group, which Bill Wescott has graciously agreed to chair, has chief sustainability officers from major marketers. They have said, “This is important because it needs to factor up into our external reporting and we need to have confidence.” Putting myself the shoes of sort of a former media director or former agency lead, I'd be really terrified if I was passing on numbers that were had a 6 or 20x variation.

I do think that there is absolutely a leading indicator that there is engagement and endorsement from a Chief Sustainability Officer to go and pursue this.

One of the things that I would throw out there, is if we leave this uncovered, are we guilty of behavioral green hushing?

If we say, “Hey, listen, you know what? It doesn't matter.” Then it's kind of like you are of green hushing. Procurement and sustainability officers, they need to understand this. They also need to understand the rigor that this was built with and sort of like, you're right. Let's get them on board and let's get them engaged.

Brian O'Kelley: Are you going to keep investing in this to make sure we get through the first cycle?

Bill Wescott: Oh, absolutely. Yes.

There's still much to be done. The key thing is that we're converging so that what's happening in the marketing world. This is going to be aligned with what's happening with the rest of the company. So that accounting is consistent. I think you guys can set both a pace that other sectors have not and have a degree of operation, which I'm really inspired by through this effort. And therefore, a degree of accuracy that is better than it has been with the rest of the supply chain.

Getting reasonable data on supply chains has been a long process. I think that's a key that this needs to be plug and play, and it’s not so serious compliance in the next couple of years, and then it's going to be serious compliance after that.

Rob Rakowitz: And eventually it just becomes the standard because it's been out there long enough, and it's been tested long enough.

Bill Wescott: We really need feedback from everybody in this room and outside the room saying, “Hey here's a mistake. “Here's a better way to do it.” “The facts have changed.” We need to have that feedback loop.”

This is just version 1. 0. And we're going through a major revision, as most of you guys know, of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol itself. So, version 2 is just around the corner.

Rob Rakowitz: It’s almost like career stability because it will constantly be changing. Feedback is a gift. That's what my last employer sort of has as a motto - take it on.

Anthony Falco: I think the other point you raised, if you're a service business, then obviously that's going to be probably significantly higher than somebody who manufactures by yourself. But even, so, talking to a big global advertiser, and they were saying that the emissions that were produced from their factories, not the whole supply chain, but from their factories globally, was the same as the emissions that were associated to their media activities. And that was the light bulb moment for them.

Rob Rakowitz: Exactly. And I'll give you another example.

A marketer that I actually used to handle their business when I was on the agency side, they came and they reached out to me, and their footprint is massive because they're in the manufacturing business. The family that owns this company has made sustainability a manufacturing and a design priority. They said: We are wiring it through in terms of the way that we approach trade shows, the materials that we print, and advertising and media. When you guys started saying what you're saying, it was music to our ears.

Every company has a culture and a DNA. We've all worked at multiple companies. I don't think anybody here has a career or life or where they are. But you've got to just figure out, like, how do we how do we speak the language internally?

Every company is going to approach this in a different way. And that's why these things must be built in a way that's modular and flexible.

Gabi Kay: Thank you to both of you for taking the time out in what must be an unbelievably busy week for you after several extremely well.

Rob Rakowitz: You guys have been key partners in helping us take this to the next level, so we are happy to make the time with you guys.

Anthony Falco: And one thing I want to say, which was my miss from, from our process and the process we've gone through over the last year and a half. There's two people sitting to the left here, Ina and Hannah, who have been fundamental to any success that we may have over the coming months and years. The RMA team, their support through this process, impossible without you guys, so apologies for not mentioning that earlier.