Jonathan Wise Says Marketers Impact Climate Change

While many marketers may not know it, few professions drive more carbon emissions than the advertising industry. Sure, creative strategists and media planners might not be mining, manufacturing and shipping the products themselves, but they are directly responsible for cultivating—and increasing—the consumer demand that justifies those products’ creation in the first place. For an industry that prides itself on empathy and creativity, this can be an unpleasant truth. But it is a reality that its practitioners need to acknowledge, according to Purpose Disruptors co-founder Jonathan Wise, if for no other reason than to make an informed decision about how to respond. Wise—one of Adweek's 2023 Sustainability Honorees—would know. He worked in creative strategy for decades, crafting campaigns that bolstered sales for companies like Nestle, Shell and Kraft. Then, after completing a mid-career graduate program in sustainability, Wise realized his own role in driving unnecessary consumption. “I understood that the better I did my job, the worse I made the world,” Wise said. “That led me to wonder what sort of responsibility I had in the matter, and whether I could shift things for the better.” Advertised emissions To better illustrate the connection between advertising and its carbon emissions, Wise cites a parallel in the world of institutional investment, called financed emissions. Using this concept, asset management firms like BlackRock can tally the carbon emissions produced by companies they invest in, which allows them to measure emissions for which they share partial responsibility. Wise has championed a similar concept, called advertised emissions, to quantify the uplift in carbon output generated by marketing campaigns. In the U.K., these emissions make up 28% of every individual’s total carbon footprint, according to Purpose Disruptors. If you allow the people in advertising to wake up to their role in climate change, that is an opportunity to change the purpose of advertising.Jonathan Wise, co-founder, Purpose Disruptors Although his work can inspire at first a sense of guilt, Wise frames Purpose Disruptors as a tool of empowerment. To solve a problem, you must first be able to measure it. “This is not about sustainability,” Wise said. “This is about freedom. It’s about giving people the information and the space they need in order to choose what they want to be in service of: unsustainable consumption and its consequences, or a thriving future where they contribute to the benefit of life on Earth.” In fact, Wise takes this logic one step further. Rather than condemn advertising as an agent of climate change, he believes that it is a valuable tool that can and must be part of the solution. ‘We Have to Clean Up Our Act’: Industry Leaders and Critics Discuss Climate at Cannes Lions He offers another parallel, this time to the oil and gas industry. The chief executive of British Petroleum, for example, has said that the industry needs to decouple its skills from their historical outcomes. If BP engineers can drill deep-sea wells in the Gulf of Mexico, could they instead use those skill sets to erect offshore wind farms? Likewise, advertising agencies play a critical role in creating and influencing consumer demand, a superpower they could use to reduce carbon emissions, according to Wise. An agency could, for example, rank businesses by their ability or inability to reduce their carbon emissions by 2030, then create campaigns that transfer desire from high-emission to low-emission sectors. “I am not anti-advertising, and I am not anti-capitalist,” Wise said. “I am pro-responsibility and pro-maturity. If you allow the people in advertising to wake up to their role in climate change, that is an opportunity to change the purpose of advertising.” This story is part of Adweek’s The State of Sustainability digital package, which spotlights climate-focused marketing solutions across the beauty, experiential and media spaces, and examines how an industry that was built to drive consumption is adapting to reduce its impact. Adweek’s 2023 Sustainability Honorees Are Setting Advertising’s Climate Agenda

Sustainability Honors

Advertising Drives Climate Change, and Jonathan Wise Thinks Marketers Should Know

The Purpose Disruptors co-founder, an Adweek 2023 Sustainability Honoree, wants the industry to recognize its role in the crisis

Mark Stenberg

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Mark Stenberg