Greenwashing Is Everywhere. This New Training Could Help

A new training and certification program from the nonprofit Institute for Advertising Ethics aims to guard against industry greenwashing—in exactly the forms that it exists today. The online course, Green Shield, which is free to take and can be completed in less than one hour, is the first ad-industry-focused training to incorporate social science research on climate-related communications. With input from academics, agencies, brands, activists and regulators, it focuses on the concepts underpinning modern greenwashing, such as paltering, overindexing and astroturfing. Greenhushing Morphs to Green Silence Ahead of Election Season While numerous climate initiatives exist within the ad industry, what has been missing is "a single universal framework [with] scientific consensus that people could use to check themselves and protect themselves," said Andrew Susman, president of the IAE. "What we've tried to do is to make that science accessible to the professionals who are making the decisions." This week, Susman gave a presentation on the IAE's general certification—a broader ethics-focused course that includes Green Shield—to 100 of Procter & Gamble's agencies and external business partners, a majority of which expressed interest, he said. As more governments consider regulations around greenwashing and climate litigation ramps up in the U.S., the legal risks of greenwashing are only expected to increase and likely extend to brands' agency partners. Modern greenwashing isn't just climate denial Over four modules, the course highlights three main categories of greenwashing: factual omissions, factual distortions and denial. The basis for the categories is drawn from academic research stemming from the Climate Social Science Network at Brown University and the work of Melissa Aronczyk, media studies professor at Rutgers University. While the course content was developed by the IAE, it worked with a wide range of advisors with representation from the Better Business Bureau, Omnicom, Havas, MasterCard, Microsoft and P&G, as well as advertising lawyer Jeff Greenbaum and former Federal Trade Commission employees. The material covers tactics regularly used by brands and a few specific instances in which ads were banned by the U.K.'s Advertising Standards Authority. For example, HSBC ads claiming that the bank was helping clients transition to net zero and planting trees to capture carbon were banned by the ASA for omitting the fact that the bank is a significant funder of fossil fuel projects. A series of airline ads from Air France-KLM, Etihad Airways and Lufthansa from late 2023 was also highlighted for misleading consumers about the true impact of their operations—another example of factual omissions. "I would not be surprised to see lots of companies start to say, 'If you're creating advertising for us, we want to be certified,'" said Greenbaum, managing partner at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz. "We want you to have a basic understanding of how greenwashing can occur." Nominations Are Open for ADWEEK's 2024 Sustainability Stars Within each category of greenwashing are also more specific descriptions of the tactics used. Overindexing, for example, is a type of factual omission that describes when a company focuses its marketing on a very small percentage of its overall business—like oil companies creating major ad campaigns around algae-based fuel—projects that constituted a tiny fraction of their budgets and were ultimately canceled. Paltering, a type of factual distortion, happens when a company uses phrases that are "based on selective truths, but that end up suggesting something that on balance is not true and not verified by science," explains the IAE Charter for Greenwash Prevention, released in tandem with the Green Shield training. Examples of paltering language include phrases like "cleaner burning," "eco-friendly" or "climate-conscious," the course explains. 'It's a matter of time' Founded in 2021 by Wally Snyder, Linda Thomas Brooks and Susman, the IAE serves a purely educational purpose within the industry. While trade groups like the 4As, the Association of National Advertisers and others can lobby and advocate for their members in the political realm, the IAE's 501(c)3 nonprofit status prevents it from engaging in those activities. The group released the first ethics training for advertising, marketing and communications professionals in March 2022. "It's a matter of time before agencies are named as third parties within some of those suits," said Christine Arena, former executive vice president at Edelman and founder of social impact production company Generous Films, pointing to precedent in other harmful industries like tobacco and opioids, where agencies were held liable for harmful client work. "We're educating people on all of the mistakes that fossil fuel companies make in their ads," Arena explained. "We're putting the agencies that represent them in a position where they have to acknowledge these areas. That will change the dynamics because they can't claim ignorance."

Sustainability News

Science-Backed Training Helps the Ad Industry Avoid Greenwashing

This week, the course was delivered to 100 of P&G's agencies and external business partners

Kathryn Lundstrom

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Kathryn Lundstrom