How the media industry can change to embrace B Corp

By David Price, Managing Director, The Grove Media

The UK needs to affect huge change if we are to get even close to meeting our 2030 net zero targets. So it’s incumbent upon all businesses to do everything they can to become more sustainable in the way they operate.

B Corp certification is a key way of driving essential change within an organisation. And it extends beyond environmental impact to other important areas of social, inclusive and equitable practice.

To date, the B Corp movement has been very much driven by SMEs. This isn’t surprising. SMEs are agile and flexible and so more accessible to adapting and adopting new working practices.

The Grove Media became B Corp certificated earlier this year and we are one of the very few media agencies in the UK to do so.

It is harder for larger media companies to gain certification, but it’s not impossible. If the likes of Patagonia can do it, so can the media industry.

And frankly, the recent fallout surrounding Havas’ controversial relationship with Shell, and its subsequent loss of B Corp status, really highlights the issues the industry has with its sustainability credentials.

So, it was with a strong sense of the need for positive action, that The Grove Media attended the recent B Corp event ‘Louder than words’.

And I believe it provided some clear, important insights into how the UK media industry might be able to overcome some of the challenges of certification and address some of the key areas of change that B Corp is looking to bring about.

To become a certified B Corp, a company must undergo a rigorous assessment process that evaluates business performance across five key impact areas: workers, community, environment, governance and customers.

It sounds daunting, but having gone through certification – and listening to some of the speakers at ‘Louder than Words’ – it’s clear that most agencies will already have strategies in place which are B Corp-ready.

These include: being a Living Wage employer, actively volunteering, ESG policies central to their business models, supporting the IPA’s People First initiative, and working with brands and suppliers with credible sustainability credentials.

And the industry is actively tackling perhaps its biggest sustainability issue, reducing digital emissions and the Ad Net Zero initiative has an ambitious decarbonisation plan.

The key for the media industry is to look and act beyond the things that are currently holding them back, notably, commercial targets, bureaucracy, unwieldy operating structures and a lack of motivation.

Many agencies already have the prerequisites to score highly in the impact assessment test and achieving B Corp status will help build our industry’s sustainability credentials.

A key sustainability focus of B Corp certification is the environment – how a business works towards a more sustainable and regenerative planet.

In this context, one of the best sessions at ‘Louder than Words’ was on the Climate Scenario Analysis – a method used to develop understanding of the implications of climate change on a business and to aid longer term strategic thinking about the risks and opportunities.

The analysis uses a scoring system which ranks each event by ‘unlikely’, ‘fairly likely’ and ‘highly likely”, helping a business to plan accordingly.

But analysis is only the start point –  action needs to be taken if businesses are to reduce their environmental impact.

Key areas of change include increasing energy efficiency, using more renewable energy, making sure supply chains are more climate-friendly and the creation of services that emit less carbon emissions.

And it’s this change that agencies – and many other businesses – understandably find so hard. A recurring theme of the sessions I attended was that change needs to start from within a company and as part of their culture.

Change can take lots of forms for a media agency, but one area that is focused on positive action is helping the advertising industry to reduce digital emissions.

Media agencies are the gate keepers of the media supply chain, so we should be actively looking for less carbon heavy solutions across all media channels and formats, eg eliminating carbon heavy websites and formats from programmatic buys.

We need to move away from the race for low-cost digital inventory and use our influence with clients to effect positive change.

Across most industries, a lot still needs to be done to convince businesses of the need to change in order meet climate goals while maintaining a successful business.

BLab is focused on driving collaborative efforts to convince business that there are new and innovative ways of producing goods and services that are more beneficial to us and our planet.

One of these areas of innovation is rethinking the office space. This isn’t just about looking for more environmentally friendly options is also about improving staff wellbeing.

Right now there is a growing movement back to the physical office for the majority of the working week. While there are valid reasons for this, I believe agencies should reconsider as, more often than not, traditional offices are the root cause of many of the issues we are trying solve.

Hybrid/agile working is generally viewed as a positive shift for employees and ultimately, businesses.

Of course, hybrid working models don’t come without risks and bring their own unique challenges, particularly in terms of how a climate change event may impact a business’s ability to keep functioning.

Moving to hybrid working requires specific risk assessment and careful change management.

Understanding risk, planning and undergoing change management is at the heart of what the media industry needs to do to embrace the challenges of B Corp.

But it’s more than just a tick boxing exercise. Once change has been introduced, you have to continue to behave and act as a B Corp certified business, from the top down and the inside out. This was one of the most striking things about the other businesses that we met at ‘Louder than Words’.

They all live and breathe B Corp, each and every day. This type of behavioural change won’t be easy for the media industry.

But with many agencies already having the prerequisites to score highly in B Corp’s impact assessment, change is most definitely possible.

This article originally appeared in Mediashotz link below

https://mediashotz.co.uk/how-the-media-industry-can-change-to-embrace-b-corp