GroupM to give clients ESG ratings for all media activity

GroupM is aiming to provide clients with a holistic approach to environmental, social and corporate governance – offering everything from education and execution to measurement and improvement – through an exclusive partnership with two independent ESG specialists.

The partnership combines Legacy Media’s ESG data solutions with Right Thing Media’s ESG insights to create one tailored solution for GroupM’s clients that is compatible with the group’s fundamental sustainability efforts.

The solution represents the start of a long-term plan, the first step of which is for an organisation-wide education programme to empower internal teams and clients on how to understand, action, and measure those insights.
The aim for this partnership is to leverage the data for GroupM to incorporate ESG ratings and insights into its future media planning and buying processes.

This partnership, exclusive to GroupM, will offer both ESG data, insights and education and comes as a result of ongoing work between GroupM, Legacy and Right Thing Media over the past 12 months.

The launch aligns with GroupM’s Responsible Investment Framework, launched in 2021 signalling a new media era where scale serves clients through a commitment to making advertising work better for people.

Sustainability is one of GroupM’s core five pillars of the Framework, and includes other such initiatives and tools like its per-campaign carbon calculator and its global framework for media decarbonisation – all in effort of GroupM’s commitment to decarbonise its media supply chain by 2030.

Legacy Media works with brands, media companies and agencies to improve ESG quality for the global media industry, using aggregated ESG market leading data to allocate ratings to every global media supplier and to understand the efficiency of investment.

Right Thing sources independently verified ESG insights and data which helps brands, agencies, and media partners to deliver a more responsible and sustainable media supply chain investment by viewing their strategies through an ESG lens.

Legacy’s ESG data and Right Thing’s ESG Insights will be integrated into GroupM’s current data tech stack and will be easily accessible to GroupM’s clients and media partners.

Right Thing Media will then support a comprehensive education programme to empower GroupM’s planning teams and leads with the knowledge and consultancy to manage client conversations around ESG.

GroupM Investment managing director Carl Nawagamuwa said: “ This partnership has come about as a result of GroupM’s ongoing commitment to finding new ways to innovate and build sustainability into our organisation.

“We see this as one critically important step on a complex journey to improve holistic delivery towards decarbonisation. We recognise that education and understanding is our first port of call, and believe the potential to integrate ESG into our day-to-day planning and buying will have transformational impact for our clients.”