Vodafone rings changes to cut marketing CO2 footprint

Vodafone is hailing a major breakthrough in the fight aganst climate change after revealing it has reduced the carbon footprint of its media and advertising activities by more than a third across 13 markets, over the past 12 months.

The move follows the launch of the mobile giant’s Sustainable Media Programme in October 2022, designed to deliver emission reductions across Vodafone’s global media and advertising activities. It supports Vodafone’s ambition of halving greenhouse gas emissions in its value chain by 2030 and achieving net zero by 2040.

In partnership with marketing and ad agency Dentsu and carbon management software provider Cozero, Vodafone measured the climate impact of its digital and traditional media activities across 13 channels in 13 markets during 2023.

Media spend was analysed from cinema and TV, magazines, and newspapers, to billboards and digital channels including social, video and search. Vodafone was able to quantify around 85% of its overall media-related activities to establish a GHG emissions baseline for those activities for calendar year 2023 of 16,958 tCO2e, the equivalent of around 3,800 round trip flights between London and Cape Town.

Vodafone was able to reduce the carbon impact of its media and advertising from 7,311.56 tCO2e in Q3 FY23 to 4,855.27 tCO2e in Q3 FY24, a 34% decrease of 2,456 tCO2e.

The analysis also looked at the emissions generated by an individual advertising ‘impact’ – the opportunity for an ad impression to be seen or heard by a person across a range of channels.

This found that cinema and outdoor dgital out of home were the most energy intensive channels overall when considering their emissions per unit of impact. Although traditional TV emits the most emissions overall for Vodafone, it is one of the most efficient channels in terms of emissions per unit of impact.

Vodafone group director of brand and media Anne Stilling said: “Vodafone has ambitious targets to achieve net zero across its entire value chain by 2040. Our industry-leading Sustainable Media Programme will play a key role in mitigating our Scope 3 emissions through ongoing benchmarking and improving the carbon impact of our advertising and media activities.

“By partnering with organisations like the World Federation of Advertisers to share our experience, Vodafone can also help the wider advertising industry develop and implement consistent standards to measure and reduce media carbon footprints.”