4.1.2.3 Opportunities related to the fight against global warming
74% of the Groupe’s Top 100 Clients have an SBTi trajectory (public information items), and 96% of the same Top 100 made public commitments to reduce their environmental impacts.
The ecological transition has already been a reality for several years: clients ask their agencies not only to measure the impact of their marketing and communication actions but also to identify solutions to reduce their carbon footprint. The Groupe supports its clients in their own ecological transformation, establishing partnerships with specialized third parties, including startups, or with expert organizations that can help implement operational changes.
In addition to proprietary tools such as A.L.I.C.E. (see Section 4.1.5), climate issues are also an opportunity for innovation in terms of new services to be offered to clients. The Groupe relies on the following levers:
- a specific request in terms of support for clients and their marketing related to their transformation towards more sustainable products, less impactful and adapted to changes in consumer behavior (environmental trade‑off criteria, use of the circular economy, privileged proximity, etc.). Consumer expectations are heightened in terms of traceability, transparency and truthfulness;
- the Company’s ability to innovate and help clients reduce their own emissions, particularly those related to their marketing and communication, through adapted solutions, working with partners and suppliers committed and aligned behind these same carbon emissions reduction imperatives to achieve Net Zero. The Publicis approach is collaborative, resulting in various tools or services built with the help of partners and third‑party experts.
Several Groupe activities have begun this shift in recent years and this is reflected in various initiatives, including the following examples:
- in France, since 2019, the #NIBI program (No Impact for Big Impact) is a global approach with the training of employees as a prerequisite, starting from the client brief until the final implementation of communication actions, all measured with A.L.I.C.E., by involving suppliers and partners in order to achieve the expected objectives together but with the lowest possible environmental impact. #NIBI invites each business line to rethink its processes, invent new, more efficient approaches and think outside the box. This French program serves as an inspiration for other countries;
- A.L.I.C.E. (Advertising Limiting Impacts & Carbon Emissions) is a proprietary carbon calculator created in 2017, used for more than 250 clients in 50 countries to measure the carbon footprint of projects and reduce their environmental impacts. In the United States, the United Kingdom, Poland and Canada, Media teams have integrated A.L.I.C.E. measures into their tools such as Growth.OS or PMX, or Lighthouse. This approach makes it possible to provide clients with a tailor‑made proposal, integrating performance and carbon footprint, even if all market players are not yet at the same maturity level. Work is underway to integrate the measurement of the use of generative AI, in particular conversational use. The calculation methodology is provided by Bureau Veritas as an independent expert;
- in the United States, Publicis Media has prepared its Publicis Lighthouse dashboard which incorporates six pillars of the campaign’s performance analysis. One of these pillars is based on the calculation of carbon emissions, via A.L.I.C.E. or with very detailed additional analyses, and another pillar includes elements on the inclusiveness of the campaign based on the privileged minority groups (when the local context allows the monitoring of these indicators);
- in France, Razorfish (digital agency) launched a solution at the start of 2022 called Razoscan in partnership with Green IT and their EcoIndex algorithm to generate an eco‑score of the key journeys of a website, with a score ranging from A to G. The aim is for the agency’s sites to obtain the best ratings, guaranteeing an optimized user experience that consumes less energy. For the past two years, the use of Razoscan has been incorporated into all technological design and manufacturing processes for customer digital experiences, and is used to continuously analyze the environmental footprint of client sites. The objective is to reduce this footprint, to remain at the best level (A or B) without compromising the user experience;
- against this backdrop, the Digital Eco‑design Barometer created by Razorfish and Green IT to measure trends in the environmental footprint of websites in France, in its second edition in 2023, found that the eco‑score of CAC 40 corporate websites had improved by six points in 2023, with an average score of D. However, the environmental maturity of e‑commerce sites has not improved sufficiently quickly;
- at the same time, Publicis Sapient France launched e‑Footprint, the first open‑source project to model the impact of manufacturing and energy consumed by complex digital systems. The special feature of this model is that it is used upstream of the project, right from the client's briefing and the sketch of an initial solution, as modeling helps to choose the best practices for the project. This anticipation makes it possible to obtain orders of magnitude for energy consumption and to assess the environmental impact of digital technology. Taking into account these improvements to be made from the design phase makes it possible to truly eco‑design the entire project. e‑Footprint was made with the help of the Boavizta association. This tool is currently presented in Python code (the API will be available in 2024) and is available as open source at https://github.com/publicissapient-france/e-footprint.The tool takes into account the impacts of the use of a chatbot (online conversation robot) from generative AI.
