This ecosystem is unique in the sector; it is constantly updated to take into account contextual and professional changes, best practices recommended by the inter-professional bodies, regulatory changes to be anticipated, reference to new Groupe or external tools, and team progress.
France has been an excellent pilot to adapt and roll out this program in other countries, the aim being to make it available to all teams. More than 4,500 employees were trained and 900 people on the client side, adopting a pragmatic approach.
b) The proprietary tool A.L.I.C.E. (Advertising Limiting Impacts & Carbon Emissions)
To determine the carbon emissions of goods and services, the first and simplest option is to apply emission factors to the total amount of purchases made, these emissions factors being public and international, and by category of products and services. The second option is to measure the impact of the components of a product or service as closely as possible. This has been Publicis Groupe’s commitment since 2017, with the creation of A.L.I.C.E. Since the end of 2019, the agencies have been using this ad hoc calculation tool, developed and monitored by Bureau Veritas for calculation methodologies aligned with the GHG Protocol, and for updating emissions factors (emissions factors taken from the IEA – International Energy Agency; DEFRA – Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the United Kingdom; ADEME – Ecological Transition Agency in France; EPA – Environmental Protection Agency in the United States, etc.). A.L.I.C.E. is a tool for the Company’s Climate objectives, for clients to reduce the impacts of our products and services. A.L.I.C.E. covers all Groupe business lines: Creative, Production, Media, Events, Data and DBT (Digital Business Transformation), and makes it possible to respond to a request from clients on the calculation of the carbon impact of their marketing and communication activities.
A.L.I.C.E. has already made it possible to reduce the impacts of the campaigns and projects that have been assessed, thanks to the upstream reflection that is undertaken well before measuring the impacts. The measurement also identifies easy-to-action levers to reduce impacts by 20-25%. For example, reducing the size of visuals and/or video formats can generate more than 50% savings on electricity consumption. The agency has thus established new production standards to maintain visual quality and minimize these energy consumption impacts.
The objective is to sharpen everyone’s reflexes to reduce all environmental impacts. A.L.I.C.E. is an open system, making it possible to interface with other internal tools such as Razoscan, built with the support of Green IT and Epsilon’s Digilab. In 2022, A.L.I.C.E. hosted two APIs with experts in the measurement of media-related impacts, Impact + and Scope3, making it possible to refine the calculations of digital impacts, particularly those related to programming.
A.L.I.C.E.’s governance is the responsibility of the Groupe’s CSR Department, with a cross-functional project group of around twenty employees from different business lines and countries actively participating in A.L.I.C.E.’s improvements and developments. Bureau Veritas acts as a trusted third party and ensures compliance with the methodological framework by assessing each improvement project. In 2022, a critical scientific review was conducted by an external third party, Resilio Solutions, based in Lausanne, in order to refine the measurement of digital impacts, particularly for calculations related to servers and data centers. A presentation methodological document is publicly available on the Groupe’s website in the CSR section of the Responsible Marketing section. In 2023, a Commission of experts met to discuss the next steps in the development of the tool, given the more general changes in the measurement of environmental impacts. In 2024, work focused on methodological updates and preparing to integrate the GMSF framework, developed within Ad Net Zero, to measure the impact of media coverage (all types of media).
c) Once And For All Coalition: for stronger inclusion
Launched in 2021 at the initiative of Publicis Media US, in 2023, this coalition brought together more than 80 companies, including clients/brands and media. The common objective is to build long-term relationships with media that address very granular audiences. Clients thus increased their investments with these media by +50%.
This program has enabled the Groupe to develop analysis tools from the media planning stage and for media purchasing, including the Inclusive Buying Protocol (IBP). This tool is unique in the market and makes it possible to align the objectives of a communication campaign with the demographics of the brand’s potential customers. This tool ensures better coverage of all target population segments, corrects any bias resulting from automated purchasing mechanisms, such as with programmatic advertising, and complements the efficiency of a campaign. The IBP, which uses a more granular approach to the audiences sought, has been deployed in the various Publicis Media tools in the United States.
Since 2021, through its dedicated Inclusion Investment Funds, the Groupe will have invested USD 35 million in the creation of 32 projects, representing 400+ hours of content, alone generating more than 500 million additional views.
