Less than 10% of UK TV adverts have included an environmental message over the last three years, despite mounting public calls for climate action within advertising.
Revealed by ‘The Greenprint’, a report compiled by ITV, System1 and behavioural scientist Richard Shotton, 1,000 randomly selected adverts from the last three years were analysed to see whether they contained environmental messaging and how this was communicated.
It key findings were that only 8% of the ads surveyed included such messaging, even though 80% of the UK population is concerned about climate change, whilst ‘dull’ creatives were also found to be hampering efforts – with environmentally-driven ads failing to connect strongly with audiences.
“Effective environmental narratives in advertising play a vital role in inspiring long-term change. The Greenprint serves as a guide on how to captivate audiences and encourage them to step up to the climate challenge,” System1 chief customer officer, Jon Evans said.
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“In it, we explore the opportunity that effective environmental advertising presents, where the benefits are tangible for our planet, consumers, and brands themselves.”
Surprisingly, the ads were also revealed to be overwhelmingly focused on areas of minor concern, with waste reduction proving the most heavily-featured issue despite only ranking 60th in terms of importance for reducing carbon emissions.
Having compiled its findings, The Greenprint has released a set of actionable best practice guidelines to help advertisers facilitate more engaging and effective sustainable advertising, which included a focus on hope over fear; targeted, subtle messaging; story-telling over statistics and prioritising the ‘right messenger’.
ITV director of client strategy and planning, Kate Waters added: “ITV reflects and influences culture both through our programming and the advertising we carry. As such, we can play an important role in helping the nation move faster towards a lower-carbon economy and part of our commitment to doing that is to help advertisers create advertising that works hard to drive the change we need.”
