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Unfortunately, greenwashing is nothing new. But it’s been under the microscope more and more these days. Case in point: One marketing industry org is bringing together different stakeholders to discuss the topic and push for change this month.
The Institute for Advertising Ethics—a nonprofit educational foundation that recently partnered with Havas to provide staff and clients access to an ad ethics certification course—is hosting not one but two events on greenwashing.
- On October 19, the first event will consist of an online symposium in which “a diverse panel of distinguished experts from government, academia, media, and the advertising industry” will chat about avoiding greenwashing, as well as the risks of it.
- The institute claims it’s a first for the industry.
- Its organizers plan to host another event in December based on the symposium’s findings, according to MediaPost.
Big picture: The news is the latest sign that advertisers are increasingly being held to account for their role in the climate crisis. It comes weeks after Interpublic Group and its agencies (in what it also called “a first for the industry”) said they would review the “climate impacts of prospective clients…in the oil, energy, and utility sectors” before taking them on.
It also comes after the House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing last month on how PR firms have contributed to climate misinformation. One of the witnesses from the hearing, Generous Films founder and CEO Christine Arena, is set to speak at the Institute for Advertising Ethics’ event in October.
+1: On Thursday, John Osborn, former CEO of OMD US, was appointed to lead the US division of Ad Zero Network, an organization focused on reducing “the carbon impact of developing, producing, and running advertising to real net zero by 2030.”—PB