The climate isn’t someone else’s brief
Opinion
The cumulative effect of thousands of briefs making marginally better choices could ultimately prove more powerful than a handful of purpose campaigns, writes Chris Herbert-Lo.
So far this summer’s heatwaves have closed schools, cut train schedules, forced hosepipe bans, set wildfires ripping across the countryside, decimated crops and led to 2,700 excess deaths. It’s strange then to think that 2026 is likely to be the coolest summer for the rest of our lives. Because all the data points towards it only getting hotter from here.
It’s easy to feel powerless in the face of events with such global scale. After all, we’re just marketing and comms people, not the heads of government or oil funds.
Yes, there are things we can do within our own businesses (thanks to a fantastic team of Ecostars, the7stars is an Accelerator-level partner for Ad Net Zero and, earlier this year, had its science-based targets verified). But beyond this, there are a couple of reasons why we should be paying greater attention to the changing climate:
It is sort of our job
The job of a marketer, comms planner or strategist is to improve the chances of long-term brand growth. To do so means identifying risks ahead of time and what may be required to overcome them. There isn’t a category of products on earth that won’t be affected by climate change in some way. The OBR estimates that climate change could cut GDP by 3% to 4% by 2050.
Sometimes the impact will be direct, such as a travel company adapting to different holiday seasons or a clothing retailer redesigning for hotter temperatures. Often the effects will be indirect. Insurance becomes more expensive. Household budgets tighten. People’s routines shift towards cooler hours of the day. Summer events become less predictable.
A look at the clients we have at the7stars reveals a private healthcare brand that may need to adapt to a world with more heat-induced illness and death. Food brands which must adapt to less reliable harvests, and food scarcity. Cosmetics brands whose products may one day need to be reformulated for the heat.
Understanding how people’s lives are changing is part of our job; the climate is simply becoming one of the biggest forces driving that change.
Often, it’s not so much about anticipating changes coming down the road as about acknowledging those already taking place. Just take a look at the growing number of duct pipes from portable AC units that hang from windows on hot days. Perhaps something that is itself exacerbated by increased numbers working from home (TfL data shows tube journeys fell by up to 17% during the June heatwave, whilst bus journeys fell by up to 14%).
Each of us must understand what a changing climate means for consumers’ needs, habits, and anxieties.
Advertising can shape societal norms
Whilst anticipating changes in behaviour is worthwhile, the next four years are also crucial for shaping behaviour.
2030 is a crucial milestone in the fight against climate change, representing the deadline by which the world must have made meaningful progress. If we fail to make sufficient progress by then, the pathway to a safer climate becomes harder and less certain.
Advertising can play a role in this. Because it can both sustain and challenge societal norms.
If advertising can create demand and social acceptance for multiple brands of water in plastic bottles despite perfectly drinkable water coming out of the tap, then surely it can also help make more sustainable behaviours feel attractive and socially expected.
Ad Net Zero is seeking to harness that influence with the Any Brief Counts initiative.
Rather than treating sustainability as a specialist discipline or something reserved for purpose-led campaigns, it encourages the industry to consider whether every brief contains an opportunity, however small, to encourage more sustainable behaviours or to challenge outdated social norms.
It doesn’t mean turning every campaign into an environmental campaign or asking brands to stray beyond their credibility. It’s about planners, creatives and advertisers asking themselves if there is anything a piece of communication could do that leaves people, or the planet, slightly better off than before.
That might mean normalising repair over replacement, celebrating lower-carbon choices, reducing waste, or simply avoiding the reinforcement of behaviours that no longer serve society.
The cumulative effect of thousands of briefs making marginally better choices could ultimately prove more powerful than a handful of purpose campaigns.
It was never ‘someone else’s problem’
The next decade will reshape people’s lives, how we all live and what we spend our money on. The question isn’t whether our industry will be affected by climate change; chances are that in many ways and in many places it already has been. The question is whether we’ll simply seek to anticipate and respond to those changes, or use the tools we have to try to steer toward a better direction of travel.
The climate isn’t someone else’s problem, and it isn’t someone else’s brief.
Chris Herbert-Lo is a strategy partner at the7stars. Read his new monthly column for The Media Leader on the first Tuesday of each month.