By: Elma Bašić
Andrea Henao is leading the first ever sustainable advertising agency in the world, promoting exclusively sustainable brands across the globe. She is one of the revolutionary thinkers deciding that 360 Agency Berlin and 360 Agency Europe would promote exclusively sustainable brands and take full responsibility of the brands and products they promote.
At the next Golden Drum Festival that will take place in Portorož on 17 – 18 of October, Andrea will explain what exactly is sustainable advertising (not sustainable communication or green washing) and how to distantiate both antagonist schemes.
MM: What exactly is sustainable advertising and how present is it in our industry today?
Andrea Henao: Sustainable advertising is based on 3 main pillars: First aligning the message with the essence of the brand by promoting exclusively sustainable brands and avoiding green washing. We assess the level of sustainability based on the 3 following criteria: We look at the brand certifications covering their respect of international labour rights, we look at their environmental impact and respect of local environmental laws by looking again into their certifications. And finally, we look at their Corporate social responsibility parameters they have in place in their company to determine if we can work together and promote their brand. This is drastically changing the way advertising works since we select actively the clients we work with.
We would not be able to talk about sustainable advertising without talking about Digital online Privacy that we actively fight for. We believe that the regulation should come from the industry, for this reason we attended meetings at the European Commission to discuss potential regulations. Therefore, when we plan a digital campaign, we avoid being too intrusive, avoid some retargeting technics and instead reaching new customers. We strongly believe that it would benefit the advertising industry to restore trust and respect between the consumers and the brands.
Also, Sustainable advertising is almost inexistent nowadays in the industry, there is since a long time sustainable communication which means agencies delivering a sustainable message regardless of the social or environmental impact of the brand they communicate for. There is indeed a lack of regulation around sustainable communication which is truly needed and would enable to avoid the abuse we can see today.
MM: You decided that 360 Agency Berlin would promote exclusively sustainable brands and would take full responsibility of the brands and products it promotes. How limiting is this decision factor businesswise?
Andrea Henao: It is indeed limiting the financial revenues of the agency meanwhile we prefer to work this way as we find it that at least there is a real alignment between our vision/strategy and actions on a daily basis. Profit will no longer be the only key measurement of success.
MM: Do you envision more sustainable brands being developed in the near future? What are the main factors influencing this development?
Andrea Henao: Of course, and real ones who bring real solutions on the table. We started to create some videos reviewing a few sustainable initiatives that we call the ‘game changers’. We truly believe that this is only the beginning and that they will become more numerous with time. One other indicator that can enable us to forecast this structural change coming is a recent study from the research house Nielsen that have monitored that sustainability criteria are increasingly influencing purchase intention: in 2018 nearly half (48%) of U.S. consumers say they would definitely or probably change their consumption habits to reduce their impact on the environment. Since 2014, these influential shoppers have grown sustainable product sales by nearly 20%. This confirms our prediction that it is only the beginning.
