Photo: Norwegian Seafood Council

France, an important Norwegian salmon market, is first with more climate-friendly campaigns for Norwegian seafood

FRANCE
Tuesday, April 16, 2024, 07:00 (GMT + 9)

The Seafood Council's media campaigns are becoming greener

A large proportion of the Seafood Council's carbon footprint is linked to marketing and PR activities. Be it TV commercials, digital campaigns, posts on social media or advertisements in print media.

Worldwide, the sum of all digital advertising from all companies is estimated to be responsible for the emission of around 60 million tonnes of CO2 in the course of a year . That is more than all of Norway's emissions in 2022.

Now the Seafood Council has started the job of sweeping on its own doorstep.

Last year, the carbon footprint of the salmon campaigns in France was considerably reduced, and this is just the start of a larger change process where sustainability is the focus.

65 percent reduction

In France, sustainability is high on the agenda, and "people and planet" is constantly highlighted in various contexts and at various companies. When the French media agency Iprospect aired a proposal for more sustainable media campaigns, Norwegian Seafood Council envoy in France, Trine Horne, lit on the idea. 

"This was a relatively unknown landscape for me, but we chose to go for the proposal", says Horne. 

With that, France became the first of the Seafood Council's outdoor markets to invest in more climate-friendly media campaigns.

It produced results. Last year's digital and printed media campaigns for Norwegian salmon were carried out with exactly the same quality, but with a much lower CO2 footprint.

"The footprint was reduced by as much as 65 per cent, compared to what it would have been if we had not gone for a greener solution".

In numbers, this corresponds to CO2 emissions going from 29 tonnes to 10 tonnes, i.e. a cut of 19 tonnes of CO2 equivalents. The cut is roughly the same as 193 flights between Oslo and Paris according to SAS's calculator for aircraft emissions , 2,600 steak meals, or almost 100,000 kilometers with a petrol car based on calculations from fårmen.no  - which corresponds to approx. 40 journeys from Oslo to Rome.

Green coding

The Internet is a major contributor to climate emissions, partly because of the power consumption from servers and data transmission and storage. All data such as texts, images and videos on the internet is located somewhere or other, and it requires electricity all the time. And the larger the files and the higher the resolution, the more electricity is used. It explains why digital campaigns, videos and posts in social media lead to emissions of greenhouse gases.

The Seafood Council's media agency in France, iProspect, has reduced the digital climate footprint with what they call "green encoding", or green coding in good Norwegian.

"It will be like putting all the advertising into a washing machine, and getting something cleaner and using less energy when the washing program is finished," explains Trine Horne.

Simply put, it's about everything from the content production itself, file sizes and compression of data to transmission surfaces, storage and targeting. For advertising in printed media, printing methods, paper quality, transport and distribution methods are also part of the accounts.

New quarry work

Digital "washing" or green coding is on many people's lips, but it is still a fairly young industry. There are, for example, several different calculation models for greenhouse gas emissions, and several methods to make the campaigns more climate-friendly.

"For us, this is groundbreaking work, and it is possible that we will use other methods in the future. In any case, we have learned an enormous amount", says Horne, who is proud of what they have achieved with just a little extra effort.

The Seafood Council is now working to find out whether a common method can be used for all countries where Norwegian seafood is marketed. This is according to Camilla Beck, director of marketing at the Norwegian Seafood Council.

"We have started a process to get an overview of what exists of carbon calculators and any standards for measuring the carbon footprint of marketing", she says.

Norway's Seafood Council is in dialogue with several professional circles, both in Norway and internationally. During the year, the Seafood Council will start mapping its own carbon emissions in paid media, for all outdoor markets. A system must then be established for continuous measurement and follow-up, and targets for reducing own emissions must be set.

"But digital sustainability is of course more than just choosing carbon-efficient digital media. Ultimately, it is all about energy use, and all forms of data storage are very relevant in this context", adds Beck.

More measures in the right direction

For the salmon campaigns in France, other measures were also taken to make the marketing more sustainable. Among other things, the recipients were defined even more clearly than is usual, to avoid spending money and electricity on people outside the target group. In addition, "no food waste" was among the criteria, and the mom influencers were not allowed to include their children in the cooking videos.

"These are perhaps small things in the grand scheme of things. But we have faith that 'everyone goes' ", says Trine Horne.

When the seafood service is now planning next year's campaigns in France, of course sustainability and "responsible media buying" are still high on the agenda. Exactly how depends on the Seafood Council's final plans and guidelines for more responsible media campaigns in all outdoor markets.

Source: Norwegian Seafood Council (translated from original in Norwegian)

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