Céline Craipeau, vice president of sustainability at Jellyfish, is pioneering a greener future by re-evaluating business operations, media planning, and consumer engagement.
Sustainability is a core focus for us at Jellyfish. But while committing to this mission is one thing, actually acting on it is quite another. So for the past few years, we've become increasingly passionate about how we show up and serve others with our sustainable principles — from our in-house operations to how we work with clients.
As the sustainability lead at Jellyfish, my position is anchored by three primary goals. The first is to lower carbon emissions across our global operations. The second is to diminish the CO2 footprint of our client projects, spanning paid media, creative endeavours, and data management. And, finally, we aim to redefine our role as digital marketers by promoting sustainable consumption behaviours among the audiences we engage and the services we provide.
The impact of rethinking our media planning
A 2024 report by IAB Europe revealed that 64% of companies agree CO2 impact is the most important aspect of sustainability in digital advertising — up from 58% in 2023. As such, conversations around climate change within the advertising industry are increasingly shifting towards ways to reduce these emissions.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does an exemplary job of documenting the issue, offering invaluable insights into the necessary actions to address this global challenge. And we as marketers can make a significant impact by rethinking how we plan our media.
Where media performance has previously been seen at odds with sustainability, making CO2 emissions a core KPI can actually boost business performance.
Brands are becoming increasingly aware of this. Over the past 18 months, we have received a growing number of enquiries from clients about how to enhance their sustainability practices. They’re gearing up for what’s next, and that’s not 10 years down the line — it’s in the immediate future, especially considering the rapid evolution of digital marketing.
How we’re driving more sustainable practices
To bring sustainability and brand performance goals together, Jellyfish has embarked on an ambitious programme to reduce CO2 emissions across the entire value chain. By 2030, we aim to implement a carbon budget alongside a financial one for projects. This strategy not only promotes accountability for all parties but also ensures that the environmental impacts of our marketing efforts are front and centre in our decision-making.
Specifically, we built a reporting model to help identify opportunities for carbon reduction in paid media. This helps us show our clients that it’s the little things that add up — from making creative assets lighter by decreasing their brightness or enabling dark mode, to simplifying website structures and reducing load times.
We then mapped out the markets, channels, and formats we needed to focus on first for the most impact. More than 50% of our workforce have undergone training to enhance their understanding of the not-so-obvious repercussions of climate change and how digital marketing is contributing to it. We’ve also built a dedicated team of sustainability experts who can now conduct comprehensive carbon performance evaluations for clients and recommend strategies to effectively reduce CO2 emissions.
Working with clients
For our healthcare client, Sanofi Consumer Healthcare, we designed and built a bespoke dashboard to measure media carbon metrics for their digital media campaigns across more than 35 markets and 8 marketing channels. This enabled us to do things like monitoring the share of impressions delivered on Made-For-Advertising websites, which generally emit higher levels of CO2 than other platforms, and share insights on carbon heavy domains. Having access to these insights makes it easier for them to work towards their end goal of reducing media carbon by optimising against it in a scalable way.
We’ve also harnessed the automation capabilities of custom bidding in DV360 to track media and environmental performance alongside each other, and optimise towards both. Heineken France was one of our first clients to implement this feature last year. Combined with a product we’ve developed at Jellyfish called ‘J+Bidding for Climate’, it helped them achieve a double-digit percentage decrease in estimated carbon emissions related to its media activities, all while improving media performance.
Setting KPIs for future success
Great transformation takes great education, and we’ve added sustainability as a KPI on client briefs to help influence change. While this can make things more complex, it’s crucial for everyone involved in campaigns — from the clients to the agencies — to understand the importance of measuring carbon emissions across the media ecosystem. We consistently emphasise that sustainability and business performance are not in conflict and anticipate they will become increasingly aligned in the future.
I’ve been very inspired by the work of cable company Nexans, who underwent a transformative shift in its business management practices to put sustainability front and centre of its strategy. Focusing on value rather than volume, they reassessed each line of their business based on profit and carbon intensity. As a result, they went from 17K to 4K customers and reduced their product offering by 40%, boosting profitability by 28% and bringing CO2 emissions down by 28%. It’s a great example of how integrating sustainability into the core business strategy inherently impacts every part of the organisation.
Becoming a force for positive change
As part of our sustainability efforts, we’ve received great feedback from clients, who are keen to continue measuring their impact and reducing CO2 emissions. This gives me so much hope.
Where media performance has previously been seen at odds with sustainability, making CO2 emissions a core KPI can actually boost business performance. Our efforts to reconcile sustainable practices and brand performance has already shown positive results for our clients, and we’re only getting started.
While marketers don’t always have the power to change how business is done or how products are made, they can be a force for positive change for future generations. For every CO2 emission you’ve saved, you’re making a difference.
