Reporter’s Notebook: 4As Sustainability Summit

WPP CEO Mark Read offered some eye-opening numbers today on the industry’s carbon footprint and the opportunity to reduce it.

Read, speaking at the 4As virtual Sustainability Summit, noted that pre-covid, the company would do an estimated 1,500 on-location advertising commercial shoots around the world each year. That’s a lot of travel by multiple parties including agency people, client representatives, production teams and more.

But here’s the kicker: 90% of the footage shot is never used, Read said. Assuming most advertising agencies work in similar ways on commercial production, that’s a lot of carbon usage, most of it completely wasted.

Read more in MediaPost here.