David Cook
Director and Co-Founder
As one of Crowd's Co-Founders, David is shaping the way the agency manages its Carbon Footprint, prioritising eco-friendly practices.
Reducing the environmental impact of campaigns
David Cook • 6 February 2024
As a Student marketing agency, brand activations are a key part of our offering. Students love to be part of an experience and love the engagement that this approach offers. However these activations do pose us, as an agency and the brands we work with a unique challenge - how can we produce these activations in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way?
This isn’t an easy challenge to overcome and we know things aren’t perfect but we are making progress. At Crowd we have a company goal to achieve B-Corp accreditation in the next couple of years and we’ll be placing how we deliver campaigns at the centre of this mission.
Here are our
5 quick and easy wins to help reduce the environmental impact of your student activations:
1. Choose Eco-Friendly Materials:
Over the past 12 months we have seen a rapid uptake of our eco options which can be a simple backdrop made out of cardboard like we have done for Art Fund, all the way to a fully branded eco bathroom as we have created for Lady Garden Foundation. Aside from the obvious benefit of them being kinder to the environment these setups are also hugely impactful from a brand perspective and are always well received by students.
2. Create Reusable and Modular Set Ups:
When designing activations we like to plan ahead and have a focus on reusability. Whilst the campaign messaging may change there are ways to decrease the amount of wastage with removable branding that can be added or removed from the core set. Additionally, creating a modular installation as we have done for Springpod is also a great way to ensure that the installation can fit any venue and can be dismantled and easily stored for re-use.
3. Consider Eco Merchandise:
The impact of our campaigns aren't condensed to just the work that we do, it's expanded out through a further supply chain which needs to be considered. This is why our preferred merchandise supplier is B-Corp accredited and have thoroughly audited their supply chain giving us assurance that the items we supply are ethically sourced. We've heard directly from students that there's nothing more they hate than wasteful merchandise, it's an important one from them personally.
4. Use digital channels to reduce paper waste:
Flyers and marketing collateral have been a staple part of brand activations for decades. However, flyer wastage has been steadily increasing over the past few years. One of the reasons for this could be the fact that students are more wary of the environmental impact they have and don't want the responsibility of recycling them. What we would suggest is using digital platforms for the post activation follow up. A really simple approach is to get students to sign up for an email receipt via a QR code, or as a step further for trip.com we have been diverting students to a chatbot within WhatsApp which is delivering high quality post activation engagement.
5. Carbon offset:
Crowd can help you calculate the carbon footprint of the activation and broker investment in offsetting carbon to balance out the environmental impact of your student campaign.
We hope these 5 quick steps will trigger some ideas when your planning your student strategy for the year.
If you would like to hear more about making your campaign eco drop us a line.
