Here at Flight Feather, we talk a lot about doing Paid Media the right way. For us, that’s always meant delivering the most effective work possible for our clients; campaigns that genuinely move the needle in a meaningful commercial way.
But ‘the Right Way’ stretches beyond that. It also means taking responsibility for the wider impact of that work.
So each year, we come back to a simple question: what is the wider impact of the work we do and what are we going to do about it?
Understanding our total impact
As we do every year, we’ve completed a robust carbon assessment across Scopes 1, 2 and 3 for the last financial year. This covers everything from our direct operations and energy use through to the wider impact of our supply chain and client media activity.
The headline number came in at 271.34 tCO2e – more than 270 tonnes of carbon generated through our operations and the campaigns we deliver.
But that headline number only tells part of the story. What really matters is where those emissions come from.
Where emissions really come from
Like most media agencies, our footprint isn’t driven by office energy usage or team commuting. It sits overwhelmingly within Scope 3, specifically, within the media activity we plan, buy and optimise on behalf of our clients. In simple terms, the biggest environmental impact of our business isn’t how we work, it’s the campaigns we run.
That leads to a fairly unavoidable conclusion. If we want to reduce our footprint in a meaningful way, we don’t start with marginal operational gains, although we continue to evolve our internal policies and ways of working to minimise impact wherever possible, we start with the media itself.
As a proud B Corp, this is now the third year in a row that we’ve measured our emissions across all scopes and committed to offsetting 100% of what we produce. That remains an important part of taking responsibility, but it’s not the end goal. It’s the baseline.
A more deliberate approach to reduction
In the spirit of always wanting to do better, we’re now committing to a more systematic approach to reducing our impact. Offsetting addresses the impact we’ve already made, but for this year and beyond, with support from our carbon reduction partners, Seeding, we’re developing an Emissions Reduction Plan to create a more deliberate and structured approach to reduction, as well as offsetting.
Rather than trying to improve everything at once, we’re focusing on where we can make the biggest difference, prioritising areas of highest activity and scale, where small improvements can lead to meaningful reductions in overall emissions.
In practice, that means reducing wasted impressions, improving targeting accuracy, and optimising how creative is delivered. It includes lighter file sizes, more efficient formats, and more considered production choices, including exploring options such as recycled materials where appropriate. None of this comes at the expense of performance, in many cases, it improves it.
We’re also looking beyond our own four walls. A significant proportion of emissions sit within our supply chains, production processes and platform ecosystems. That means working more closely with partners, asking better questions around transparency, and pushing for improvements across the wider system we operate in.
What success looks like
The ambition is clear, even if the path isn’t always simple. Our current roadmap targets a reduction of around 46% in emissions by 2031. But success isn’t just about hitting a number. It’s about shifting behaviour internally, with our partners, and with our clients.
Because while we don’t control every source of emissions, we do influence a significant portion of them.
From accountability to action
We’ll continue to measure. We’ll continue to offset. But more importantly, we strive to reduce.
Not because we expect to get everything right immediately, but because the goal isn’t perfection, it’s progress. Being better than we were last year, and better again the year after that.
If the first phase of responsible business was about awareness, and the second was about accountability, then this next phase is something more demanding.
It’s about action in the places where it actually makes a difference.
