RMB assesses its OEF footprint
RMB strengthens its sustainable strategy by measuring its footprint using the European OEF method with Glimpact. This approach provides a comprehensive view of its impacts and paves the way for more coherent and effective environmental actions.
Environmental Transition: How to Act Effectively?
In a context where environmental transition is becoming central for businesses, RMB adopts the OEF method, recognized by the EU as a reference framework, to obtain a comprehensive and scientifically sound view of its impacts. While the carbon footprint only covers one aspect of the issue, OEF considers the 16 environmental impact categories of human activity, providing a more precise and representative diagnosis of ecological transition challenges.
In its approach, RMB is supported by Glimpact. With its rigorous and intuitive environmental assessment tool, Glimpact guides organizations in collecting, analyzing, and modeling their environmental data. The platform helps better understand a company’s true impacts, identify priority actions to effectively reduce the ecological footprint, and optimize environmental performance.
With this thorough analysis, RMB reaffirms its commitment to a transparent and comprehensive approach, enabling the identification of the most relevant reduction levers at both the operational level and in the advertising solutions offered to its clients.
RMB is the first advertising agency to have precisely and rigorously assessed its environmental footprint using the OEF method, adopted by the EU as the reference methodological framework. This systemic method offers a new perspective on the real challenges of the necessary ecological transition in the advertising sector. Through its pioneering and structuring initiative, RMB asserts the environmental performance of media campaigns at the core of its development strategy and opens a new path likely to inspire the entire ecosystem of players, agencies, publishers, and advertisers.
Media campaigns: main source of environmental impact
Media campaigns today represent the main source of environmental impact for RMB, mainly due to the devices consumers use to view or hear ads. As an agency, RMB can act on key levers to reduce campaign impact (notably message length and weight) but has few direct levers to influence the purchase or use of these devices.
Some concrete initiatives show the agency's commitment, such as investment in the Balnz app, which encourages screen time control and promotes more responsible smartphone use.
What levers can advertisers activate to reduce their campaigns’ environmental impact? How to reliably and jointly calculate the media footprint? And how to ensure these efforts are recognized and measurable across the sector? Reducing campaign broadcast impact is essential, and answers to these questions help advertisers design more sustainable, responsible ad strategies.
Thanks to our collaboration with Glimpact, we have developed a greater awareness of the scope of environmental issues in the advertising sector. This allows us to focus our efforts on the most effective levers at every level of the value chain. Complying with the OEF requirements is also a way for RMB to promote the rigorous and systemic measurement method of the European Union, which should guide us toward greater responsibility in all dimensions of environmental impact.
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Toward a Common Methodology for the Advertising Sector?
While several solutions are emerging to measure campaign footprints, no approach has yet been adopted industry-wide. Discussions around Ad Net Zero internationally and CommToZero in Belgium highlight the importance of methodological harmonization.
Alongside Glimpact, RMB aims to actively help advance a common measurement, more comprehensive and including criteria beyond CO₂ alone. The OEF method precisely measures all impacts, sets reduction priorities, and structures a coherent sustainable strategy to support transparent and responsible communication.
A broader perspective: eco-design
The OEF footprint analysis of RMB highlights the main environmental impacts and invites exploring eco-design as a lever to reduce them. Several approaches can be considered:
- optimize content production
- eco-design files (notably by reducing their duration and memory size)
- optimize the distribution strategy
- select committed and/or local suppliers
- share certain creations
- measure then offset residual impacts
These approaches represent concrete opportunities to set priority actions and guide responsible efforts of advertisers and other industry players toward a more sustainable, coherent, and harmonized strategy at the European level.
