Taking a data-led approach to sustainability 

Sustainability has always been close to our hearts. Our teams have organized beach and park clean-ups, recycling initiatives have been introduced across our offices and we have made changes to our office environments to reduce energy consumption.  

Increasing concerns have given us pause to reconsider our policies and explore new approaches to becoming more sustainable.  

We took a big leap in 2020 when we launched the Metia sustainability initiative with a mobilized team across the organization.  

The pandemic really changed our normal behaviors making it even more difficult to evaluate what direct impact any one business can have on wider sustainability issues. However, as we’ve adapted to new ways of working, we thought it was a good time to take a step back and ask how we as a business can best contribute to global sustainability efforts. It’s as close to starting with a clean slate as you can get. 

We went back to what our core principles are as an organization. All of our marketing work is driven by insight - insight drives strategy, you can even read it on our homepage. Applying this ethos to our sustainability efforts, we’ve started by looking at the data. We used 2020 to collect key facts and figures to better understand our impact benchmark.  

After reviewing flights, daily commutes and energy consumption across our four offices there was a stark difference between 2019 and 2020. Despite the gap, we’re now able to better understand how reduced our impact has been as a result of adapting to crisis.

It’s not just up to the big corporations to make change, but for the millions of small and medium sized businesses like us. A challenge many organizations now face is how to measure the impact of working from home – one that we’re yet to figure out. We’re moving into an unknown, we don’t even know what a commute will look like in 12-months' time, but the best way we can prepare is to arm ourselves with as much insight as we can in order to make the most educated decisions possible. 

We’re not the most sustainable company in the world but are consistently making efforts to find opportunities for development. An accumulation of small changes can move the needle – that we know. Which is why it’s important for medium-sized companies, such as ourselves, to drive sustainability initiatives forward. And as marketers, it’s important we use our platforms to educate and encourage sustainable action. If we don’t, we might not have anyone to market to in the future. 

Sustainability is about progress over perfection. We need to band together in order to achieve a more sustainable future, and if the global pandemic has taught us anything it’s how powerful we can be when we all rally around a cause. As marketers we have an influential platform that can drive market change – our calendars are open for virtual coffees to anyone eager to drive change.