Carbon emissions from advertising are fueling climate change and endangering our planet’s future. Oksana Khidko is helping GroupM lead the industry to Net Zero.
When Oksana joined GroupM in 2017, she didn’t expect to be spending her days trying to solve the world’s climate crisis. But when WPP unveiled its commitment to reaching net zero carbon emissions in its operations by 2025 and across its entire supply chain by 2030—an industry first—Oksana became a key member of a team working to reimagine the advertising business for a more sustainable future.
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I am passionate about bringing change through innovation, and that’s why I love working for GroupM,” says Oksana, Senior Director of Programs and Operations in GroupM’s Global Innovation Group. “What we’re doing has never been done before. But everyone here is determined to figure it out, and we have the talent and the resources to make it happen.”
As the largest media investment company in the world, GroupM provides big thinkers like Oksana the opportunity and tools they need to make the change they want to see. Today, Oksana and her team are using those resources to build a single methodology for calculating carbon emissions from media campaigns anywhere in the world–an essential step toward understanding and reducing the industry’s carbon footprint. Her team is also building a first-of-its-kind planning tool that will empower GroupM employees everywhere to create media campaigns that have minimal impact on the environment.
“Once we have the methodology in place, we can produce a product that will allow all our client teams to plug in the details of their media plans and calculate their carbon emissions,” she says. “They’ll be able to assess every channel and vendor based on carbon footprint and optimise campaigns toward lower emissions. That is truly meaningful change.”
Oksana knows that global problems require global solutions, and at GroupM, she has the opportunity to work with a diverse team of experts from media agencies in 80 countries around the world. “The innovation group sits at the center of GroupM globally, so we get to bring together all the people who are passionate about these challenges from different agencies, markets, and practices”, she says. “It’s a dream come true to be able to look for solutions to these problems with brilliant people who bring so many different experiences, skillsets, and perspectives to the table.”