In June this year, the British animation studio, Aardman, made public its commitment to communicate every 12 months its environmental goals and achievements in its bid to be a leading voice in sustainability not only within the business of animated content and production, but outside of it, too.
The steps the business has taken to date are more than a little impressive. On the operational side of things, Aardman has set about measuring emissions across its scope 1, 2, and 3 and began the process of engaging suppliers and supply chain actors in its pursuit of reducing its environmental impact.
While on the licensing side of the business, Aardman admits it’s early days work is ongoing both internally and via an environmental consulting agency in mapping out just what that process will look like for the team.
But just take a look at the activity going on around its Shaun the Sheep One Farm campaign you get a vague idea of what a sustainable future for brand licensing could look like. Celebrated for its authentic application of the Shaun the Sheep brand, One Farm is Aardman’s soap box… it’s means of engaging the most sustainable product partners and initiatives to bring home the message of sustainable development, all without alienating its audiences and preaching to the kids.
It’s a delicate balance that Aardman must strike, but one that has – to date – delivered some very compelling campaigns, product partnerships, even TV spots (it’s 2023 Christmas advert with Barbour was in the running for Christmas Ad of the Year at one point). It’s a culmination of all the above that has this year seen Aardman place not once but twice in the shortlist of the Licensing Awards’ Best Sustainable Product category, and why you’ll find them proudly showcased on the Products of Change stand at BLE later this month.
With so much to bleat about, we catch up with Aardman’s senior brand manager, Rachael Peacock and Environmental and Sustianability Strategist, Helen Argo to dive into all the sustainable practices at Mossy Bottom.
Can we set the scene and talk about Aardman’s relationship with sustainability and the environment? Why is it when we think of Aardman, of Wallace & Gromit, and of Shaun the Sheep – it feels there’s a genuine connection with nature, biodiversity, food sustainability, repair and reuse etc?
Rachael Peacock, Senior Brand Manager, Aardman Studios: Our character universes are set within real world environments. The handmade craft of stop motion means there is an intrinsic physicality – everything is crafted to represent miniature replica of the real world, from Gromit’s vegetable patch at 62 West Wallaby Street to Shaun the Sheeps’ rural Mossy Bottom farm.
It always amazes me the level of intricate detail the prop makers and set dressers create to make sure the worlds are authentic, whether it’s painstakingly painting thousands of bricks or expertly handcrafting lifelike miniature fruits and vegetables.
But it’s not only the worlds themselves that lend well to these topics, it’s also the themes of the content. Wallace is a hapless inventor who is always crafting new inventions to make his daily routine more seamless… until it goes wrong, and Gromit is there to save the day! In Shaun the Sheep, recycling and upcycling from the farm’s resident rubbish dump is central to helping the flock on their adventures.
It’s a constant source of inspiration for re-inventing things in our household! Bit of a jump then, but how does this translate across Aardman’s actual environmental impacts and the journey the studio has been on to reduce emissions across scope 1, 2, and 3?
Helen Argo, Executive Producer – Third Party & Commercials, Aardman E&S Strategist: Stop motion is a labour-intensive process and our talented team of artists put a lot of care and attention into everything we create. To echo the values of our brands we strive to reduce, reuse and recycle as much as possible during the production of our sets and models, as well as more environmentally friendly ways to run our animation shoots, particularly with lighting.
All our productions go through Albert Certification which ensures everyone on that production is playing their part in helping to raise awareness of our environmental impact as well as looking at how we can perform better and become more sustainable.
The latest Environmental and Sustainability update gives us a really encouraging look at the work you have put into measuring, tracking, and reducing scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions – Can you share data on where those emissions sit for 2022/23?
Helen: We’re currently working on our 2023 emissions to see how they sit against 2022. For 2022 our Scope 1 and 2 emissions represented 14% of our total emissions, Scope 3 represented 86%.
We recognise that the level of production activity directly impacts our Scope 3 emissions, the main area being our Purchased Goods and Services, along with Employee Commuting. This means we need to ensure our metrics used to report our carbon footprint is based on the contextual landscape of the business during that year to accurately track our position and reductions.
Can you talk us through some of the actions you have put in place and steps you have taken to reduce emissions across all three scopes?
Helen: As mentioned earlier, one of the main actions has been to ensure that all our long form productions are Albert certified, this ensures engagement at all levels on a production and the sharing of best practices from one production to another. We have seen reductions across scopes 1 and 2, largely due to the greening of the energy market and therefore the calculations used have resulted in lower figures.
Scope 3 is the largest part of any organisation, representing over three quarters of the business, and one that is a complex area to report on. Our main focus has been on refining and improving our data accuracy, identifying our main hotspots and engaging with the key strategy leads to help develop reduction strategies relating to their particular area of the business.
I would love to learn more on how you guys are working with suppliers and licensing partners to reduce scope 3 emissions. Can you tell us more?
Helen: We are at the start of the journey on this area and so at this stage we are working on our strategy for engaging with our suppliers to enable meaningful discussions over their environmental performance and reporting to provide us with more accurate data for our carbon footprint reporting. Our intention is to engage with our top 20 suppliers from across the business, create a consistent framework for how we want to work with them and what shared information we want to have.
Alongside this we want to create a standardised procurement process to ensure that supplier environmental performance is considered as a priority whenever the business procures goods and services. This all needs to be centralised within the organisation to develop an approved Sustainable Supplier list that all partners within the organisation can refer to.
For our licensing partners, this is more complex and a new area to our Scope 3 reporting for 2022, we are still very much working out how to approach this with our Environmental Consultants.
This brings us perfectly onto the subject of licensing and the truly inspiring partnership you have been developing under the Shaun the Sheep One Farm Campaign. Can you give us some background on the campaign itself?
Rachael: The studio has a unique opportunity to use our world-renowned characters to inspire education and more importantly change, to protect the planet for the future of our ‘little lambs’. We know it’s more important now than ever, following Naturals England’s Children’s People and Nature survey which reported that
However, we are always mindful to ensure our characters do not come across as preachy or too worthy, instead delivering messages in a fun and engaging way for families and children; exactly what Aardman are experts at, using our extensive pool of creative storytelling talent.
One Farm uses Shaun’s authentic links to the great outdoors, farming and family and the world of Mossy Bottom Farm to provide a fun and engaging platform to inspire families to take part in activities that will enhance and sustain our own world; whether that’s having fun with food and understanding food provenance or caring and conserving the natural world through to living more sustainably. We think the campaign tagline of ‘We have One Farm, Let’s Flock together to look after it’ represents all these topics perfectly.
What do you guys look for in a potential partner when it comes to the One Farm campaign and can you talk us through some of the most recent successes for the initiative?
Rachael: For us, it’s all about shared values. We are very selective when it comes to who Aardman partners with, especially with regards to our character IP and more specifically One Farm. It has to feel like a truly authentic partnership, from which the storytelling and creative should then come naturally.
We already have such a strong network of partners who all believe in the power of a character to deliver storytelling. The National Forest use Shaun as their Forest Guardian to encourage a goal of 10 million trees planted across the midlands. Shaun has also become a Countryside Code Champion delivering the messages of Respect, Protect, Enjoy to over one million people through a series of short films, resources and events.
Last Christmas we were delighted to take our initiative global with luxury fashion brand Barbour delivering a campaign to with key message of ‘extend the life of your jacket’ through their repair and re-wax services. The authenticity and comedy of the spot produced really grabbed media attention and punched above its weight in being compared to the top Christmas ads of the year.
We’ve just recently brought on our newest One Farm partner within an unusual sector for character licensing. British Wool and Campaign for Wool are using Shaun as an ambassador for real wool carpets through a POS package presented throughout UK carpet retailers.
The programme continues to grow within the consumer products space with Emu Australia global range of cosy footwear, endorsed by The Woolmark Company. And Willsow’s first ever character licensed plantable book which grows wildflowers, a great source of good for Sheep!
And we’ve recently expanded into the live events area partnering with locations who share similar values of getting families outdoors; RHS with The Great Garden Adventure with Shaun the Sheep and a bespoke exhibition at Northumberland’s National Park visitor centre which resulted in 148% uplift in visitor numbers compared to last year’s exhibition.
We love that the campaign speaks to the wider power of brand licensing to really drive better practices among ‘consumers’ – selecting partners that push for regenerative farming, responsible forestry, reuse and repair, supply chain transparency.
How can brand licensing – when done right – make larger and somewhat more esoteric ideas around sustainability more accessible? How is Aardman doing this?
Rachael: It’s all about making it feel fun and engaging for children. Shaun the Sheep is a non-dialogue show so we are able to use imagery and visual comedy to our advantage to deliver important messages in a less dry way. Character licensing is a great way of highlighting issues to kids (and their families) by positioning loved and trusted characters in campaigns with more serious messages. Shaun the Sheep is an established and trusted brand with an exciting pipeline of content and themes attached which partners can feed off. We are excited for the future.
Your E&S update lays out intentions for 2025 which includes, among some very exciting ambitions, a plan to engage licensing partners in scope 1 and 2 data collection and start addressing your scope 3 emissions. This is less of a question more of an admiration, but mega congratulations on the work so far and for setting those intentions! What’s in place to make sure you achieve all these?
Helen: We work with our Environmental Consultants and are currently working through our 2023 carbon footprint report. Through this work we are able to look at our initial year-on-year results, understand all the areas of the business that it covers and work with strategy leads to both develop and implement processes that will help with our reduction strategies, particularly as we plan to set the studio’s target for ‘Net Zero’ in 2025.
We recognise that key leads across the areas of the business that fall within Scope 3 are vital in the success of this and ensure that environmental and sustainability is weaved into every part of the organisation.
There’s so much to dive into just from the E&S update alone! The work you are undertaking with local transport authorities to address employee commuting is fantastic! Outside of producing the wonderful Aardman content, how does this speak to the role of businesses and the positive impact they can have on local infrastructure and community?
Helen: Aardman is determined to be ahead of the game regarding the sustainability of its business operations across all aspects of its activities.
As an example, looking locally regarding the impact we have on the immediate community, we have seen a change in the commuting habits of our partners, not only because of awareness and a desire to reduce transport emissions, but due to changes in working practices that the pandemic yielded.
Hybrid working is now an embedded practice amongst a large proportion of our partners, so our emissions profile has changed for the better. We engage fully with our Local Authorities and take part in detailed commuter habit data gathering to monitor this and we also benefit from their initiatives which include cycle to work resources and grants for EV charging points, we now have 4. All these transitions are contributing positively to the environment both locally and globally.
Well, feel I need to wind up otherwise I will go on forever… What’s the next immediate step for Aardman when it comes to sustainable development and hitting those goals? As an aside, are you part of the UN SDG Global media compact?
Helen: The next immediate step for us is to finalise our 2023 carbon footprint report and from this we will be able to see our performance against our baseline year of 2022. We will create a report and action plan for the business and intend to engage key areas of the business in the Autumn.
No, we’re not part of the UN SDG Global media compact but we have worked with Project Everyone, in particular a series of films for World’s Largest Lesson which aims to build a generation of young Global Goal champions through the development of creative tools for learning, it engages millions of children in over 120 countries.
Helen and Rachael, this has been wonderful. Before we let you all get BLE-ready, is there anything you, Wallace, or Gromit would like to leave us with?
Rachael: Thank you, Rob. Just to say we really believe in the Shaun the Sheep One Farm values and who better to be champions for change for future generations than shaun and his friends! We are really looking forward to welcoming even more new and exciting partners onboard for this long-term initiative.
