Legacy & CSRHub ESG Media Partnership
Legacy Media and CSRHub are proud to announce our global media partnership, bringing ESG ratings and information to the $1trillion media industry. The partnership combines CSRHub’s consensus ESG data and Legacy’s valuable industry insight, enabling media strategists to make conscientious planning decisions, directing investment towards companies with strong ESG ratings.
“We are excited to partner with Legacy to create an ESG platform for the media industry. This will provide the lens that a brand’s board can use to ensure they are investing with ‘good’ media companies, like any other part of their supply chain. ESG is at the top of many corporate agendas, and our partnership with Legacy will provide valuable intelligence for the media industry.” Cynthia Figge, CEO and Co-founder, CSRHub.
ESG is gaining momentum. In 2021, 52% of C-Suite directors reported that ESG issues are regularly a part of the board’s agenda, up from 34% in 2019 (source: PwC: ESG Oversight: The corporate director’s guide November 2021). Companies are increasingly measured on ESG criteria for investment purposes, risk management, reporting quality, and new business opportunities.
Assessing an organisation’s media spend impact and supply chain through an ESG lens is an emerging area in the media industry, with brands increasingly concerned with mitigating risk and being a proactive force for good in wider society.
Conversations and solutions include sustainability, diversity and inclusion, defunding hate speech and the necessity of connecting a company’s brand to values important to consumers, particularly in the younger generations. Topics have moved on from brand safety keyword lists, supply chain transparency and data privacy concerns to actively investing in quality content providers which support diverse voices and engage audiences.
Last year $8bn worth of global media pitches had elements of ESG within their briefs. These brands already understand the importance of incorporating ESG values in their media spend.
Developing a Media Measurement Framework for ESG
Through the Legacy and CSRHub partnership, Legacy offers a global, easily understood and established holistic framework to score brands and their media supply chain on ESG criteria, providing a baseline starting point to open a conversation on strategy, appropriate targets and how to measure progress.
By combining brand media spend data with this ESG data, Legacy can analyse and produce ESG media insights and ESG intelligence reports. These insights and reports can be used to help clients set their media agency’s ESG targets through balanced consideration of both audience delivery quality and the ESG ratings of their selected media suppliers.
Category and subcategory ESG ratings can be weighted to fit around a company’s specific core values. For example, a media owner may lead in Energy and Climate Change, but lag in Human Rights and Supply Chain – if this is not aligned with a brand’s values, their media agency can choose to align spend towards media owners/platforms that do align with brand values.
Our partnership aims to improve ESG performance for brands, media owners and agencies and become a leading ESG platform for the media industry.
“Strong brands have a focus on high ethical standards and business integrity, and the investment world is taking notice. Our partnership with CSRHub offers media planning tools using global ESG consensus data, which is both robust and substantiated, creating an internationally accepted ESG platform for the media industry. These tools are fundamental for purposeful media investment. Media is a huge part of a brand’s supply chain and our service offering allows brands to consciously invest, in line with core values.” Andy Power, Founder & CEO, Legacy Media
