Decarbonizing the Digital Ad Game

Leena Manro (: 00:00

Welcome to Up to So Good, the podcast that unlocks the secrets of creating a purpose-driven business so we can all make this world a better place. Come join the conversation. Hello and welcome to Up to So Good, the podcast that explores the purpose of business. I'm your host, Leena Manro. Today's guest is Avril Tomlin-Hood, who is the CEO and founder of boa, which is a digital media buying agency.

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And it also happens to be a B Corp. Boa is focused on reducing the overall carbon footprint of digital advertising, and it does this a number of different ways. You'd be really surprised to learn how environmentally unfriendly the click of a button when you're browsing on the internet is, and especially those conversations with ChatGPT, oh my goodness.

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Today's podcast explores the power of advertising and media buying as it can be a tool for good. You'll be surprised at what you find out and how media buying and advertising actually does touch our lives on a daily basis. So stick around and hope you enjoy this episode.

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Hello and welcome to Up to So Good, the podcast that explores the purpose of business. I'm your host, Leena Manro, and today, we are going to be talking to the founder of boa.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 01:06

So happy to be here. Thanks for having me on. My name is Avril Tomlin-Hood, I am the founder and CEO of boa. Boa is a sustainable digital media buying agency.

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We work exclusively with purpose-driven brands to achieve high-performance, lower-carbon digital ad campaigns for our clients. And I can dive into that, yes.

Leena Manro (: 01:25

Yes, please, because I think, okay, first of all, I don't think a lot of people know what media buying is, right?

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And then to make it sustainable, that's a whole other part of the conversation, so let's start with what is media buying?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 01:37

Okay, great. Easy question, I can answer that. I've been in the field for quite a number of years, and media buying is basically the placement of ads wherever people are looking at them. Online, offline, we specialize in digital, that's where most of my expertise stems from.

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But any piece of inventory that's available online, paid social, paid search, programmatic, that means display ad, banner ads you see follow you all around the web. There is a complex ecosystem and economy behind that where we're buying and selling ads.

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And so media buying is what we do, which is we purchase those advertisements in the most simplest terms across all kinds of platforms.

Leena Manro (: 02:21

You purchase those advertisements on behalf of companies?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 02:24

On behalf of companies, yeah.

Leena Manro (: 02:25

So a company will come to you and they'll say, "We've created this ad, and now can you place it in a strategic way"?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 02:31

Yeah, absolutely.

Leena Manro (: 02:32

So it gets visibility.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 02:32

So maybe an example, we'll work with a client, they have ideated on a campaign. They have overarching goals in mind, specific KPIs.

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They want to reach a certain audience or a group or set of audiences, and they come to us and they say, "Here's the creative, here's the idea, here's the goal, here's the campaign vision."

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And then what we do is we find the right person, the right place, the right environment. And serve the ad in the right time for the right price, so that is an example of how that would work.

Leena Manro (: 03:00

Do you guys also do some of the creative?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 03:02

We don't actually, so we are pretty pure play. A lot of agencies are full service, they bring creative, they do webdev, they do it all.

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We are just, I like to say, "An inch wide and a mile deep." So media buying is what we do, it's in our blood. It's what we've always done, and I think it's what we'll always do.

Leena Manro (: 03:18

Amazing. How'd you get into that?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 03:20

Accidentally.

Leena Manro (: 03:21

Okay.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 03:22

So I worked in marketing and advertising in events and in PR for the first 10 years of my career, and then I ended up falling into media buying. I got a job with a woman who became a mentor of mine, and that was 2012. And she had a small media buying shop, and she was involved on both the sell side and the buy side, and so I got a really good education in the whole ecosystem.

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And this, back in 2012, just technology, it couldn't be more different than it is today in terms of how we were buying and what we were buying. And so the however many years that is, between 13 years I've been working in media buying, the industry's evolved so much. I've gotten a great education ongoing in it just due to the nature of the industry moving so quickly.

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But yeah, I started working for her, worked with her for three years, and then took over the agency that she had founded. She wanted to do something else. I took the agency and I turned it into what it is today, which is boa.

Leena Manro (: 04:27

I see. It didn't have the name boa before?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 04:28

No, boa's new.

Leena Manro (: 04:28

Okay.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 04:28

Yeah, yeah.

Leena Manro (: 04:30

I see. What's the name boa mean?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 04:33

Whenever I get this question, the first thing that comes to my mind is a little bit of snake and a little bit of feather.

Leena Manro (: 04:38

Okay.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 04:41

We went through a really fun branding process around the name and finding the name, and digging into who we are and what we want to be.

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And the snake was a symbol in terms of regeneration, regrowth, rebirth, sustainability. That was really it, and also fun, because we're a fun crew and we don't take ourselves too seriously.

Leena Manro (: 05:04

And the snake is also incredibly, I'm South Asian originally, I don't know if that's the way to phrase it, originally. I don't know. My parents are, for sure. I'm Canadian. And when we think about the representation of the snake in my own culture, a very, very powerful, spiritual representation.

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Everything from, I think in the Western world, a lot of people know about Kundalini energy, Kundalini rising, the snake reference there. But there's more than that within various, I guess, spiritual traditions in the South Asian culture. So I was also wondering if there is a spiritual element and if you could comment on that?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 05:38

For me, yeah, the journey, it was interesting being a business owner, being in business for a lot of years. And the business of media buying, I should say, it's quite an analytical one. It's not a particularly creative one.

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It's creative within the confines of strategy, but I'm a relatively spiritual person and a sustainability-minded person. And the snake to me is definitely an interesting, symbolic representation of that. I have a couple of snake tattoos, I love snakes. I love the symbolism of the snake.

Leena Manro (: 06:13

If there is something that's really important to us deep down inside buried in our subconscious, it comes out in ways that we're not even realizing it.

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And so I'm just wondering how conscious you were of pulling some of that into the construction of your company, boa?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 06:28

Oh, that's so interesting.

Leena Manro (: 06:28

Its name, its operations?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 06:30

I had help in pulling that forward, and it's when it came, when the name came, it was one of those moments of like, "Oh, of course, this is it." And then my wonderful director of marketing, who I've worked with for many, many years, and she was with me on this whole process, both of us were.

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And she knows me well personally too, which I tend to do business and become very close to people I do business with because I think that's really important. And having those sounding boards, people who know you when you're making decisions. Yeah, I think we both felt like, "Oh, this is it."

Leena Manro (: 07:02

I'm just curious, I've never heard of media selling. I apologize for my ignorance in that area. I've never heard of it.

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I've heard of media buying, yes. What is media selling?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 07:10

So broadly in the media buying industry, we'll call it, there's the sell side and the buy side. The sell side is mostly comprised of tech companies, publishers. So every website online sells inventory, so they're on the sell side. So every bit of inventory where an ad could possibly show up, is considered publisher side, sell side.

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So then all the companies, all the programmatic, The Trade Desks, Meta is on the sell side, Google's on the sell side. That's the sell side, and we sit on the buy side, so our job is to find the media. It's a very complex ecosystem and it's fraught with fraud and bot traps, all kinds of stuff.

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So to find the most efficient, effective way to buy what we want to serve the ads to the people we want to talk to with the message that resonates.

Leena Manro (: 08:10

So what does it mean to make it sustainable?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 08:13

Yeah. So that's the layer on top of that I'm really and boa is really focused on, and I'm going to back up a little bit just to talk in broad terms. Because this was something that as a person who was very environmentally conscious, always has been, sustainability is a way of life and a given.

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I had not contemplated until maybe four years ago the carbon impact of the internet itself. So the internet itself by its very existence and its existence is dependent on server farms, and server farms are massive energy sucks. And so it's a very carbon-intensive industry.

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So I see figures from 3.5% to 4% of global carbon emissions coming from the internet. That is on par with the airline industry, so it's huge. And all industries are making headway in trying to reduce carbon here, there and everywhere. The internet has been ignored in this to a large degree.

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I think with the advent of AI, people are talking about it a bit more because it's being pushed more to the top of the headlines. So the internet is highly carbon efficient. The internet is fueled by this ad ecosystem of media buying. Every piece of content you read online, nothing is free.

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So if you're reading a publication that's not paywalled, it's all paid for by ads, everything is paid for by ads. The economy of it, it's a multibillion-dollar industry, it's huge. And so the internet is powered by advertising, thus advertising has a direct carbon emission output.

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And it's very complex too, and it's unnecessarily complex in a lot of ways. So from the time, say, we take our client's ad and we put it in our ad server, to the time it reaches the eyeballs of the intended audience, there are a multitude of intermediaries along the way that are touching that ad.

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So server calls are numerous just all the way through, and each time the server is called, carbon is used. And so that is essentially in, I guess, layman's terms how the carbon output of media buying happens.

Leena Manro (: 10:36

I'd love to know more about how has AI even affected your business?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 10:41

AI initially, I've been really, because adtech, this is the industry that I live in, and adtech is all about progress, and it's all about technology and progress at all costs.

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And AI is one of these things like the train has left the station and people haven't been paying attention to the implications, the negative externalities that are environmental.

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Like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. We have overnight, essentially in the scheme of time, quadrupled, quintupled, whatever it is, the carbon that we are emitting to feed our internet habit, which is our way of life."

Leena Manro (: 11:28

Yeah, that's true.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 11:30

So I was quite wary of it, and AI, there's an AI that and AI everywhere. And there are AI applications for everything that anyone does in the ad industry and in the media buying industry, to helping with creative, to media planning and buying, to budgeting, to optimization, there's the AI everywhere.

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How fully formed products are, we're still on the runway, but there also are applications for AI to make that inefficient supply chain I was mentioning where every server call is creating excess of carbon, make it more efficient.

Leena Manro (: 12:06

Okay.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 12:07

And so I feel like most things, it's not black and white.

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Same thing you could say AI can hold some great potential for climate solutions when it comes to scaled industrial mapping of projects. Who knows, right? So yeah, it's complex.

Leena Manro (: 12:24

Yeah. And with your business with boa, what is the approach then to sustainability?

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How do you navigate this, which seems deeply complex and inefficient, the system, how do you navigate that?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 12:38

Yeah. So in terms of making our media buys actually more efficient, we are lucky enough to be a beta partner of a company called Scope3. And their founder, who is often referred to as the godfather of adtech, Brian O'Kelley.

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I just laugh when I describe this. But he was instrumental in creating the system that actually made everything so inefficient in the first place, in terms of what has been realized in hindsight to be very carbon intensive. So he developed a function called header bidding, which is that real-time bid system.

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It's like the stock market for advertisers. So there's one unit on a website, and there are millions of advertisers in real-time bidding, bidding, bidding, bidding to get that spot at the lowest price. And so every single advertiser, think about that, every single server call along that complicated supply chain.

Leena Manro (: 13:35

Oh, my.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 13:35

So at the time, no one was thinking about this. This was in the early to late '90s, early 2000s, no one was thinking about this. So this guy, he's an interesting guy, he made his multiple billions of dollars in adtech. And he came back around about four years ago and has cofounded with some really impressive women, in this company called Scope3.

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And their base, their reason for being was to figure out a methodology that would actually just measure the carbon like, "What is going on?" Because that's hard to measure. Think about lifecycle analysis for a large manufacturing plant, that's complicated enough.

Leena Manro (: 14:16

Yeah.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 14:16

You're a B Corp, you talk to companies who are getting their B Corp certification. And from here to here, all the things that are going on that you need to measure and hard to pin down, in scope 1, 2, 3, et cetera. So their methodology that they developed in the last few years is basically just getting the measurement down.

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And so we have adopted their technology to be able to base level we can measure the impact of the carbon of the ad campaign. So say we work with a client and we have a certain media spend and impression level, and we feed that through our media reporting dashboard that they've developed the tech for the measurement.

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We've not developed that. We just use the technology and we can see what the impact is. And then from there, is where we can identify areas for reduction or improvement.

Leena Manro (: 15:14

Okay.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 15:15

And so we can eliminate inefficiencies pretty quickly. We can eliminate sites that are junk, right?

Leena Manro (: 15:23

Okay.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 15:24

We can eliminate, there's sites called MFAs, stands for made for advertising. So these are sites that are basically created to just host ads. So you know clickbait?

Leena Manro (: 15:35

Oh my goodness, yeah.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 15:36

Yeah, yeah. Clickbait like, "You won't believe what he looks like," those all go to MFAs.

Leena Manro (: 15:40

Right.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 15:41

So their economy is based on this. It's just this circular little industry.

Leena Manro (: 15:47

Isn't that fraudulent?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 15:48

That is all fraudulent, yeah, and below the fold. So ads that never appear that no one's actually seen, but they're being counted and paid for.

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So we can identify that through this technology and just eliminate them.

Leena Manro (: 15:59

Oh, that's good.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 15:59

Yeah, so with that supply path optimization, we'd call it. And then we can also do things like identify where we may be paying less for an ad or 1,000 impressions is how we pay in media buying. But we're not getting quality traffic, we're just getting impressions.

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People that are not the right audience, people who are not doing the thing we want them to do, which is visit the site, make the purchase, engage with the advertisement. And we can make tweaks to our targeting, to our channel strategy, so there are all kinds of ways that we can pull levers to create carbon efficiency.

Leena Manro (: 16:41

I don't think people on a day-to-day basis think about, know about.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 16:44

No, I didn't until I started thinking about it and it was a bit of a rabbit hole. It was around the time that we rebranded to boa and I was thinking, "Who do I want to work with?" And I went down that journey of making a decision to commit to working with brands that had purpose beyond financial gains.

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So that was very clear to me, it was a great decision to make. And then started looking into how are ways that we can actually offer something that's more sustainable, more in line with the companies we're working with?

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And this, it was the time of it was just around the time that we were founding boa, this technology was just coming to the surface and companies were starting to address it.

Leena Manro (: 17:29

Amazing. Has that brought down the cost a little bit as well, because you're not paying for advertising on junk sites, et cetera?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 17:36

Yeah, that's a great question. It can, not always though. It can make what I would say make your spends more efficient and more effective.

Leena Manro (: 17:36

Okay.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 17:46

And so we've been trained in media buying over the years to like cheapest, cheapest, highest reach, lowest CPM, cost per mille. That's how we measure our cost in media buying or buy on a CPM basis, like high reach, low cost.

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But people are starting to, me in particular, to question that why, why, why? At what cost? Spraying a bunch of even if it's more targeted than just spray and pray, as we call it in the industry, you're still not maximizing your dollar against the most qualified audience. So I would rather pay more and reach less people.

Leena Manro (: 18:26

Or reach the right people.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 18:27

The right people.

Leena Manro (: 18:28

Yeah. Spray and pray, that's hilarious. I've never even heard of that.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 18:28

Yeah, we say it a lot.

Leena Manro (: 18:34

Now that you're so well versed in this digital ecosystem, what are some things and practices that the everyday person can also do to reduce their carbon footprint?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 18:42

Yeah.

Leena Manro (: 18:43

Those are two different questions.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 18:44

No, but they're great questions and I have thoughts on both. So I think the first one about what would I want someone to know about media buying who has no idea?

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When people ask me, "What do you do for work?" Media buying. It's also not a commonly-

Leena Manro (: 18:57

Yeah, I feel like a lot of people would be like, "What is that?"

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 18:59

What is that?

Leena Manro (: 19:00

Yes.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 19:00

And then I'll say something like, "You know those ads that follow you around after you look at a pair of shoes? That's me and I'm sorry." No, it's not all that. I would say content on the internet is not free, so it is an ecosystem that is necessary if we still want access to quality content. So that's in defense of media buying, and that it's highly complex and it is like all things.

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It's got its dark and its light side. And I think it can be used for good because it can be used for, how we hope to use it is to carry messages, brand messages. We do a lot of work with marketing collectives for companies that are nonprofits that are doing things like promoting. I'll give an example because that's always helpful.

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Trying to get people buying more canned food again, that's important. We've moved away from canned food. Cans are some of the most sustainable food delivery vehicle materials that we could use.

Leena Manro (: 20:06

Okay.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 20:06

They're infinitely recyclable, they reduce food waste, they're economical in terms of affordability. And so we've worked with an organization called CannedGood.org to advertise to young people, who don't even look at the canned food aisle anymore, that cans are great for all these reasons and you should consider cans.

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Things like that where that would be a client that we would be media buying for that client is really important, because we're spreading a message that is impactful and there's a ripple effect. And so it's not just those annoying ads following you around with the pair of shoes you looked at two weeks ago, hyperconsumerism and all that. It is that too, but it's also that.

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So I think it's like all things, it's black and it's white, it's gray. I think about AI. I think about AI because not everyone can actually... The everyday consumer, when I talk about the complexity of the programmatic ad supply chain, that's not really relevant to most people, unless you are in my seat or someone in my broader industry's seat.

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And you actually can do something about that on a delivery level. But with the AI, I think people should really, really, really, really, really, really think twice about using it. I do, I use it, I don't not use it. I understand too, technology, it's like I have a six-year-old. I'm not going to never let him get in front of a screen.

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That's just a part of me is tempted to do it. But no, we have to educate and adapt, and adopt and work with the technology of the time that we are in. And AI is no different, but it's just think twice before you ask it to make you a funny image of a whatever.

Leena Manro (: 21:54

Yeah.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 21:54

Or think twice when you're going to ask ChatGPT or Claude something. How important is it that you're using the AI tool versus just a traditional Google search? Can you get your answer that same way? Is it just the novelty that you're interested in? And then I came across something the other day. If you're in a ChatGPT conversation, don't open more conversations, keep the same conversation going.

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You can keep it going all day, that uses less carbon. Don't say thank you as a separate message because then it has to respond separately. And that again, it's just like it's starting to reframe your thinking to understand the real-world impact of everything you do online. On that point, delete old emails. Don't store a bunch of stuff in your computer that you do not need anymore.

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And I'm guilty of this, I know I am, but I'm aware of it. And every time I think I'll go in and have PDF downloads from 2017, and this is all the cloud is not invisible. The cloud is storing everything at the cost of the carbon to feed the ad servers, or sorry, the server farms.

Leena Manro (: 23:06

Yeah. Is internet listening to us? Why is it when I'm talking about shoes, all of a sudden, I'm flooded with all these adverts about shoes?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 23:15

Yeah, but I'm not responsible for that.

Leena Manro (: 23:18

But is that just a psychological thing that people are like I looked up a search, I guess, and then all of a sudden, now you're flooded with a search?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 23:26

That's just very, very clear. When you search something and you go to a website, there are things called cookies that are bits of code that will take, it's not personal information. It's not this is your name and your birthday, and what you ate for breakfast.

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It's like this IP address visited this site, this individual becomes identified. And then we can sell the data to put them in a pool that qualifies them as a user that fits a certain category.

Leena Manro (: 23:54

Oh I see, I see.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 23:54

So you are someone who is interested in earthing shoes, therefore, you may also be interested in Kundalini yoga, right?

Leena Manro (: 24:03

Sure, yes, yeah.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 24:04

Well, this is not the best, but something like that.

Leena Manro (: 24:07

For sure.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 24:07

And then that data is bought and sold. So advertising runs on the purchase and sale of user data.

Leena Manro (: 24:16

Okay, gotcha. So every time you make an online purchase too, I would think?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 24:20

So the company that you purchase from, they own your data, that's called first-party data.

Leena Manro (: 24:23

Oh, I see.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 24:24

And you know what's been popping up, everybody's all of a sudden paying attention like, "What is this? Do I accept cookies? What are what?"

Leena Manro (: 24:30

Yes, yeah.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 24:32

If you accept the cookies, in advertising purposes, that means they can sell your data to advertiser, tech companies or brands to advertise to you.

Leena Manro (: 24:32

Gotcha.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 24:44

So that's what that means, so it's the sale and purchase of data.

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There's also another phenomenon that happens that some of these adtech companies can identify who you are in close proximity to on a very regular basis, and draw conclusions about your purchase behaviors.

Leena Manro (: 25:04

Wow.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 25:04

Yeah, yeah. So you and your spouse or your close friend or your work colleague could potentially start being served similar ads.

Leena Manro (: 25:04

Interesting.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 25:12

Or you could get something that is more relevant to them.

Leena Manro (: 25:16

So be careful who you hang out with.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 25:17

Be careful who you hang out. I mean always, but yes, in this instance, yeah. Social media algorithms can be very damaging because we've seen this in the political landscape in the US and Canada and beyond, internationally. But in terms of classifying us into consumer groups, some may say it's reducing us to consumers, but it's economics, it's business, it's what it is.

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These people are going to sell things, and I would rather be on the side using my expertise for good, so to speak. And helping businesses sell better products, products that are better for you, better for the planet. And so you will find, if you look through, if you use Instagram, your Instagram feed or your online journey within a day.

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The ads that you're getting served are going to be entirely different than mine. Maybe not entirely different, I feel like we might have some crossover.

Leena Manro (: 26:19

Maybe have some, yeah.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 26:20

I think we might. But you name it, it's very individualized and I don't think that's always a bad thing.

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And the education piece, again, I'll go back to that, I think that's really important and I think it's really useful.

Leena Manro (: 26:32

If you don't want to be inundated with terrible advertisements of things that are just not good for you, maybe start looking up things that are good. Start looking up Kundalini yoga and earthing, and grounding and healthy food alternatives.

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I don't know, and then maybe you'll be pulled into that space. I think that has happened personally to me, I think I'm in some sort of a positive vicious cycle or circle. Yeah, it's positive.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 26:59

It's self-perpetuating and that's how algorithms work, which is where they can be for absolute evil. I'll use an example, which is a silly one, but I think it's really pertinent. So Instagram can be a potentially very, very toxic place. And I made a conscious decision a while ago, I was like, "I'm going to unfollow anyone that doesn't make me feel good."

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So any content, the influencer related or lifestyle showing off or anything to do with diet or anything, I don't want any of that. So I unfollowed a lot of stuff and I followed friends, friends like real people, and then the stuff I follow is plant-based recipes and animal content. Yeah, and so it's that as the following and then engaging.

(: 27:51

So if I like or I share, I'm telling the algorithm, "I want more of this, give more of this to me." And so I will show people, "Look what I've done to my algorithm." It is when you look in the explorer section of Instagram, it's exclusively like noodle recipes and furry animals.

Leena Manro (: 28:08

Oh, that is so sweet.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 28:09

And I have trained my-

Leena Manro (: 28:10

You have the most joyful algorithm, most joyful content.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 28:12

I highly suggest it. I have trained my algorithm to feed me what makes me feel not crappy on the internet.

Leena Manro (: 28:20

That should be a campaign. It should be like train your algorithm day.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 28:20

Train your algorithm.

Leena Manro (: 28:21

Right?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 28:21

Yeah, yeah. And I say when my best friend will send me some bizarre content from online that is not on mine.

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And my response is always, "Please stop messing with my algorithm."

Leena Manro (: 28:33

People will complain about their algorithm all the time, but actually-

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 28:36

You are your algorithm.

Leena Manro (: 28:37

You are. Oh my gosh.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 28:37

Well, I don't know.

Leena Manro (: 28:42

My algorithm is also a lot of very healthy recipes, and I do like animal videos and babies.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 28:47

Yeah.

Leena Manro (: 28:47

I love cute babies.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 28:48

Yeah, there you go.

Leena Manro (: 28:49

Spiritual messages, positivity, fun songs. Yeah.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 28:55

Make it what you want it to be.

Leena Manro (: 28:55

Yeah.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 28:56

Yeah, that's great.

Leena Manro (: 28:58

I was going to ask you if you can share with us what you feel then, now that you've been with boa for over, you had said since 2012, '13, '14?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 29:14

Yeah. So 2012, and then 2017 is when I purchased the agency and grew it into what it is today. How I feel?

Leena Manro (: 29:20

How you feel the purpose has changed or maybe currently is? What would you say in just a few sentences is true to the purpose of boa?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 29:29

Yeah. Well, that's definitely changed in that we have one that's very clear. And I would say for a lot of years it was a me-too agency, as we call it, in the space where you're just scrambling for business, and trying to make a living in a really competitive landscape, and taking clients, no matter the industry vertical.

(: 29:51

Boa has a very clear vision and a clear purpose, and we don't backslide or go outside of that. And I think one of the things that really defined that crossroads where it was like, "This is who we're going to be and this is what we're going to do," is we started saying no to companies that didn't fit, or didn't align or didn't feel good.

(: 30:14

And we've even found companies that on the outside fit that bill of maybe more sustainable or community minded, maybe they weren't very nice to work for. And we won't work with them either because I'm in the business of creating, first and foremost when it comes down to it, a really happy workplace.

(: 30:33

And a strong, communicative, collaborative, mature team with really great culture. And I heard recently someone, a colleague or a client of ours posted this, and I loved it and I talked to him about it. Let me see, "Culture isn't chemistry, culture is clarity," and I think that we have that.

(: 30:59

We have communication, clarity of communication, so that's the first thing I think boa has really achieved, we've achieved as a team. We have a shared mission and vision, we have shared values. Even if you're not as gung-ho about all the sustainability stuff, like most of us are, and we find value and interest in that.

(: 31:18

And then in terms of what we're actually doing for companies, it couldn't be more aligned, so I feel really good about that in terms of where we came from. You make that decision and you go, "Okay, this is where we're going to go," and here we are.

Leena Manro (: 31:32

And how about you personally, do you feel that you are living your purpose?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 31:36

Yes, I do. And I think you had Anita Spiller on the podcast.

Leena Manro (: 31:42

We did, yes.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 31:42

Yeah, and I met her at a sustainable fashion event a number of years ago, and we've since become good friends. And I remember talking to her at that event, that was when boa was, it was our first. I think that was our brand launch, it was at this sustainable fashion event and I interviewed her for something and we met.

(: 31:57

And I remember this conversation I had with her, and she'd asked me, "Why did you start this company?" And I said, "Well, I had a kid in 2019." And it was around that time, and in the couple of years surrounding that or following that, that I started to ask myself, "What am I doing? Where's the purpose, is my inner life and my home life and my personal life?"

(: 32:24

I've been plant-based diet for many, many, many years. Like I said, I'm a relatively conscious human being. Is that aligned with what I'm doing at work to make money? And how can I make those two things more congruent? And I feel as if, back to having the kid, what kind of world am I leaving him? What can I do? Can I do something? Is there something that I can do as an advertising professional? And it turns out that there is.

Leena Manro (: 32:49

There is, yeah.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 32:55

There's a lot I can do. And to be able to get to do that and to feel good about it, yeah, I would say that we're very aligned. I was in a career for a long time prior to media buying and then in media buying, and got to a point where I was like, "What am I contributing to essentially?"

(: 33:10

Am I just going to help people spend money to get other people to buy more stuff, to contribute to the problem that is consumerism and over consumerism, I should say? And so it depends what you're advertising and it depends who you're working for and it depends what your message is. And I think advertising is as far back as the history of advertising is very interesting.

(: 33:38

I also have always been interested in advertising and how messages, this is not my wheelhouse because I'm not that creative ideator, but how different messages resonate with different groups is very interesting to me. What makes that ad go viral that we find so funny or touching or whatever? It's human connection and the power of advertising is being able to tap into something that is beyond.

(: 34:03

And some people could say it's manipulative that argument, but I find it fascinating, and so I think there are great applications for that. I'm just thinking of some other, I've got tons of examples. We've worked for a group of flooring companies that are sustainability focused in using renewables in their materials, and they want to educate people.

Leena Manro (: 34:29

That's great.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 34:30

Yeah, it's a healthy home and healthy planet. These are some materials that you should be using for reflooring your home. And so things that people aren't maybe thinking about. The family who was thinking about remodeling and doing their hardwood or their laminate.

(: 34:48

It's maybe not on their radar that they could choose a material that would not only be more environmentally responsible and healthier for their family. So I think that's great work.

Leena Manro (: 34:58

Amazing. That is great work.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 34:59

Yeah.

Leena Manro (: 35:00

That deserves to be broadcast, that deserves to be told.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 35:03

Yeah, absolutely. And there's so much out there. Its work nonprofits do. It's like BC Cancer spends a lot on advertising. I always see the big billboard ads. I have a family member who spends a lot of time in children's hospital with her two kids. And whenever I see those billboards, small but mighty, and I think, "Thank goodness someone is getting this word out and keeping it top of mind."

(: 35:25

And it breaks you from your reverie, for me anyways, driving down, getting from A to B in my little life and buying this and that, I think it can be really powerful. And then I think there's just it's education too. We're looking to educate. Nature's Path is our client and they've got a lot of brands, US and Canada. And one of their hero, made-in-Canada brands is Que Pasa.

(: 35:53

And I have a personal connection to Que Pasa because my closest family friend was the founder of Que Pasa, then they sold to Nature's Path. And so I feel there's also that level going on, the spiritual level or whatever. And they wanted to advertise that they were made in Canada so people knew during, especially back in January, February of this year, where everyone was a little bit shaken by the economic bombs that were being dropped.

(: 36:18

And I think that's important, because I was making purchasing decisions based on where things were made and who was getting my dollar. I think we all were, I think we all still are.

Leena Manro (: 36:30

Yes, I agree.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 36:31

My husband brought home the wrong kind of soy milk the other day because it was the only thing left at the store. And I was like, "No, no, we're with Earth's Own Oat Milk, that's it." Anyways, so they are running campaigns and just wrapped another one. But just advertising very simply, like Que Pasa is made in Canada.

(: 36:52

I feel good about that when my head hits the pillow at night that I'm advertising for folks like them. And at the same time, we ran these campaigns and we are taking the carbon measurement from all of the buys that we're doing primarily on paid social media. And making tweaks along the way to make them more efficient.

(: 37:12

And so it's a great example of how a company that's very mission and purpose-driven, like a Nature's Path, a big Canadian brand, is able to live their values in an area that they otherwise were not even paying attention to a year ago.

Leena Manro (: 37:30

And I love what you said earlier too, the work you're doing, the clients that you're working for, the messages that you're helping to communicate. It's nice to be able to sleep at night, isn't it?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 37:39

Yeah, it is.

Leena Manro (: 37:41

Do you have any stories about where maybe the parties might not be able to sleep at night?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 37:46

So I can speak to some of types of companies I wouldn't work for in general terms, without naming names or whether we have or have not worked with such companies.

Leena Manro (: 37:54

For sure, yeah.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 37:55

I think any company that is in the industry that is related to the harm of animals, and that's a personal thing. So meat, just can't go there, dairy, generally speaking, no. So we work with a fair bit of CPG and we tend to stick more in the plant-based or snack industry, or things that are not down that that road.

(: 38:26

I wouldn't work with a company that had a business model of promoting a great deal of overconsumption. So clothing is a tough one because for a while, we thought, "Oh, sustainable clothing brands, we would love to work with some of those." There aren't a lot because clothing is actually, the clothing industry just can't be sustainable. If you're making something new, you're making something new.

Leena Manro (: 38:46

Right.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 38:47

So that one is a little, not all, there are great companies out there doing minimal harm. And then anything like I think that the main ones that advertisers like is no tobacco, or big pharma or things like that.

(: 39:06

But really just the overconsumption vibe I am not interested in, or companies that are clearly this one, this is a bit more particular. And I'm seeing this as a trend in the food industry, which is better-for-you brands that they're masquerading as better for you, but they're really all about diet culture.

Leena Manro (: 39:30

Oh, I see.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 39:31

So wellness has become a big thing, for a long time wellness. Wellness is just diet culture in disguise. That's blanket statement, there are lots of great companies doing great things.

(: 39:41

But I've become a lot more discerning when it comes to who we want to elevate, and what messages we want to help disseminate.

Leena Manro (: 39:51

I would love to talk about some of the other things you do. For example, you host a podcast. Can you tell us about your podcast?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 39:57

Sure, yeah. We're sort of in the same way as I'm an accidental media buying expert, I'm an accidental podcaster. So we started a podcast about, I guess, two and a half years ago, something like that. And we've recorded, we're close to 80 episodes where we interview the leaders behind sustainable or purpose-driven brands.

(: 40:19

And we just give them the floor. They're short 20, 30-minute episodes and we get down to what makes them who they are. And I selfishly get to ask any kind of question that I want to ask and learn. I was saying to you before we pressed record, I get to learn a lot about a lot of different industries.

(: 40:36

And a lot of really cool companies doing innovative things, and things that I would never have even thought about if I hadn't had the opportunity. So that's something that we really love doing.

Leena Manro (: 40:47

So if you like to talk to and listen to stories about good business, come listen to more episodes of Up to so Good and also?

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 40:56

In With the New, yeah.

Leena Manro (: 40:56

In With the New, very cool. All right. Thank you so much for being on our show today.

Avril Tomlin-Hood (: 41:00

Thank you so much, Leena. Really appreciate it.

Leena Manro (: 41:02

Well, that's all the time we have for today's show. Thank you so much for joining us. And if you've enjoyed the show, please subscribe, hit the like button or share an episode.

(: 41:10

And if you have any feedback, questions or comments or show ideas, you can email us directly at Hello@AllPurpose.io. Thank you once again for joining us. We'll see you next time.