Case study
Reverse Media Schedules. The first media product where brands pay to disappear.
For decades, brands have invested in visibility, carefully planning where and how they show up. But there’s another kind of media that’s been unintentionally created: litter. Every discarded bottle, can or wrapper leaves behind a negative brand impression, one that damages perception and reduces value. Reverse Media Schedules transforms that problem into an opportunity, creating a new kind of media system where brands can actively remove their worst impressions from the world.
Challenge
THE AD CAMPAIGN NO BRAND EVER APPROVED.
Litter is often treated as a sustainability issue, but rarely as a marketing one. Yet research shows that when consumers see branded waste in the environment, it negatively impacts what they are willing to pay. In other words, every piece of litter is unplanned, harmful media, damaging brand equity at scale. The challenge was clear: make this invisible problem visible and measurable, shift it from CSR to core business impact, and give brands a reason, and a system, to act.
Approach
IF IT ACTS LIKE MEDIA, MEASURE IT LIKE MEDIA.
Reverse Media Schedules flips traditional media thinking on its head. Instead of paying to place messages in the world, brands can now pay to remove the worst ones.
Developed with Sea Cleaners and JCDecaux, the initiative reframes litter as a media channel, where every item represents a negative impression, and cleanup as a strategic investment that protects brand value. By combining media planning frameworks with environmental action, the project introduces a new logic: negative impressions can be identified, valued and reduced, cleanup becomes measurable media optimisation, and sustainability becomes performance-driven, not symbolic.
Solution
PROTECTING BRAND VALUE WHILE RESTORING THE ENVIRONMENT.
Reverse Media Schedules creates a world-first media model, where brands don’t buy visibility, they buy removal. Built using academic research and media modeling, the system quantifies the impact of branded litter and translates it into actionable media metrics by identifying where negative impressions occur, measuring their impact on brand perception and value, and enabling brands to invest in their removal as part of media strategy.
For the first time, environmental cleanup is integrated into the media ecosystem as a trackable, optimisable investment, not a donation. By turning negative media into a measurable liability, and cleanup into a strategic investment, Reverse Media Schedules creates a model where doing good is directly tied to business outcomes. Cleanup becomes a commercially driven decision, environmental action delivers measurable brand benefits, and sustainability and performance are aligned into a single system.
+18K
projected items removed this year
+219K
projected audience for this year not reached
75%
of consumers say they’d view a brand more favourably if it supported clean-up efforts
Results
Won Silver Lion Cannes Creative B2B Lions, and Finalist for Cannes Titanium Lion, which celebrates game-changing creativity.
