Better prompts save time and carbon | The real cost of AI with Seb Royce

This webinar explored how marketers can use AI more sustainably through better prompt engineering, right-sizing AI models, and understanding their AI supply chain. We cover the environmental impact of large language models, data centre energy use, and how tracking prompt efficiency acts as a sustainability intervention. Topics include conscious creativity, digital carbon footprint, work footprint, and practical steps for reducing AI energy consumption at work.

Every time AI comes up in a marketing conversation, someone asks: "But what about the planet?" This webinar is the answer to that question.

Seb Royce, Creative and Communications Partner at Eden Lab, joined us as someone who's been sitting with this tension for years. He loves AI. He uses it every day. But he's also a marketer who audited his own work footprint, took a course at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainable Leadership, and came out the other side with a framework he actually uses. Not a list of things to feel guilty about. A practical way of thinking about the choices you're already making.

Timestamps:

00:00 - Progress Not Energy Stats

01:22 - Introducing Seb Royce

03:56 - State of Sustainability Now

13:38 - AI and the Environment

17:17 - Should We Worry

18:27 - Right-Sizing AI Models

22:58 - Writing Better Prompts

25:58 - Your AI Supply Chain

29:53 - Q&A Begins

33:44 - Persuading Colleagues

36:01 - Tracking AI Usage

43:02 - AI Search vs Legacy Search

44:58 - Risk Reward and the Guinness Ad

50:13 - Final Thoughts

Watch / listen:

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-meetup-podcast/id1365546447

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5QvmFdxg5pMwsfPkKjhXl9

The Marketing Meetup thrives for many reasons, but one of the crucial reasons we're able to do what we do is because we have the support of some incredible individuals from some equally inspiring companies. Below is the list of our partners in crime: our amigos. All we have to say is a big, massive, thank you.

Cambridge Marketing College – The place to go for marketing qualifications (CIM, CIPR) and marketing apprenticeships. Cambridge Marketing College have supported us since day one, and are an unbelievably kind bunch of people.

Frontify – The Frontify DAM simplifies brand workflows so marketing teams can deliver engaging experiences on a global scale, fast.

Planable – Planable keeps your content in one calm place. It gives everything one home — what's going out, what's being tweaked, what's scheduled, and what's still an idea.

Mailchimp – The leading platform to help you grow your audience, improve automation, and prove ROI more clearly.

Wistia – A complete video marketing platform that helps teams create, host, market, and measure their videos and webinars, all in one place.

Prismic – A CMS designed for content teams that move quickly and scale without creating more mess.

Canva – An online design and publishing tool with a mission to empower everyone in the world to design anything and publish anywhere.