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- Shanghai
- August 8, 2026
As the domestic advertising and outdoor media sectors accelerate their green transition, ESG has evolved from an optional CSR initiative into an imperative metric for high-quality growth. Today, brands and market players increasingly demand actionable and quantifiable local sustainability capabilities from media partners, evaluating their overall strength through green operations, compliance governance, social impact, and supply chain collaboration.
As one of China’s most credible accolades in marketing, the TopDigital Awards spotlight industry pioneers with long-term growth potential and forward-looking vision. Moving beyond creative flair and short-term traffic, the awards evaluate a company’s long-term business logic, media innovation, and sustainable social impact. The "Annual ESG Brand Award" specifically honors enterprises that seamlessly integrate sustainability into their core business models to create dual value for both the industry and urban development.
To ensure rigor and impartiality, TopDigital assembled a distinguished panel of over 180 judges spanning key sectors including food & beverage, beauty, home appliances, consumer electronics, and energy — with over 70% comprising director-level and senior brand executives. Following a multi-round evaluation across four core dimensions — local impact, commercial sustainability, benchmarking value, and long-term social contribution — JCDecaux China’s comprehensive, localized ESG ecosystem earned unanimous acclaim.
Since entering the Chinese mainland market in 2005, JCDecaux China has built a comprehensive, locally tailored, implementable and replicable ESG operating system in response to domestic urban development needs and the characteristics of the out of home media industry. Adopting “Sustainable Media” as its core development strategy, the company moves beyond the conventional out of home media model limited to merely providing advertising display space. It advances sustainability practices along three pillars: fostering more sustainable urban living spaces, optimizing environmental footprints, and building a responsible business environment. This creates a virtuous cycle business ecosystem for out of home media and continuously supports the progressive upgrading of urban living quality.
Rooted in the local market, JCDecaux China delivers a diverse set of sustainability initiatives. It procures renewable energy certificates to secure renewable energy credit coverage for electricity consumed across offices and all media assets. The company carries out energy saving retrofits for facilities and runs pilot projects for the recycling of used advertising materials. Upholding an inclusive, people centered philosophy, it has rolled out company wide training mechanisms and organizes regular safety hazard inspections and emergency drills, while maintaining a record of zero operational safety incidents. It rigorously implements end to end reviews of advertising content and improves full lifecycle supplier management systems. Drawing on its extensive media network covering metro, airport and bus sites, JCDecaux China disseminates free-of-charge public service content on environmental protection, public health, child welfare and cultural undertakings to broadly raise awareness of sustainable development principles.
This China adapted ESG system, featuring clear, quantifiable practical outcomes and reference value for industry wide replication, forms a key source of competitive differentiation for JCDecaux China. Its long accumulated practical achievements serve as important backing for the company’s TopDigital Annual ESG Brand Award and become powerful evidence of the marketing industry’s recognition of its multi year dedication to sustainable development work.
Grace Zhou, CEO of JCDecaux Mainland China, commented: “Winning the TopDigital Annual ESG Brand Award is recognition from the marketing industry for JCDecaux China’s sustainability practices. Over the years, as we have rolled out various ESG initiatives, our strategic transit partners including metro authorities, airport principals, and public transport groups have consistently offered strong support. They have recognized our sustainability efforts covering energy saving retrofits for media assets, compliant disposal of used advertising materials alongside pilot scale recycling, and regular deployment of public service advertisements. Through collaborative efforts, we strive to transform urban transport spaces such as metro stations, airports and bus facilities into low carbon, people oriented public venues. Going forward, we will continue to align with domestic urban development needs, further strengthen our in house ESG framework, continuously optimize green media operational solutions and scale up public interest communication outreach. Working together with brand clients, transit authorities and supply-chain partners, we aim to build a green, equitable and highly resilient out of home media business ecosystem. We will fully unlock the communication value of out of home media, support urban sustainable development, and lead the advertising industry in exploring new pathways for high quality, sustainable growth.”