Kingdom & Sparrow:
Behind the B
This month is officially B Corp month. It’s a time when over 4,600 B Corp certified companies around the world raise awareness of what it means to be a business committed to creating a better world.
We were lucky enough to work with Nice and Serious, and innocent’s creative team to create this year’s campaign – Behind The B. The campaign is designed to give the public a sneak peak into what goes on behind the certification and what it means for their customers and clients.
Behind our B Corp activities
Being B Corp should be ingrained in an organisation’s culture rather than just a series of tick boxes, but there are some great and relatively easy activities and policies anyone can undertake to improve their positive impact on people and planet. Here are some of the ways we make sure we’re living our values…
Sustainability Initiatives
- Making sustainability measurable and easy through real activities and processes, so that it’s more than just a general policy
- Getting recycle points in every room and a TetraPak recycling point to make it really easy for the team to recycle
- Buying from ethical and sustainable office suppliers
- Being part of a cycle-to-work scheme to cut down team emissions (and helps wellbeing too)
- Having membership with Ecovadis and Ecologi to be climate positive
- Using a sustainable energy supplier
Team Culture & Industry Wellbeing
- Making sure we have a team charter and the right policies in place that empower and benefit the team and make doing their work easy and enjoyable – for example our team-agreed values and behaviour charter has been really beneficial to everyone
- Organising regular team events and away days – one-off days like boat trips are great, but we also do regular pub visits, life drawing lessons and our PPP days once a month (Pasty, Pint and (litter) Pick)
- Promoting our Think Feel Creative website for mental health awareness in the creative industries
- Embracing transparency and team collaboration on our business goals and journey
- Empowering internal culture ambassadors to drive our culture
- Have an Employee Assistance Programme as well as gym membership and an NHS top-up plan for the team
- Share our thought pieces on industry wellbeing and helpful info for creatives
Community Support
- Undertaking pro-bono work locally that can have a big impact – we’ve worked over the last year with the amazing Sea Sanctuary
- Supporting community charities and environmental activists like Surfers Against Sewage
- Donating to local charities like the Cornwall Wildlife Trust
- Buying from and promoting local suppliers as much as possible
Why B Corp is good for us
As agents of positive change for our clients, our communities and our planet, we know that successful businesses have the power to hugely impact our world for the better. Being B-Corp Certified means that we’re part of a global movement of business, accountable for our people and our planet, not just our bottom line.
For us, being part of the B Corp community is a way of showing commitment to our team, our clients and our partners, and that we’re not only doing good, but striving to do better for all our stakeholders. It creates a benchmark by which we can measure ourselves and helps us make better decisions about what we do, how we do it and who we do it with.
It has great benefits for us as a business too. It helps us to attract and retain hugely talented people, because they know we care about them, their wellbeing and the community around them. It also helps us to connect with other like-minded businesses, to create great projects like the Behind the B campaign. And it helps us to attract the right clients, the ones who share our values and are putting something better into the world.
Why is it good for our clients (and their customers)?
As a branding agency, being B Corp certified means we’re well placed to connect people to our clients’ brand purpose. We understand that a business is more than just its product offering – people want to engage with brands on a deeper level than the purely functional.
That’s why we work with brands that are at a point of critical change – change opens up opportunities to connect more deeply and authentically to people’s values and purpose and create better, more meaningful choices for consumers.
We work with a lot of product-focused companies, and we therefore design a lot of packaging. Our certification is a reminder to us and an assurance to our clients that we will work with them to find more sustainable options and ethical suppliers, and give careful consideration to what we’re helping them to put out into the world.
It also means our clients know they’re working with an ethical company. For businesses who want a transparent, positive supply chain and want to future-proof their brand as a force for good, working with a B Corp certified agency is a no brainer.
Why is it good for everyone ?
You don’t need to be B Corp certified to be an organisation that’s dedicated to more than just profit. There are many wonderful companies out there having a positive impact on the world. However, it is a way to know for sure that a company you work with or buy from is part of a global movement of businesses, accountable for people and planet, not just the bottom line.
No certification is perfect. But the rigorous process of attaining B Corp certification means you have to look at all facets of your business operations from your suppliers, to your community, to your employment practices to your sustainability. It’s thorough and it makes it very hard to greenwash or fluff your way through. Especially as every year you produce an impact assessment that proves you’ve been taking action, not just talking.
For small businesses like us, it’s helping us measure our impact properly, improve our policies and change our approach for the better. We’re proud to be part of this network and we’re proud to be able to put our values at the front of what we do.
Ultimately it means more transparency in business, more accountability to people and planet, better choices for consumers and profits that benefit everyone.
