How Mother is redefining its business and pitch process around purpose

When global independent agency Mother opened its doors in London in 1996, it arrived on the scene with a unique premise inspired by the name on its shingle: “Make our mothers proud.” More than 25 years later, the agency is recentering its business around a new platform: "Make our children proud.” The evolved motto encapsulates the agency’s mission to weave purpose into its core—informing everything from talent and new business to the work and diversity and inclusion. “'Make our mothers proud' has stood us in such good stead for more than 20 years, but it feels a bit backward-looking,” said Katie Mackay-Sinclair, partner at Mother London. “It’s a really simple shift of one word—from making our mothers proud to making our children proud—but it’s helped us to rethink our whole business.” Among the offerings under the new mantra are “Pitch it forward,” a proposition that encourages clients to move away from the pitch process and toward chemistry meetings to secure appointments. In return, the agency will donate its first-year profit to a non-profit. There’s also a renewed focus on diversity and inclusion under the new platform “Kindred” and a new website, Mother Goods, that will both fund and sell “ideas that do good.” “Make our children proud” will be implemented globally at all of Mother’s five offices, located in London, New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai and Singapore. Cannes Lions 2022 Read all of Ad Age’s festival coverage here Check out our live blog here Flipping the script So why now? The initial idea came a few years ago from Mother Founder Robert Saville, according to Mackay-Sinclair. “We were having a conversation about why we got into this and he talked about wanting to do something that would outlast any of us,” she said. “He said, ‘What if we flip and stop talking about our mothers?'” That enables “your whole belief system to switch,” said Joe Staples, partner and chief creative officer at Mother USA. “Parents are an easy audience because they are proud of what you do. As soon as you say ‘Make your children proud,’ you are talking about a higher standard. If I can get my 10-year-old son to be interested, then hopefully I can get a 22-year-old interested.” Although Mother execs claim that the agency has not been affected by “The Great Resignation,” the war for talent is undoubtedly on its radar. And Mother’s new focus is indeed partly about attracting new talent, Mackay-Sinclair acknowledged. “The last two years with COVID, war and crisis have reinforced our need to be looking at the future and what kind of business we need to be to attract the best talent around the world,” she said. “How do we protect Mother and our industry? I don’t want my son to grow up ashamed of having a mother who works in advertising.” Fortunately, the agency’s independent status gave it the freedom to implement such fundamental changes. “We said let’s look at every part of our business and think about what would we do differently, what would we change, and what because of our independence we can choose to do,” Mackay-Sinclair said. Pitching it forward Changing the nature of pitching has been a hot industry topic in recent months, particularly in the U.K., where the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) and Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA) recently launched “Pitch Positive,” a joint pledge to “improve the behaviors of agencies and advertisers around pitching for the benefit of its people, the planet and profit.” Mother’s “Pitch it forward” approach will give new clients the option to forego the pitch altogether by appointing the agency on a retained basis after a chemistry meeting. In return, Mother will donate all its first-year profits from new retained clients to not-for-profit organizations that “help inspire future generations with the power of creativity,” Mackay-Sinclair said. While Mother believes both agency and clients could benefit from the time and money saved, it will be a choice for clients. “Pitching is a huge part of what we do; it’s what drives growth,” said Mackay-Sinclair. “But we also recognize that it can be a real drain of time, energy and resources, and sadly, sometimes that can be wasted.” The idea was born from the realization that the agency’s best pitch experiences had come out of positive chemistry meetings. “Like a date, you can generally tell in a chemistry meeting if you click, and the rest of it is sometimes a hoop-jumping exercise,” said Mackay-Sinclair. The Mother team would like to see this approach adopted by the industry, which has already widely been questioning the value of the pitch. “It’s an option at a time when the entire industry is talking about how do we make it better?” she said. Client pledge Another facet of “making our children proud” includes asking each and every client to sign a “pride statement,” which lists why the agency and client are proud to be working together and why this will make their children proud. “It’s about identifying what our shared ambition is and how the work we do will make our children proud,” explained Mackay-Sinclair. “It could be about working with diverse under-represented talent or dedicating some of our time to initiatives, or looking at how we can have more of a sustainability focus.” Every single Mother office will adopt the system. According to Staples, in Los Angeles, the new approach has already been making an impact; for example, it has informed the design of its new office. The agency brought in a UCLA professor to discuss the gentrification of neighborhoods and how to move into a new neighborhood in the correct way. Diversity and Inclusion Mother’s refocus also puts renewed emphasis on diversity and inclusion, in the form of a global platform dubbed “Kindred.” In local markets, this will include panels formed from a diverse group of people with "different lived experiences." In the U.S., it has formed the “Get it Right” panel, and in the U.K., the “Kindred Council.” Part of their remit is to advise on creative work. In the U.K., for example, the council advised on a recent push for Uber Eats around Ramadan. “We really deeply wanted to understand the experience around Ramadan and how your relationship with food and drink is in that particular time,” said Mackay-Sinclair. There are also several initiatives designed to make the agency’s work more representative and authentic by tapping into a more diverse talent pool. For example, in Singapore, Anak, the Singapore-based design and branding arm of The Secret Little Agency, part of the Mother agency group, developed an “Asian Creators Index” that promises to showcase the best of Asian creative talent, from artists to animators to paper crafters. And in London, a new internal tool called “Curated” will take the form of a monthly online showcase of inspiring work from diverse and under-represented directors. “We are at risk of being obsolete and extinct if we don’t find a way to bring new diverse dynamic voices into the industry,” Sinclair said. 'Mother Goods' Another new initiative from the agency is “Mother Goods,” a website due to launch later this year that will focus on creating products to make statements about cultural and societal issues. The idea is to build on the agency’s legacy of creating such products. For example, in 2013, as an act of solidarity with Russia’s LGBTQ+ community, it sent Vladimir Putin a set of Russian nesting dolls styled as gay icons like Elton John and George Michael. And in 2018, for Pride, its New York office created a t-shirt designed with ink made from the blood of its gay employees, to highlight the ban on gay blood donors. A more recent example was the Mother L.A.. initiative that created a spoof, amber-encrusted “luxury diaper” to highlight diaper tax and raise awareness for Los Angeles-based nonprofit Baby2Baby. The agency's creative team brought in Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop to publicize the idea with a fake launch that sparked global headlines until it was revealed as a stunt. “Mother Goods helped us get into the role of 'find something that you really want to talk about and disarm the conversation of the world,'” said Staples. Mother Goods will showcase such products, whether to sell them, display them as art pieces or start fundraising efforts. All will be “things you would want to send, show or own,” said Staples. It may also include products from Broody, the incubator platform Mother set up several years ago for startup brands, leading to direct-to-consumer detergent company Smol and Nursem, a skincare brand that donates a product to a working nurse for every item sold. Making the change While Mother began communicating its new approach last year to its employees and to clients, only now is it finally going public with the platform. Mackay-Sinclair is keen to emphasize that it’s not about “winning” or beating its competitors—she hopes the whole industry can learn from the changes. “A lot of this is open source, and we would like people to come with us on it,” she said. “We really need to think about the future, not just of Mother, but of our industry.” Though “Make our children proud” is a major shift, “We’ll always be Mother,” said Mackay-Sinclair of the agency’s moniker. That will stay, as will the photographs of the employees’ moms and other significant relatives that have become a characteristic feature of the agency’s offices. “There is a sense of responsibility there,” she said. “It’s also about being fit for the future, so we can look our own kids in the eye, and we can move with how the world has changed.”

How Mother is redefining its business and pitch process around purpose

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