Our Purpose-Led Agency of the Year didn’t enter the category.
The submission for Mother London—whose company’s calling is “Make Our Children Proud”—was so powerful that the A-List judges opted to honor the agency for living that mission for both clients and employees.
While many agencies laid off staff last year, Mother London hired 5% more employees. While others retrenched amid cloudy economic forecasts, privately held Mother awarded its staffers a 1,000-pound cost-of-living raise. With many employees coming to the office only three days a week as a result of the pandemic, Mother donated its free lunches to local charities on the other two.
“A lot of people talk about people putting people before profit, but when times are tough, they don't really stick to it,” said Katie Mackay-Sinclair, partner. “Making Our Children Proud is such a defining goal for us that it wasn't a hard decision. We're lucky that our independence means that we can do that.”
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Despite this—or perhaps because of it—the agency managed to hit its biggest income numbers to date and notch 23 new clients last year. “Our values make us feel like a [client] partner that will be with them through ups and downs, that we will really care about the people in their business and their customers versus just what we want out of work,” said Mackay-Sinclair.
In this spirit, Mother has proposed “Pitch It Forward,” an open-source plan to eliminate wasteful pitches. In return for skipping the pitch in favor of chemistry meetings, the agency has pledged to donate its first year of profit from any client adopting the plan to a nonprofit.
The agency’s principles also speak loudly in the work. Last year, while Ukrainian families fled the war and relocated to the U.K., Mother came up with the idea of working with the BBC preschooler cartoon show “Hey Duggee” to add familiar characters from a Ukrainian kids’ program. In an effort to make refugee children comfortable, Mother created a welcome episode including a song sung in both English and Ukrainian.
But that was only part of its outreach to the country. Mother made a “Defiant Dancer” art installation that showed a ballerina weighed down by hundreds of sandbags to promote the United Ukrainian Ballet’s performance of "Giselle" at the London Coliseum.
To support the United Ukrainian Ballet, Mother created Defiant Dancer—an installation featuring a real ballet dancer entombed in sandbags to symbolize the preservation and protection of Ukrainian culture back home.
“The project wouldn’t have happened without (staffers’) initiative,” said Felix Richter, chief creative officer. “They went above and beyond to make the right contacts, jumping through multiple hoops and making the impossible a reality.”
Mackay-Sinclair said the agency would reach out to counterparts in Ukraine and receive responses like, ‘“I’m sorry, it is my turn to go to the front.’” Added Chris Gallery, another partner: “They would send us a picture of them on the front lines with a rifle.”
Closer to home, the agency created an animated campaign for London transportation company Trainline that included an original song created with Craig David that asked people to skip one plane or car trip and travel by more environmentally friendly rail. It resulted in 500 people a day taking the pledge.
“I don't know if we ever would've considered entering a purpose category because we have such a nervousness that the industry has used purpose to win awards versus doing the right thing for clients,” said Mackay-Sinclair.
“I feel almost more proud that we didn't enter,” said Gallery, “because the essence of this is for us to not shout too much about us doing purposeful things, just to do them.”
