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Becoming a Sustainable Marketing Company

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At Flock we are committed to positive change not only for our clients, but also for the Industry and the wider world. After doing a lot of research on what a Sustainable Marketeer looks like, we recently released our findings in a whitepaper, which can be downloaded below.

We want to try our best to put our findings into practice, so here is our list of sustainable actions we’ve been doing or will now be doing at Flock. We’re not perfect by any means, and we want to do more, but being transparent is part of our pledge to be accountable.

Economic Sustainability

How do we ensure that we are economically sustainable, and encourage our business partners to be economically sustainable?

Internal:

  • We have a clear purpose for the company, values and personality that drives our behaviours
  • Run a bonus scheme for staff based on sustainable profits
  • Put employees and shareholders on equal footing when it comes to rewards
  • Have a balanced scorecard for the success of the company, don’t just focus on profit
  • Maintain balance of full time and freelance staff to ensure financial flexibility
  • Key staff have option to gain share options, through salary sacrifice
  • Clear client charter, staff and freelance guides to ensure projects go well and hit budgets
  • Clear goals and accountabilities
  • Client Net Promotor Score (NPS)
  • Increase our fees to allow for staff pay rises, training, and development
  • Invested in technology to offset peaks and troughs of consulting revenues
  • We pay our taxes
  • We pay our suppliers fairly and promptly

External:

  • Ensure clients make fair commercial agreements with agencies (use our Flock Agency Scoping Tool to benchmark rates, and build clauses into contracts)
  • Ensure clients and agencies follow commercial best practise (anti-fraud, laundering, tax etc)
  • We push for transparency in all business relationships using our tools (Flock Agency Scoping Tool, Flock Agency Appraisal Tool, Flock Skills Assessment Tool) to build enduring and smart commercial relationships
  • Ensure our clients act for the long term, not just the short term
  • Provide a Sustainability survey and benchmark for client and agency leaders
Environmental Sustainability

What do we do to ensure environmental sustainability?

Internal:

  • Recycle paper
  • Reduced paper usage
  • Recycle waste
  • Ask Clients to ask Agencies about their policies, and enshrine in contracts
  • Off-set all flights with active tree planting schemes with a goal of being Carbon Neutral Certified by Natural Capital Partners
  • We volunteer at the London WildLife Trust to improve Biodiversity
  • We are committed to and actively support the Get Nature Positive program

External:

  • Build Sustainability Questions into Agency Appraisals ensuring the envirnmentally positive processes are followed
  • Push for products and services that are environmentally positive (not just less bad)
  • Ensure each annual agency resourcing plan has a CO2 calculation and push for minimisation and tree planting offsets
  • Ensure every production, or print job uses a CO2 calculation and pushes for minimisation and tree planting offsets
Cultural Sustainability

How do we ensure that we are building a rich and rewarding culture, celebrating the artists and artisans that make the work a better place?

Internal:

  • Cultural trips
  • Pay for imagery and other rights used

External:

  • Push for original art/imagery over recycled or re-used stock imagery
  • Push for support for independent Artists and Agencies
  • Push for linkage between Advertisers/Agencies and local creative communities
Societal Sustainability

What do we do to ensure broad societal sustainability and growth?

Internal:

  • Equal opportunities by gender, race, religion, age
  • We seek job applications and internships from all backgrounds, using diverse recruiters to ensure viable candidates representative of our places of work. We have signed up to Disability Confident UK
  • Offer learning and development plans for all staff
  • Offer £1000 per annum for all staff to grow as people
  • Have guests and staff talks on diversity, inclusivity, gender topics, etc
  • Regular appraisals, clear career paths
  • Annual pay reviews
  • We match Staff commitment to a pension plan
  • Clear complaints procedure
  • x2 a year staff satisfaction survey

External:

  • Appraise agencies on Diversity and Inclusion
  • On client demand audit Agency staffing for diversity
  • On client demand audit Agency output for diversity (media spend & delivery, creative representation and production spend)
  • Push for inclusive ways of working and tools via our pitch work
  • Try to include Diversity and Inclusion commitments and clauses in all client/agency contracts