Recently returned from B Corp Assembly, the largest gathering of B Corps in Australia, B Corp comms agency Good&Proper founder Oliver Pelling shares his reflections on what Adland stands to learn from the purpose-driven movement.
If you’re lucky enough to be alive in 2025, you might have heard that there are a handful of things threatening the very foundations of our existence.
These things are big and complex and I’m not here to convince you of them one way or another, but they can be loosely summarised as: the climate crisis, biodiversity and ecosystem collapse, rampant geopolitical instability, turbulent economic conditions, growing inequality, declining trust in political institutions and roughly 100 per cent more fascism than I am personally comfortable with. Oh, and AI.
Combined, these issues are known as the polycrisis, which speaks to the way in which each crisis interacts with, impacts and accelerates the others, making them immune to our quaint attempts at singular solutions (like beach clean ups, carbon offsets or ‘ride to work’ days). A systemic re-adjusting is what’s required, if not a little tricky to orchestrate – 50 years of maximising shareholder value at the expense of basically everything else has left us in a bit of a pickle.
In light of our existential pickle, the thought of sitting in a field with 250 strangers might feel like a catastrophic waste of time. But having just returned from B Corp Assembly – the largest gathering of B Corps in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand – I can say, with confidence, that the opposite is true.
Taking place in the Glenworth Valley on Darkinjung country, this three-night camping ‘conference’ consisted of panels, breakouts, workshops, fire pits, dance parties, light shows and more, and aimed to help Australia and New Zealand’s B Corp community connect and learn from one another.
Don’t get me wrong, B Corps – businesses that have been certified as meeting higher social and environmental standards – alone won’t get us out of this mess, but the movement at least provides a formidable and rapidly accelerating alternative to the ‘economy’ part of the polycrisis puzzle.
I learned heaps at Assembly. But the one point I keep coming back to is that we need more communicators who understand the urgency (and opportunity) of this moment. There are so many incredible organisations doing world-changing work, and we need more creative, comms and PR leaders and founders to lean in and help those organisations share their stories and ideas with the world.
“Our industry holds the microphone – we shape belief and behaviour,” Natalie Dean-Weymark, co-founder of B Corp Compass Studio said when I asked her for input on this article. “If used responsibly, that influence can accelerate real progress faster than almost any other sector”.
Natalie’s not wrong. Australian brands spend billions of dollars on advertising every year. The economy is made up of the many purchasing decisions, small and large, that the Australian public makes each day.
Those decisions are shaped by the messages those Australians receive. And this industry controls the vast majority of those messages. What if more agency leaders and creatives refused to work with harmful or wasteful industries and found ways to dedicate their time and resources to promoting solutions or sustainable alternatives? What if we did more to encourage our clients to focus on messaging, products and services that actually make things better?
There’s no shortage of organisations out there doing the work that could shift our economies and societies for the better, and a great many of them lack the creative and storytelling chops to let the world know about all the good work they’re doing. This is why I started Good&Proper five years ago. We exist to help purpose-driven organisations amplify their ideas, stories and solutions so they can achieve outsized impact.
The most exciting part about this space isn’t the opportunity to land a dream B Corp partner like Patagonia or Who Gives a Crap, but to help create the next Patagonia or Who Gives a Crap. More brand, creative and strategic comms support for these outfits means more customers, more funding, more coverage and more resources. But this isn’t a pump-and-dump campaign theme – you have to walk the talk.
“Build it into your business strategy. Because reputation without proof is just noise, and audiences see through it now,” Dean-Weymark added.
Australian B Corps collectively contribute $19 billion to the Australian economy and employ over 56,000 people. The likes of R.M. Williams, Kathmandu, Patagonia, Intrepid Travel, Blackmores, Lion and hundreds of others have certified, proving that it is entirely possible “to do good while doing well”, as Natalie put it.
Industry pundits like Eugene Healey and Nick Asbury have criticised ‘wokeism’ and purpose in marketing in recent years, but these salvos almost always miss the point: one-off campaigns from gargantuan brands that are hard-wired to chase the zeitgeist in their quest for relevance cannot be compared to organisations that have integrated purpose into their operations, supply chains, constitutions and business models.
The steady rise of B Corp proves this is closer to an economic recalibration than a trend – the real shift is currently happening inside businesses, not on the billboards they’re buying. And the need to tell those stories is increasing. For an industry obsessed with relevancy, adland is missing its biggest opportunity, and the most exciting brief of our generation.
“Advertising, marketing and PR plays a critical role in the frontlines of climate, environmental and social issues through the power of transformative storytelling. To truly shift systems, we need to decolonise our thinking,” Wayne Denning, a proud Birri and Guugu Yumidhirr man and founder of Carbon Creative, a B Corp creative agency he started over 20 years ago, said.
Jonny Clow, founder of B Corp Silver Linings Agency and no stranger to ‘traditional’ adland, shared a panel at Assembly with representatives from Lion and the newest B Corp, North Melbourne Football Club and Intrepid Travel. Ever the advocate for collectivism, Jonny railed against the idea that institutional agencies can’t or won’t step up, in spite of the risks.
“Purpose comes to us at different stages of our lives and careers, and there are many compromises – chiefly reduced revenues and profits – that for many will mean ‘no thanks’. But there’s a growing movement for our industry to do its bit. We can see it in the increase of creative B Corps in Australia,” he said.
We can’t decolonise our thinking overnight. But we can decide to start focusing our time, energy and creative resources on supporting solutions-oriented organisations today. We can decide to push our agencies, our teams and our clients to prioritise campaigns and messages that seek to fix things and not just sell things.
Granted, markets are turbulent right now, job security is a genuine concern, and many agencies are walking the tightrope between breaking even and barely making payroll. But those conditions should serve as more motivation, not less – the issues we’re facing aren’t going away. And the agencies, businesses and individuals who help people solve those issues will, in time, turn out to be the most resilient, the most necessary and the most relevant.
I just spent three days in a field with 250 organisations that can prove it.
