Choosing Clients
We make conscious choices in choosing who we work for.
We worked for a vaping company.
They wanted a social creative strategy and an influencer programme to promote a set of vaping products. We are a marketing company. Seemed like a good match.
We studied the regulations and industry reports in great detail across three countries and drew three conclusions:
that vaping was OK and
there needed to be a strong set of protocols, monitoring, risk assessments, training, crisis response procedures, and other governance and compliance measures on how the client and we worked and
given the above, we would work with them.
If that company came back as a client today, my vote would be not to work for them. On principle.
First time round, I was pro-vaping, as evidence showed its power as a means to reduce tobacco use. I don’t feel the same way now.
As a company, Honey does not have a policy on how we categorise clients into ones we are happy to work for and ones we are not happy to work for.
We handle clients case-by-case across our primary workplaces in Amsterdam, Shenzhen, London and Madrid, with input from the teams who work on them.
With all new clients, we start with a discussion on our terms and conditions, which make it a contractual obligation on both sides to identify the actions and share plans for supporting the UN SDGs (or ESG or CSR if the client prefers that language) and identify how working together can help us both improve.
So it could be, that we have substantive discussions with an oil company, or Coca Cola, or an arms manufacturer, and conclude that we can actually take significant steps forward in our UN SDG journey by working together.
It could be that we enter into discussions with a company from Russia, and conclude that working with them could advance us both on our UN SDG journeys. The same for a tobacco company, a fracking company, a Big Pharma company or a political party.
We have no blacklist and no company or organisation is verboten.
In principle, we will work for anyone where we have skills and approach which will work.
In principle…..but in practice we go through a number of hoops and some very tough discussions.
These are important. Each person naturally takes a view before they can commit wholeheartedly to working on a client, and people can and should have strong views, and these need airing.
It may be that in practice, when we start work and discuss Ts & Cs with the client, we may find no alignment on the role that UN SDGs should play in the client’s business. So we may decline or withdraw from the opportunity.
In practice, the client may do things during our engagement which cause us to revisit our commitment to them. (The treatment of people, use of abusive language, homophobia etc are examples of where we have issued a Call-Out to a client and gone through a disciplinary/grievance process with them to restore working practices).
In practice, we may decline a new client opportunity for a number of reasons: from their financial standing and payment history to their approach and ways of working with agencies.
In practice, we recognise that people have preferences for which we simply cannot legislate, but which we must always aim to accommodate. A person may take a principled stance against working for Liverpool Football Club, Victoria’s Secret or VW. Or against alcoholic drinks companies. Or against companies from Israel, Iran or China. Or the US. Or Unilever. Or P&G.
We respect those principled stands and we always try to align client preferences to the values of our people. Obviously.
Most people have dream clients for whom they simply love working - it makes so much sense to aggressively seek out those win-win opportunities.
Even where those principled stands are at odds with our own practice, we try to accommodate. Our wholehearted embrace of working with Chinese companies (including such names as Huawei and Alibaba Group) since we started business in 2014 has not been without issue for some people.
Sometimes there’s a clash: we champion the ethos of global trade and see the good side to working with companies from all nationalities (as do the UN SDGs - “Decent Work and Economic Growth”). We see the huge capacity for positive change that Chinese companies have embraced, so a person who does not share this approach may find it difficult, long term, to be satisfied working at Honey.
An agency business such as ours has remarkable flexibility when we put our minds to it. If we each share our personal preferences, and strive to advance our personal interests (expressed through our Personal Development Plans), we can so often find creative solutions to workstyles, work patterns, teamwork, approach and values that create surprising win-wins. We genuinely can use our partnership model to help people achieve their goals.
Despite our embedded commitment in thoughts and deeds to the UN SDGs, we are not technically a “sustainable marketing” company. I think “sustainable marketing” companies only work for clients who are “objectively sustainable”, and they make their own value judgements on which clients are objectively sustainable.
It can be quite an absolutist position. Certainly principled.
Our approach is clearly different.
We take the view, underpinned by a contractual agreement, that each client must be on a defined journey of improvement on a UN SDG path, and we figure out with them and help each other improve. We don’t only work for “perfect” clients, but also clients who are committed to progress.
We don’t judge that a client is “sustainable”. But we do judge if a client embraces improvement on the journey and commits legally with us to improve.
And if we had a formal policy - I would be certainly championing a clear framework or guideline which says:
“Our starting point is that we will work for any company where we can add value, but on one overriding condition: can we work with them to improve their commitment to and progress with the UN SDGs (or whatever they call their CSR or ESG programme).”
And yes, that would include Shell, any airline, any car company. Our mission is to specifically and proactively help 100 companies get to 2030 and we would work for any company, proudly, where we achieve that with them.