Insight:
Waste is Everywhere
When you hire a creative, communications or marketing agency, where does your money go? How much really makes it into the work you’re paying for?
From our time in multiple agencies, we’ve seen that it’s probably less than you think, and definitely less than you deserve.
Every penny that a charity or socially-driven business spends on us or any other agency could have been spent on the cause itself. So whether in the form of inefficient systems or unnecessary expenses, no one who works in this sector should abide waste.
When a successful campaign or project doubles the charity’s initial investment, that result has a real world impact.
For a homelessness charity, those funds might give someone a night of safety, or the skills to transform their future. For a medical research charity, it might become the new equipment or expertise that one day facilitates a breakthrough. For a human rights charity, it could be the pressure that leads to the release of political prisoners.
Big or small, for the world or just for one person in need, results matter. And waste stands in the way.
That’s why we founded Effective Creative.
Imagination:
Value Should Always Exceed Cost
For causes that matter, the value of our work can be tangible. It can be measured in the number of vaccines which can be administered, the ambition of biodiversity projects which can be initiated, or the scale of employment opportunities which can be offered.
The greater value we offer, the more work you can do. And your work matters. So our guiding principle is that our value should always exceed our cost.
And that’s why, as ROI goes up, only our satisfaction grows with it. Never margin.
We charge you only what it costs us to deliver.
That’s why we work from transparent budgets, with streamlined processes, and without charging for anything that does not directly benefit our clients.
We don’t spend money on permanent offices. We bill you only for the employees and hours spent directly on your project. Our project management costs are minimised by rigorous systems and modern technology. And we’ll never add margin to fixed external costs like travel, printing or media spend.
We founded Effective Creative to maximise the value of our work, whilst minimising what it costs.
Impact:
Effective Creative
Our team has wide-ranging experience in using creativity for impact at every level.
Annee has worked for institutions with the greatest top-down influence in the world, like the US Department of Justice. Alexis has worked for grassroots campaigns aiming to make change from the bottom-up, like Remain Labour and Policy People’s Vote. And Jo has worked with smaller charities making noise on a global scale, like Good Chance Theatre.
All three of us have the insight and imagination to make an impact through comms. None of us want to do it except for causes that matter.
During Alexis and Jo’s time as Creative Directors of a third-sector agency, our trio worked for many of the biggest charities in the UK, including WWF, UNICEF, Amnesty International UK, Greenpeace, the RSPB, Guide Dogs, Dogs Trust and Age UK. We also worked for small organisations we felt were doing vital work, like St Barnabas Hospice and the Royal Academy of Engineering, and for organisations that are particularly personal and meaningful for us, like Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity, Scope and St. Mungo’s.
We all believe it is a privilege to do this work. And in return, we provide the greatest possible value for money, through the best work we can do.