Skip to main content

Doing Good

2023 Impact Report

Four years in. First year a certified B Corp. This is the story behind our last 12 months of digital creativity meeting real-world impact, keeping our focus on the our community and the planet.

Main Site
A photo of a river

Leadership Letter

01 Introduction

The past year has been truly exciting for us, and I'm sincerely grateful to B Corp for opening up opportunities for us to learn, gain inspiration, educate ourselves, and challenge our limits. Most importantly, it has enabled us to take meaningful actions and transform into a business that's a force for good.

We had so much positive feedback on becoming a B Corp, not only from our clients, but from our suppliers, friends, family and other B corps. Suddenly our inboxes were full of emails from people and businesses that we didn’t know, welcoming us to the community. All of this helped foster a positive company culture towards B Corp.
We’re now actively incorporating improvement of the B Corp areas into our business strategy and future goals. However, this transformation did not occur overnight; it’s taken us the past year to really solidify our thinking in this direction. After our certification, we were bursting with great intentions and ideas, which at times felt overwhelming and made it difficult to focus on our priorities. Our year has been full of distractions; we saw the cost of living crisis impacting health and wellbeing, the wider adoption of AI changing the creative landscape and the way we work in terms of our people and environment doing a 180º.

So that's why our entire team educated themselves on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to help us refine our focus and determine how we can make the most significant impact as a business. We involved the entire SF team in selecting the SDGs they are most passionate about, resulting in three specific goals that are now driving our business decisions and strategy. And we've established a dedicated B Corp Action team to implement our SDG goals. We’re genuinely excited about our ambition to create achievable goals and make a meaningful impact in these areas.

Additionally, this year we've committed to initiatives like Clean Creatives, Design Declares and the Menopause Pledge, which I'm proud to support this year. These initiatives provide valuable guidance through shared information and value-driven decision-making. One of our ongoing challenges is increasing the number of female designers in our business and encouraging their participation in our industry as a whole. As our team has grown this year, this challenge has become even more apparent. By openly articulating our commitments, we hope to initiate positive change.

I genuinely see a clearer direction for SF’s future impact and know that we have the people and the desire to drive forward small but significant differences for people and the planet.We look forward to sharing them with you.

Bryony 🖤

Bryonys Signture
02 Journey to certification

Our Journey to
becoming a B Corp

asset

At the back end of 2022, we reached the end of a year-long journey: Something Familiar became a B Corporation. We did it because we wanted a concrete way to demonstrate that we’re a creative agency with a conscience; something more than just our say-so. Being a B Corp shows that we’re part of a growing group of businesses worldwide which are working positively to create the kind of world we want to live in: one full of opportunities.

But becoming a B Corp wasn’t just a way to underline our ethical stance. It was a natural next-step in our growth as a business too.

Why did we choose to do this?

Our vision is to redefine what it means to be an agency. To create a positive space where open, honest relationships come before anything else. Where change is inspired by creativity. And where every single decision is made consciously.

Being a B Corp shows that we’ve been independently verified against a series of benchmarks. It’s the only certification that measures a company’s entire social and environmental performance. It’s a way for a business like us to turn our commitment to growing the business sustainably, into a framework which supports, encourages and celebrates our progress.

It’s something real and tangible that shows Something Familiar stands for business beyond the usual.

We’re here to support our team, our clients and the planet. And we’re always looking for ways to do that as effectively as possible. To us, that looks like making conscious decisions in ways that have been properly considered. Our culture is underpinned by transparency, because it inspires trust. Which is essential. What’s more, we’re mindful of well-being of every kind, because our people are our priority. After all, we couldn’t do any of this without them.

The impact on our business

Becoming certified was validation that our values were in the right place and that our vision to redefine what it meant to be an agency was on its way. It’s great that now we know where we’re heading, everyone is excited to be involved and has their part to play.

We had so much positive feedback, not only from our clients, but from our suppliers, friends, family and other B corps. We’ve been inspired by the community and loved finding ways to collaborate. If we're not doing something, someone else is doing it and we love to be challenged!

With this framework in place, we ‘re optimistic about the future and we feel good about saying that we’re working towards making a positive impact. B Corp has made us be introspective as a business, so that we celebrate our successes, learn from our challenges and motivate ourselves for more.

04 Our B Corp Score

80.3

  • Goverance 15.2
    • Mission & Engagement 0.7
    • Mission Locked 10
    • Ethics & Transparency 4.5
  • Workers 26.8
    • Financial Security 0.7
    • Career Development 10
    • Engagement & Satisfaction 4.5
    • Health, Wellness, & Safety 4.5
    • Career Development 4.5
    • Engagement & Satisfaction (Salaried) 4.5
  • Goverance 15.2
    • Mission & Engagement 0.7
    • Mission Locked 10
    • Ethics & Transparency 4.5
  • Workers 26.8
    • Financial Security 0.7
    • Career Development 10
    • Engagement & Satisfaction 4.5
    • Health, Wellness, & Safety 4.5
    • Career Development 4.5
    • Engagement & Satisfaction (Salaried) 4.5
  • Goverance 15.2
    • Mission & Engagement 0.7
    • Mission Locked 10
    • Ethics & Transparency 4.5
  • Workers 26.8
    • Financial Security 0.7
    • Career Development 10
    • Engagement & Satisfaction 4.5
    • Health, Wellness, & Safety 4.5
    • Career Development 4.5
    • Engagement & Satisfaction (Salaried) 4.5
  • Goverance 15.2
    • Mission & Engagement 0.7
    • Mission Locked 10
    • Ethics & Transparency 4.5
  • Workers 26.8
    • Financial Security 0.7
    • Career Development 10
    • Engagement & Satisfaction 4.5
    • Health, Wellness, & Safety 4.5
    • Career Development 4.5
    • Engagement & Satisfaction (Salaried) 4.5
05 Ambitions
06 Looking Forward