We’re exceptionally proud to be one of just 25 B Corp PR agencies in the UK; a status that has given us laser focus in terms our policies and sits at the heart of everything we do. Being B Corp isn’t just about being ‘green’ or ‘eco’ – it’s about being completely transparent in the way you run your business. No-one understands the process better than our CEO Victoria Ruffy, currently serving as one of the judges in the sustainability category at this year’s PR Week Best Places to Work Awards. Vic was invited to contribute to Vuelio‘s white paper exploring sustainability and social responsibility, ‘Paying It Forward With Your PR’; check out the full interview below to learn a little more about Little Red Rooster’s B Corp experience, what it means to us as a business and how likeminded brands can get involved.
Explain a bit about what B-Corp status is and what it means to you?
B Corp, for business, is what Fair Trade is to coffee. It means we are part of a group of change-makers committed to doing better and supporting a range of environmental and social issues. It goes beyond the idea of being âgreenâ or âecoâ and is about being transparent in your business â doing things the right way. Most importantly, this process has been independently verified by a dedicated team of analysts, so itâs not just something we have claimed ourselves, rather, something we have genuinely earned off our own merit.
What led you to start the journey to becoming a B Corp?
I noticed a lot of brands I respect and admire â Coat Paints, Aesop, Patagonia and House of Hackney, to name a few â had B Corp status, so I started digging. As a service-based company, I thought it may not be an opportunity for us â we donât have a manufacturing process or shipping procedure where we can make an immediate, obvious impact. However, once I started researching B Corp I saw it was absolutely something we could get involved in.
What does achieving the status involve?
It was a lengthy process â for us it took about two years â however I believe there was some post-Covid backlog. Itâs a comprehensive and rigorous process â but thatâs a good thing. It means brands canât simply greenwash to achieve this status â you must perform an internal audit and provide evidence for everything you do across different aspects of the B Corp certification, from the team and customers to the local community and environment. I worked very closely with our head of operations throughout the process, who took what I wanted to achieve and helped bring the vision to life!
Do you think it will make a difference to clients and the people who work with you as an organisation in future?
Itâs been a hugely galvanising project for our team and something for us to all get behind. As a company, we host quarterly âEngagement Multiplierâ surveys â an anonymous survey that is distributed among our team to ask for feedback on the company. Weâve seen from this the support the team has for the project and it helped us achieve our highest ever score for the company, suggesting people are really engaged with B Corp and what weâre trying to do. Our clients have been super supportive and very responsive, and itâs even encouraged some to apply themselves, which is brilliant.
Would you advise other agencies and brands to go B Corp?
100% â there are only about 25 agencies in the UK that have this status â equivalent to just 0.4% of the PR industry! However, you need to practise what you preach to ensure it doesnât dilute the work and efforts of others genuinely trying to make a difference â you canât just swap your typical PR sample packaging for recycled brown paper and say youâre B Corp. Thereâs so much more to it than that.
Why is ethical business practice so much more important than ever before?
To be frank, PR often has a negative and unfair reputation. We need to change this perception and for Little Red Rooster I wanted to stay true to our agency values. I always had a vision of running a company with a strong team, awesome clients and impressive results but also that did things the right way. We do things a little differently to other agencies by offering guaranteed results as just one of our promises to clients; we pre-agree a KPI with clients and offer a money-back guarantee if we donât hit this (although, weâve never had to refund a client â ever!) Many brands come to us having been burnt by PR in the past and itâs my mission to change their experience.
Will the values of being a B Corp feed through to the internal structures and team?
Weâve appointed an in-house B Corp Champion, who works with me monthly to review our current policies and practices and look at the next things we can do to improve. I donât want to stand still â Iâm always looking ahead to the next thing we can do within our B Corp journey. We then share this with the team within our monthly team meeting to ensure everybody feels involved in what weâre doing. For our senior team, itâs given us a laser focus in terms of brands we want to work with; historically our response to new business has been fairly reactive as weâre fortunate to have great relationships with media and clients who often recommend us to brands needing support. Itâs given us the confidence to be a little bolder and punchier to go out there to meet the brands we
want to work with who share the same values as us. Whatever level of the team youâre looking at, everybody is doing their bit to make a difference, from recycling the weekend and daily papers we read together as a team to our HR department reassessing our employee benefits to ensure weâre a great place to work. Itâs brought us together.
Can you give an example/examples of cause-led comms/social impact PR that youâve worked on at Little Red Rooster and the successes measured?
Some of the proudest campaigns weâve worked on in this space are those that are small, independent brands who really led the charge against their larger competitors. One of the first brands we worked with was an Austrian sunglasses brand called neubau which launched the worldâs first fully sustainable collection made of castor oil extract in fully recyclable packaging. Neubau really opened our eyes up to brands being brave to do things differently and pioneered this movement many years ago, years before many of its larger competitors. It made us far more aware of fashion brands that arenât doing things responsibly and helped us really understand a point of difference between those that do make huge strides in this space and have the evidence and data to prove it, and those that simply claim to be sustainable. Over the course of three years we generated 253 pieces of press coverage for the brand â almost 150 pieces above our preagreed KPI. Neubau enjoyed prominent placements among some of the UKâs most prestigious national and fashion titles â including London Evening Standard, Mail on Sundayâs YOU Magazine and Wallpaper*. For a little-known eyewear brand that faces huge competition from major fashion brands with large advertising spends, this is no mean feat.
To find out more, you can download Vuelio’s complete white paper, ‘Paying It Forward With your PR’, here.
