Our second B Corp Month event – How to Scale a B Corp and … speakers rise to the vagina challenge
Speaks top left to bottom right: Pippa Glucklich - Electric Glue, Ewan Douglas - Channel 4, Bruce Crouch - Green, Black & White, Susan Allen Augustin & Tara Chandra - HereWeFlo, Lisa Boyles - giffgaff, and Helena Houghton-Casella - Open Media
We’ve all heard of the game where you must get a pre-agreed word into a presentation. At the Edinburgh TV Festival one year a speaker was tasked to include the word ‘cunt’, which he did by asking the audience what words were banned by the BBC.
In partnership with Open Media, we held our second B Corp Month event on 26 March at Uncommon. Our speakers talked to a clear theme: “Secrets of Scaling a B Corp”.
The word our speakers repeated was vagina. Not because it was an excuse to juice up their presentations. Vaginas, and vulvas for that matter, are part of the daily business language for two of our presenters.
They are Tara Chandra and Susan Allen, the brilliant co-founders of Here We Flo. They spoke about how they conceived and designed a category-busting menstrual care, bladder care and condom brand, regularly saying vagina and vulva in investor presentations, how they have become an award-winning advertiser and importantly, what is coming next.
Flo’s mantra of “fiercely natural care for life’s messiest moments” has seen them target the mass market, in stark contrast to other brands in the sustainable menstrual care space. Last year, they made their debut in Tesco and Sainsburys, where 70% of period care is purchased.
Charismatic co-founders, Tara and Susan (who is Chief Brand Officer) really understand the power of advertising. As winners of the Sky Zero Footprint Fund in 2021, they made their £1m TV debut in 2022, using Sky’s TV, VOD and Adsmart channels.
Here We Flo partnered with creative agency Hatch London to bring the “period drama” commercial to life. The idea was to whimsically create a parody of a Victorian-era dinner party, inspired by the aesthetics of shows like Bridgerton, all to bring the power of broadcast to their natural and biodegradable sanitary products.
The Grocer’s 2024 Health & Beauty Brand of the Year, we think Here We Flo brings meaningful difference and excitement to the staid period care category.
Bruce Crouch, Creative Partner at Green, Black & White is the multi-awarded creative director who helps brands like Here We Flo make sustainability a black and white choice. He is an angel investor in Flo and other ethical brands including Ocean Bottle. At Hatch, he created Flo’s TV ad. “The thing that can slide down the agenda with these businesses is the brand,” says Bruce. “But Tara and Susan understand that strong brands are more successful, less reliant on their founders, and more appealing to buyers.”
Lisa Boyles, Head Of Go To Market and Media at giffgaff is a wonderful spokesperson for the no-nonsense mobile network with good value, good tech and good business at its heart. She set out the key media behaviours giffgaff put in place as it scaled up in 2023, backed up by becoming a B Corp.
Ewan Douglas, Head of Sales & Business Development at Channel 4, was our closing speaker. He told us how B Corps that successfully meet criteria laid out by Channel 4 and B Lab UK can win commercial airtime on Channel 4 as part of its advertising showcase, aligning with the broadcaster’s remit to champion unheard voices, innovate and take risks, inspire change, and stand up for diversity. More details here.
At Electric Glue we champion the power of media to grow brands. It seems to us that a lot of the knowledge around how to build strong brands, whether they are B Corps or not, is often ignored in media strategies and delivery.
If you're interested in continuing this conversation further, we would love to hear from you and share more of our point of view and experience.
And when we meet, we promise to talk vaginas – and vulvas. See what we did there?
Susan and Tara’s key takeaways: You are your brand! And your brand is fluid, it has phases. It can build future demand, the route to scaling up. It can protect you from competitors, like a moat around your business. It facilitates opportunities to grow so, as a minnow, you can behave like a market leader and target the mass market. It attracts talent.
Bruce’s key takeaways: There is climate change fatigue so don’t preach, use humour in advertising. Four million TikTok views are no substitute for a well-crafted and original TV campaign.
Lisa’s key takeaways: giffgaff’s business strategy is about value and values. Get the balance of media channels right so that it is both broad and focused. Choose your media partners carefully to prioritise responsible reach and campaign emissions measurement.Help drive industry change through initiatives like Ad Net Zero.
