Balancing Profit and Purpose – feat. Nice and Serious

We spoke with Duncan Morrison, Managing Director and Tim Sprague, Marketing Manager at fellow B Corp Nice and Serious as part of our series ‘Balancing Profit and Purpose’. Nice and Serious are a purpose-driven creative agency committed to making work with purpose and impact.

The purpose of our series “Balancing Profit and Purpose” is to feature fellow businesses on that mission, to hopefully inspire many more to join the movement. We showcase those companies that intend to use business as a force for good.

Helena @ ADLIB: For some background information, who are you as a business and what makes your business offering unique?

We’re a certified B Corp creative agency committed to making work the world needs. We do this by only partnering with purpose driven brands, organisations and charities. All briefs we receive are passed through our own Moral Compass, a decision making platform where the entire team votes if the project will have a positive impact. 

Helena @ ADLIB: What got you interested in joining the B Corp movement and what does being a B Corp mean to you?

What underpins the B Corp movement is a belief that businesses can and should be a force for good. Moving beyond simply making a return for shareholders, the B Corp community works to reduce inequality, lower levels of poverty, create a healthier environment, stronger communities and more jobs with dignity and purpose.

Certifications like B Corp are invaluable – they help differentiate the agencies that are genuinely committed to creating positive change, from those that display performative purpose.

Too often agencies see ‘doing good’ in a silo; perhaps trying to reduce their carbon footprint or doing pro bono work for charities. This is all admirable, but the impact we have as businesses on our colleagues, in our community, to our environment and to culture, is so much broader and more substantive. B Corp gives you a holistic framework to assess and improve the impact you have as a business.

Helena @ ADLIB: Can you share a little bit about your B Corp story, what the process was like for you?

In 2016, we went into the process confident that we’d pass with flying colours, but only scored 50/200 (you need at least 80 to pass). It revealed lots of blind spots, and we realised that many of the progressive initiatives we ran weren’t documented or incorporated into management processes. We took the time needed to get everything into place before reapplying in 2019, where we were then awarded our certification in 2020.

Becoming a B Corp is by no means an easy process. The difficulty of the process is a good thing as it forces you to engage with so many different perspectives on how your business could be having a more positive impact.