Charity and Community

We’re excited to announce our new charity partnership with Octavia, a London-based charity chosen by 23red employees. They help to connect people affected by unemployment, ill health and social isolation as well as supporting young people develop new creative and production skills and navigate their way through life.

Our charity and community activity includes:

Fundraising

We set aside 1% of agency fees which we have pledged to match our employees’ fundraising for Octavia and other charities which are important to them. We recently joined the Octavia team to take part in the Thames Bridges Trek and ran an Auction of Promises, raising a total of over £2,000 including match funding.

We’ve also had a fantastic uptake in staff Payroll Giving. We currently achieve the Gold mark, with over 10% of employees taking part.

Volunteering

We provide all our staff with 2 fully paid ‘volunteer days’. Many regularly help the ‘Bookmark Reading’ charity, while others have rolled up their sleeves to help the Ukraine Crisis appeal or to act as an “NHS Responder” throughout the pandemic.

Providing creative opportunities and knowledge sharing

Recently, we spent a day together discussing how to optimise Octavia’s social and digital presence to help reach their audience. We are also excited to work closely with Octavia's Youth Production company, Base Productions.

Blood Donation

NHSBT is a long-standing 23red client, and our staff are always free to lend a hand (or arm) donating blood during work time. Every donation saves up to 3 lives, so in 2023 we’re aiming to save 60 lives.

Sustainability and Environment

At 23red we consciously seek to minimise our impact on the environment from how we work to where we work and 23red have long been part of the advertising industry’s drive to become Ad Net Zero by 2030. Since joining Capgemini, we have become part of their group commitment to achieving carbon neutrality by 2025 for our own operations, and across our supply chain by 2030, and to become a net zero business by 2040.

Health and Wellbeing

We launched our first health and wellbeing staff survey in 2020 and will continue to seek annual improvements in our scores.

Our Health and Wellbeing Team are very proactive. They regularly host guest speakers on topics such as the menopause, post-lockdown anxiety, cyber safety and tips for healthy sustainable living. Since causes of stress can sometimes include the pressures of work, we’re working hard to remove these from our business and have signed up to Brilliant Creative Minds Code of Conduct to promote practices that protect mental wellbeing and creativity.

We champion conversations around mental health in the workplace, and provide access to Mental Health First Aiders, an Employee Assistance Programme and a suite of NABS resources.We also support employees with physical health and have introduced a second-hand bike loan scheme and we are launching a ‘Summer of Sport’ to get everyone’s hearts racing.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

We’re committed to supporting the industry wide ‘All In’ action plan with an immediate focus on improving the experience and representation of black talent, disabled talent, and talent from a working-class background.

We began working with an external DE&I specialist partner in 2021, which has been instrumental in our understanding of how agency culture can inhibit or embrace inclusivity. As part of that process, we carried out a survey and held focus groups that explored staff experiences. This work drove important changes to our policies and processes. For example, we launched a gender-neutral Shared Parental Leave policy, and our recruitment process now avoids bias wherever possible, removing any names and personal details from applications. We also addressed some of the barriers to entry by offering 90% of our roles with a part-time option, and through removing the requirement for a degree in our person specs.

Our DE&I team also launched ‘REDefined’, a monthly newsletter for staff to share their personal stories and help us learn more about other cultures and the challenges that our employees face. These have so far included hearing from staff on PRIDE and how they balance party and protest, on the meaning of Ramadan, and growing up as a British-born second-generation immigrant with mixed heritage.

We are passionate about encouraging new talent. So, we partner with Career Ready social mobility charity to offer paid internships to young people, we employ Apprentices via the PRCA, and we open our doors to young people for awareness-raising events via the IPA’s Advertising Unlocked and the Taylor Bennett Foundation.

Supply Chain Governance

Our Supplier Code of Conduct describes how we engage with our suppliers and how we expect them to act with their own suppliers. In 2022, we audited our entire supply chain to not only ensure they comply with their statutory obligations, but also to learn more about the sustainability and diversity of the people we work with. We are seeking to create positive change in the supply chain by, for example, working with suppliers to ensure we’re upholding the rights of all humans, as well as reducing carbon emissions.

We are committed to helping small and medium enterprises to grow, supporting economic growth and business creation. We’re proud to say that 93% of our supply chain are SMEs and we offer them practical financial help by adhering to the Prompt Payment Code. We also support start-ups with pro-bono creative work, strategic thinking and business mentoring.

Our social impact