We’re excited to chat with our CEO, Ant Stonham, and Commercial Director, Dave Clarke, about ASquared’s journey to earning a B Corp™ certification. We’ll be diving into what the process involves, what it means to the company, as well as some insights and advice for other businesses considering taking the B Impact Assessment™.
It’s a chance to understand how ASquared’s values shape our work and how we blend purpose with business… So, let's dig into the heart of our B Corp story!
Ant: Becoming a Certified B Corporation has been important to both the team at ASquared and myself too. If we’re putting purpose in at least equal measure to profit and doubling down on the triple bottom line, we’re not only helping the agency but also our clients. It allows us to scale impactful businesses across the globe in a more far reaching and profound way than businesses who are purely about purpose.
For example, charities have a wonderful place in the world but they often experience issues when economies take a downturn as donators' discretionary expenditure tightens. So imagine an impact-business world that generates revenues from smart, recession-resilient, commercial strategies. These triple bottom line businesses can perceivably scale faster, further and build reserves to call on in tough times. We can then be proud to make a profit when we know that for every £1 we’re making we’re also driving a measurable and sustainable impact.
At Asquared, we can then take it a step further and re-invest those profits to aid further scale, which is what I’m personally so excited about in our B Corp future. Being able to work with startups, scaleups and entrepreneurs to put the triple bottom line in front of everything we do is energising.
Dave: The whole team at ASquared is driven by creating positive, sustainable and impactful digital products and services, which is why joining a movement where people use business as a force for good is so important to us. We feel proud when we’re doing something that changes lives, and helps the planet as well as the people on the planet. It all feels super rewarding and we see that reflected in our team as they come to life when they have an opportunity to work on a project that really makes a difference. In turn, by taking on these projects we create a magnetism where it attracts more people who are like-minded both inside (team) and outside (clients) ASquared.
Ant: At ASquared we love working with clients who have a genuine social or environmental purpose and are aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). However, that doesn’t mean we exclude those who are wanting to do more and aren’t quite there yet. Perhaps some clients want advice or are seeking to disrupt their sector to be able to bring purpose onto their roadmap. We’ve had some really lovely experiences onboarding and working with clients who have an intent to do more, but don’t know how to execute their ideas and so come to us for advice and guidance.
Dave: Being a Certified B Corp is great as it’s an external validation of what we’re saying about our digital agency through our mission and value statements. We’re not just talking about making a difference through impact or a triple bottom line, we’re actually living it now. Having this third-party validation keeps us accountable.
Dave: The B Impact Assessment in its own right is a super valuable tool to see where you are at the start of the process. For instance, we knew ASquared was roughly near the benchmark of an 80 score, the minimum score to pass, but spending some time running through the mock assessment allowed us to see some quick improvements that would take us to a level where we’d be confident to apply. However, you also need to keep in mind that there might be times you lose points during the application process too.
We also completed a British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) B-Corp Bootcamp of 5 sessions, which looked at the different areas of the assessment. This helped us to see where internal improvements could be made, however, do keep in mind that it’s the evidence that’s important for the assessment. It’s not just about answering the questions, you also have to prove your answers too.
Ant: A moment that particularly stands out to me was getting into the actual assessment stage with a B Lab™ analyst where they informed us that they were going to open up other questions/areas of assessment to ASquared due to the nature of our work. As ASquared is a service-based agency, we were hoping to gain additional points through helping clients maximise their own impact, but we weren’t entirely sure if it was a possibility. So when we were told that our purpose-driven impact business model, where we choose to work with clients who are aligned to one or more UN SDGs, would affect our score, it was fantastic.
It was also great to see that a lot of the work we had already done just to get to the start of the assessment was already helping from both an operational and disruptive standpoint. Even though the assessment backdated to years ago, we were still scoring high, which is brilliant because it means now that we’re working with even more impactful businesses, our next score will be even higher next time (hopefully!).
Ant: It will definitely affect ASquared, but for the better. We’ve developed an initial concept called our 'impact dashboard' which allows us to measure our impact and set our own targets in this realm. It is still a work in progress at this stage and not something that everyone is aware of. The idea is that it will be able to feed into individual Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and, in time, we'd love to make it available externally for others to use too. It could be easy to get distracted with business as usual, but being a B Corp solidifies our statements to the triple bottom line and increases the visibility of some operations in order to align ASquared with the movement.
Dave: Yes, now that we’re certified, of course we have to ensure we are following all the things we said we’re doing as well as evidence that we’re doing them. One of the bigger things that will come with time is deep diving into our scorings from the B Impact Assessment and everything it means to the current and future ASquared for those who are interested to learn more.
Ant: As I mentioned earlier, I'm excited to see a future where we can measure our own impact at ASquared through the projects we deliver and the clients we work with. The impact dashboard will help us visualise internally, but to get to that stage for clients too would be a dream. A lot of businesses doing good are keeping quiet about what impact they’re having for the sake of not being too bold. So, hopefully, this idea might help to navigate some of those waters.
Dave: I agree! Having the impact dashboard will make the work we’re doing more visible and bring it to life, so it’s definitely what I’m most excited for.
Ant: Yes, when we announced internally there was a wonderful response from the team, and you could see that everyone was genuinely excited and lifted by it. In some ways, that’s one of the most important things that has happened. We’ve had some inbound leads since we announced it publicly as well as recognition from our network which has just been an added bonus. Becoming a part of something official and receiving these really lovely messages was validation that we’re doing the right thing. In time, we might get the opportunity to work with some more exciting clients who are either B Corps themselves, or on that path, so to see very real things happening already is fantastic.
Dave: As our purpose-driven culture evolved over time at ASquared, our journey to becoming a Certified B Corp has kind of been happening organically in the background. It’s been trickling along and informing a lot of what we’ve been doing, so whilst it wasn’t discussed explicitly as a shift towards becoming a B Corp, it was already happening. For example, choosing which clients to work with and realising when to say no if the purpose or fit wasn’t quite right, or how we’ve changed the way we hire, as well as the importance we’ve put on developing a positive culture internally.
Ant: Slowy. Create. Symbiosis.
Take it slow and steady, be creative with any adjustments you make and engineer a symbiosis over time with the rest of your business, stakeholders and employees.
Dave: Receiving the news that we’d passed was incredibly positive and exciting. I remember sharing the confirmation email with the leadership team and asking Ant if he wanted to sign it, but he encouraged me to do it myself which gave me a real buzz. It was a moment of validation, making me think, "Yes, we’ve done it, we’re there." It was almost surreal, given the long journey we’d been on to finally reach this point.
Ant: The feeling for me was probably 25% disbelief, 25% relief, 25% "Wow, I’ve just got an A on my homework", and 25% pure excitement. So a whole mix of emotions! After that, I was super excited about sharing the news with the rest of the team, so when the time came on the company Away Day, I just couldn’t hold back my excitement and luckily it was received very well.
Ant: 100% to go to the B Lab website and fill out the mock assessment. The assessment is just a way to measure where you currently are and where you can get to. From that point, start thinking about how you can guide the business and create a natural symbiosis between the business and the criteria of becoming a Certified B Corp. As it’s not the real assessment, feel free to be as creative as you want with your answers. However, I would suggest taking your time. You do need to have a certain bandwidth within the company to deal with the process and submission, but try grazing rather than feasting on it all in one go.
Dave: That’s right. It’s got to be driven by someone within your organisation and probably within the leadership team. Otherwise, if you delegate it then you’re not seeing it as something that’s integral and important to the whole company. Assign someone to do it, set your goals for improvement based on the mock assessment, and make sure to keep coming back to it. I would highly recommend making a project plan so that you know your goals and timeline. Don’t be disheartened as there will be some areas you can’t improve on, so just focus on the ones you can instead.
If you’re making adjustments, test them over a period of time in a natural and agile way to see if it’ll genuinely be a healthy and organic part of your business with buy-in from your team, clients and stakeholders. If you rush it you might find it’s going to hold you accountable to a lot of things that aren’t right for your business.
We also had the opportunity to participate in an online monthly Environment Sustainability Governance (ESG) group with businesses who had either already become B Corps or were just starting out on their journey. Being able to talk to others about their journeys and insights was incredibly helpful and something I’d definitely recommend to others to get involved in!
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Becoming a Certified B Corp has been an incredible milestone to us at ASquared, but it’s just the beginning. Our commitment to prioritising people, planet, and profit continues to guide us every day as we strive for even greater positive impact with our clients and digital products. Check out our B Impact Assessment scores.
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