NEWS BITES
From engineering innovation in Africa to climate, nature and culture-led communications.
A round up of some recent work across our group, shaping how organisations build trust, relevance and impact.
All posts by twgroupgavin
GONG’S PRO-BONO SERVICES BOOST IMPACT OF CLIMATE ACTIVIST’S EPIC JOURNEY
Though our Impact Committee which oversees our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) work, Gong Communications, a Wilful Group company provided pro-bono support for climate activist Craig Cohon and his Walk it Back campaign.
After decades of living decadently, the businessman and ex-Coca Cola executive vowed to remove his entire lifetime worth of carbon emissions. As part of this promise, Craig made a tremendous 4,250km walk from Europe to Asia on a fact-finding adventure to create the world’s biggest dialogue on carbon removal and its role in the fight against climate change.
In the lead up to the finish line in Istanbul on 5th June, Gong worked alongside Craig and the Walk it Back team to provide media relations and boost impact, achieving top tier coverage in Sky, Independent, Daily Mail, Yahoo and over 300 international and UK outlets. Gong also provided a social media toolkit for Walk it Back’s partners and additional support with blogs and thought leadership.
Craig said, “Gong Communications was instrumental in delivering media relations and social media support for our team. Gong delivered strategic insights and achieved fantastic media coverage at the climax of our environmental campaign, expanding brand awareness and helping us build a global dialogue on carbon removal.”
Gong tapped for Danone and B Lab Employee Engagement brief
The first free eLearning tool for the B Corporation (B Corp) community has officially launched on the B Corp Way.
This resource can be used by companies which are either already certified as B Corps or are in the process of becoming one. Certified B Corps are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.
The eLearning tool began life as a bespoke course for Danone, one of the largest multinational corporations to commit to B Corp certification. Created by Gong Communications, in collaboration with Danone and B Lab, it can now be purpose built for any B Corp to build awareness and understanding among employees.
For Danone, the tool has proved critical in making sure its 100,000 employees understand the company’s B Corp ambition and get behind it, whatever role they might play in the business.
Danone has been partnering with B Lab – the non-profit organisation accrediting B Corp certification – since 2015 to help define a B Corp process suitable for publicly listed multinationals.
Alexandra Heaven, Global B Corp Manager at Danone, who led the project, outlines the aim of the programme: “The B Corp movement is about using business as a force for good. It informs choices we make every day at a corporate and an individual level. We are helping 100,000 people at Danone, who are either already in a certified subsidiary, or on the way to certification, to understand how and why the movement is relevant to them. Gong helped us to develop a really comprehensive internal engagement tool – an e-learning programme – that allowed us to educate all our employees on our B Corp mission, regardless of position or how far through their B Corp journey the company is. Gong also helped us to create an internal comms toolkit to support our subsidiaries in promoting the programme to their employees. Since launching six months ago, we have had over 1,500 employees voluntarily complete the course. This course has proved invaluable in getting employees on board and committed to the B Corp movement.”
Katie Hill, B Lab Europe CEO, added: “We first selected Gong for this brief because everyone there was excited by the challenge of building accessible and entertaining content. This product will work consistently for people from different companies, cultures and languages who may not have been in the front line of certification, but who are crucial to our ability to bring about real lasting impact. Having gone through the certification process themselves, Gong can relate to the opportunity for companies large and small to embed the B Corp movement into company culture. We are delighted with the results and are sure it will be an invaluable tool for existing and aspiring B Corp employees.”
The initial four ‘core’ modules are designed to be accessible to all organisations, regardless of size and business model, and are currently available in English, French, Spanish (EU) and Spanish (LatAM).
- Module 1: B Introduced – What is the B Corp movement and why is it so relevant now?
- Module 2: B Certified – What is involved in B Corp certification?
- Module 3: B Inspired – Stories from across the B Corp community
- Module 4: B Part of the Movement – How you can be an active member of the B Corp movement and what resources are available to you?
The additional two bespoke modules can be tailored by Gong to reflect any company’s needs and ambitions.
- Module 5: B Corp for [Company name] – How your company vision and values align with your B Corp mission
- Module 6: B Corp at [Company name] – How your employees can actively engage in B Corp activities in their day-to-day roles
Hannah Hughes, project lead at Gong, which is a B Corp itself, said: “There is a great sense of pride and purpose that comes from working for a B Corp. We are trying to capture and convey that in this project, over and above the clear vision that already shapes B Lab and Danone’s reputation so positively. We are thrilled to have been trusted with such an important task and are looking forward to working with B Corps and future B Corps to further the movement.”
For further information about the e-learning course, please visit here.
Positive impact stories: B Corp month
This week, as part of B Corp month, we are charged with telling a positive impact story from among our network.
One of our favourites is from our partner, the African Entrepreneur Collective (AEC). This wonderful collection of business accelerators supports local entrepreneurs to drive job growth across Africa. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Collective has been disbursing business resilience grants from a special relief fund (established with help from the Mastercard Foundation) to support entrepreneurial refugees in a Rwandan camp. This is in addition to the business training and financial support that they provide in the normal course of events.
We were lucky enough to be able to support the AEC in communicating some of the refugees’ stories – including that of Karasira Mboniga, who runs a food and money transfer business – as part of our corporate CSR work. Most notably, they were covered in The Economist in a feature entitled, “The world’s toughest business school – the challenges of being an entrepreneur in a refugee camp”, which you can read here. The grants provided by the AEC proved a lifeline for the entrepreneurs who needed to support their families during this pandemic, whilst also avoiding debt and maintaining stock for customers when supply chains suffered.
The fund has already helped almost 4,000 entrepreneurs; 91 per cent of the businesses that were closed have since reopened. On average, the ventures have managed to increase their staff by a third within a month of receiving a grant. Now there’s a positive impact story.
As a proud member of the #BCorp movement, we support #BetterBusiness, believing that it is vital to use business as a force for good. With other B Corps like us, we aim to create an inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economic system for all people and the planet. What’s your positive impact story?
LOOKING FOR CARBON CAPTURE INSPIRATION? WE HAVE YOU COVERED.
You’ll know from our previous blogs that carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is scientifically argued to be the best route to mitigating climate change via a less CO2 intensive world. As a B Corp dedicated to being carbon Net Zero, at Gong we are always on the lookout for inspiring companies.
Here are our top 10 carbon capture, storage and usage innovations to help power a new green economy.
1. Biochar – CO2 that enriches the soil
Finnish company Carbofex turns biomass and organic waste into high value biochar products for soil enrichment, ultimately producing clean energy and permanently removing CO2. The pyrolysis process is explained by carbon removal marketplace PURO.earth as a long-lasting means of storing carbon for more than 1000 years. Other major players: Craig Sams’ Carbon Gold.
2. Green Cement for Africa – using agricultural residues
The production of cement produces vast amounts of CO2 – causing 8% of worldwide carbon emissions. This short video illustrates how researchers and engineers at the Federal Office for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) in Berlin are developing an innovative solution: a bio-concrete in which cement is mixed with residual materials from cassava shells.
3. Air Protein: the future of carbon-negative foods
The food industry is one of the biggest carbon emitters – even higher than the automobile industry. With synthetic biology, it is possible to transform CO2 into delicious, life-sustaining nutrition. In this article for Forbes, contributor John Cumbers outlines how Air Protein’s process uses many of the inputs of traditional crops but on a lot less land and at a vastly accelerated rate. Essentially, Air Protein has the potential to improve traditional farming efficiency by 3,500 per cent.
4. DroneSeed: replanting forests devastated by wildfires
Wildfire seasons continue to decimate landscapes at alarming rates. Reporting for CNN Business, Rishi Iyengar outlines in this story how DroneSeed has developed a way to replant trees six times faster. Covering up to 50 acres a day, it also cuts the supply chains for getting new seeds in the ground down from three years to three months.
5. Jet fuel reverse-engineered from greenhouse gases
At this stage, it’s just an experimental process, but there’s a team at Oxford University working on turning carbon dioxide into jet fuel. Outlined in this story from Wired.com, lead researcher and founder of green fuel firm Velocys Tiancun Xiao discusses the organic combustion method that could be a climate game-changer.
6. Transforming agri-waste to energy: Sistema.bio
Sistema.bio is a company that creates biodigesters to take organic waste and transform it into renewable biogas and a powerful organic fertilizer. In total, the company has offset 211,000 tonnes of CO2. This blog describes the story of Veronica, from Kenya, who outlines how Sistema’s biodigesters provide farmers with more than renewable energy: they improve economies by cutting costs and enhancing farm productivity too.
7. Direct air capture ‘buries’ CO2
Direct air carbon capture company Climeworks has started construction of a plant in Iceland that will trap and bury 4,000 mt/year of CO2. The plant will run on renewable energy and will capture emissions directly from the air. The company is also powering the plant with clean energy from ON Power’s Hellisheidi Geothermal Power Plan, minimising the plant’s impact. It is scheduled to be online in Spring 2021 – read more on Forbes.com, here.
8. Carbon-negative Vodka
Brooklyn company Air Co has developed a process for making vodka that converts carbon dioxide into alcohol. The distilled alcoholic beverage is made with a process that uses electrical energy to convert carbon dioxide into ethanol – according to Air Co, the first time it has been used for large-scale production of vodka.
We can all drink to that!
9. AirCarbon – pellets that strengthen other materials
Newlight uses a microorganism-based biocatalyst to extract carbon from methane or CO2 and strings it together into a long-chain bioplastic molecule, called AirCarbon. Following polymerization, AirCarbon is converted into a pellet for downstream use, including in extrusion, cast film, and injection molding applications. Watch their XPRIZE video here.
10. Mangrove restoration
Mother nature of course, can’t be bettered. And mangroves are even more effective than rain forests at sequestering carbon. The world’s mangroves sequester about 24 million metric tons of carbon in soil per year. A mangrove forest on the Pacific island of Kosrae, in Micronesia, can store as much carbon annually as a tropical rain forest in Panama. This organisation is helping countries all over the world to restore their mangroves as a nature based solution and carbon sink: https://coastalresourcesgroup.org/
FIVE TOP TIPS FOR STARTING A NEW JOB IN LOCKDOWN
Starting a new job can be nerve-wracking: meeting colleagues, learning about new clients, getting to grips with a new work landscape – but doing it all completely remotely makes it so much harder.
2020 was a tumultuous year globally. At Gong we’ve been fortunate to expand despite the pandemic and we’ve had to adapt quickly to support remote-working employees bed in to an internationally focused job. Here are our top tips on starting a new job during lockdown 3.0 in 2021.
Tip one: Communication is key
Working remotely means that it is all too easy to go through your to-do list without extended interaction with your colleagues. When it happens from the start of a new job, it can leave you feeling isolated and distant from the company that you’ve joined.
Our new colleagues have been quick to push for regular interaction with managers and clients. Establishing a weekly routine of whole-company video meetings, interspersed with client-specific catch ups and regular content and best practice sharing has imbued people with a stronger sense of purpose and inclusivity.
This doesn’t just apply to individuals. In times of crisis, businesses need effective communication more than ever, to align corporate purpose, manage stakeholder relations and reassure customer, clients and employees. Our clients in a broad range of sectors are feeling the benefits of quickly and consistently reacting to the challenges and changes brought about by COVID-19.
Tip two: Celebrate your successes with your team
Sharing ideas and celebrating achievements is part of working in a fast-paced corporate communications agency. When starting a new job in lockdown, this has the added benefit of increasing your sense of accomplishment and work as a team-player.
“There’s nothing like the buzz of getting blanket coverage for your client’s stories and sharing that success with your colleagues. It’s even more fulfilling when you work for clients such as ours, which are changing the world for the better. My highlight of 2020 was when we secured coverage across the board for the launch of the Bankers for Net Zero initiative, followed by a story from our client Sunlight about its role in the green energy transition. Both stories hit within a week of each other, which made for an exciting month!”
Hannah Hughes, Account Director
Tip three: Make technology work for you
Even prior to COVID-19, Gong had adopted flexible working practices, with the whole team fully set up on Zoom and Microsoft Teams with client files securely in the cloud. All of this has proven invaluable when the pandemic hit and is essential when starting a new job in lockdown.
Sara Viglione, Senior Account Manager said, “Starting a new job from home is challenging. You forget how much you naturally learn through general office conversations. However, the team is extremely responsive so I can Zoom with any of my colleagues and nine times out of ten they’re available to speak.”
Tip four: Value your clients
Due to the international nature of our client base, we are an experienced video conference crew. The team uses that client face time to go the extra mile, always probing for thought leadership ideas and media hooks rather than simply providing updates.
Another new Gong starter, Jo Hooke (Account Manager) reflects on how well virtual connections work when properly managed: “While I’m a firm believer that nothing can ever replace face to face contact, switching to more regular check-in calls with clients is working extremely well. It’s all about ensuring regular contact and developing conversations in new ways.”
Tip five: Keep a strong sense of corporate ethos
When starting a new job during lockdown, it’s easy to lose sight of your new company’s ethos. As a sustainability focused PR agency in London and a registered B-Corp we not only want to make sure we have the best people for the job but we also want to build a team that is equally passionate about Gong’s commitment to excellence, people and planet.
By reinforcing our values during catch up meetings, we have secured our new team members’ commitment to these attitudes and behaviours, despite the fact that they started working remotely:
“When I saw Gong’s portfolio of clients I was really impressed. Gong and Gong Kenya have a wealth of experience and a strong track record with clients across the B2B market in Africa. As a Zambian myself, I feel a huge commitment to Africa and making sure I leave a mark that leads to the betterment of the continent – at Gong I knew I could do this” said Vinesh Parmar, an Account Executive starting work remotely.
Annabel Bailey, another Account Executive who began work during the global pandemic commented, “What really stood out to me when starting my job was the way that Gong helps businesses communicate their positive impact. I’ve been working on accounts such as battery manufacturer Systems Sunlight and search consultancy specialist Granger Reis and their commitment to sustainability and net-zero targets has been extremely refreshing and inspiring.”
Starting a new job from home whilst everyone else is also adjusting to this new way of working can make it slightly more difficult to hit the ground running but our new recruits are doing a sterling job.
With a promise of a vaccine, 2021 is looking to be an encouraging year for our health and for a greener, diverse and equitable future. We may be working remotely for some time to come, but armed with these top tips, starting a new job in lockdown need not be as daunting as it seems.
MEET OUR LATEST RECRUITS
Sara Viglione: Senior Account Manager
Jo Hooke: Account Manager
Vinesh Parmar: Account Executive
Annabel Bailey: Account Executive
GONG WINS BRITISH COUNCIL CULTURAL HERITAGE BRIEF IN KENYA
GONG WINS BRITISH COUNCIL CULTURAL HERITAGE BRIEF IN KENYA
Gong Communications Kenya selected from 13 agencies to deliver communications for two-year British Council pilot programme
London, January 8th 2019: Gong Communications, a multi-award winning PR and marketing agency with offices in London and Nairobi, has won the contract to deliver communications support for the British Council’s Cultural Heritage for Inclusive Growth Programme in Kenya. Cultural Heritage for Inclusive Growth is a two-year pilot programme in Columbia, Kenya and Vietnam, which explores the use of cultural heritage for social and economic growth in ways which benefit all levels of society.
The Programme seeks to create an understanding of Cultural Heritage and its contribution to inclusive growth, support inventive Cultural Heritage projects in the country and create new connections between the UK and Kenya’s Cultural Heritage sector. Gong will offer strategic PR support in creating awareness and building an understanding of Cultural Heritage by first exploring how Kenyans value, protect, learn and share culture, and working alongside stakeholders to articulate how Cultural Heritage contributes to tourism, economic growth and job creation with a focus on women and young people. Gong will also be delivering a campaign to drive conversation around Cultural Heritage and how it contributes to inclusive growth, digital asset creation and a digital marketing skills training programme.
Rocca Holly-Nambi, head of Arts, Kenya and East Africa at the British Council commented, “We’re delighted to have Gong on board as one of our partners in delivering our new Cultural Heritage for Inclusive Growth programme in Kenya. This programme directly supports the British Council’s overall mission of increasing trust and mutual understanding between peoples and cultures. We were impressed with the quality of all 13 submissions, but Gong’s proposal really stood out as well considered, creative and practical.”
Nikki Francis-Jones, director at Gong Communications said: ‘‘As a B Corp and a purpose driven agency we are thrilled to be working with the British Council on this brief which focusses on inclusivity, participation and sustainability. The work, kicking off with an insights phase, will be delivered by a combined London/Nairobi team.”
