B Corp festival 2024 – our highlights

A few of the J&G team rocked up to the Louder Than Words B Corp Festival 2024. It was an inspiring fantastic experience and now we’ve had a chance to reflect, here are our a few things that really stuck with us…

Firstly, over to Rakhee, a senior consultant at J&G:

🧻 Wisdom from Mary Portas: when brands combine desire and trust – it’s a beautiful alchemy. Too often ethical brands forget the desire bit… but just look at what Who Gives A Crap has done by combining the two.

👕 Hearing about how Patrick Grant is doing exactly this with Community Clothing – building desire through quality and provenance. Less is always more.

🌳 The session with Nice and Serious and Forster Communications – your sustainability story can’t sit to one side. It has to be at the intersection of your brand and sustainability strategy to resonate.

Our co-founder Laura says:

♾️ Thinking about Regenerative Business with Forster Communications…  plan seven generations ahead to see how that reframes your thinking on what positive impact means.

🤝 ‘The Road to Net Zero – we’re in this together’ with Danone and Seismic. When you’re a small business, collaborate and use the combined power of the supply chain to effect change.

⭐ Culture Jenga with Junxion Strategy: principles sit behind values, and they can be measured, so define the principles of your company values and measure how those show up in behaviour across your team.

🛠️ And – B Corp Founder Amy Clarke’s astute observation that the system isn’t broken, it’s working perfectly for those it was designed to serve. So, we need to redesign the system!

For Amelie Wolf, account manager at J&G:

🚫 Ban saying stuff like ‘we pledge to be net zero by 2030’. It doesn’t mean anything to people. And resist the urge to tell the entire strategy, find delight in the detail.

👩‍💻 Discussing how to help remote employees be more sustainable with Notpla. Invest in your team rather than paying someone to offset carbon.

📣 Don’t strive for perfectionism in communicating your sustainability efforts. Be bold and talk about when things don’t go as planned.

And Nyree Ambarchian (our other co founder):

👞 Hearing how far the Better Business Act has come… and what’s still left to do. Roll on another march to Parliament.

📉 ‘Who’s afraid of degrowth’ with B Corp’s Lucie Montel… economic shrinking is only scary if it’s unplanned. If it’s planned, to aim for better goals then it’s the opposite of scary. It’s the difference between being burgled vs decluttering your home. In both, you lose stuff.

👏 The amazing collab between Brompton Bicycle and the awesome Sähëlï Hub.

👩‍⚖️ And, mostly having a throne and a gavel. Truly living my best life in our fringe session on flexible working.

Our main takeaway?… the really special atmosphere in every room we walked into.

It was great to meet so many people from completely different backgrounds, all united and guided by the same values. We’re proud to be B Corps, we know we’re not perfect – we question the status quo, are open to learn and take action.