Andy Last, CEO of Mullenlowe Salt, on making purpose work

About Andy Last

We had the great pleasure to interview Andy Last on how he makes purpose work. Both at his own company, Mullenlowe Salt, and for his clients such as Unilever and Kimberly Clark.

Andy talks about his connection to purpose, key aspects to positive impact, the benefits and challenges of becoming and being a B-Corp and about how their tool called Swords and Shields helps navigate positive impact journeys. Watch, listen to or read the interview further down below.

If you want to learn more about Andy’s thinking, you might want to check out his book: Business on a mission. The second edition: ‘How to Build a Sustainable Brand’ will be published by Routledge later this year, featuring a number of the models and examples featured in this podcast, new interviews with leaders from Unilever and BlackRock, and new chapters on the impact of COVID-19 on purpose and sustainability and the growing pressure from investors for companies to improve their ESG performance. The first edition was described by Paul Polman, former Unilever CEO, as “A timely reminder that the primary purpose of business has always been to serve a clear social need, brilliantly combined here with a well-illustrated roadmap of how we can get back to that essential objective.”

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Introduction 

Leon: Our planet and our society are facing big and complex challenges. Stakeholders expect companies to step up and make a difference. The pressure they apply has changed the landscape. Organizational purpose and positive impact are rapidly becoming a necessity. This leads to a pressing question. How to make purpose work?

Today Andy Last, CEO at Mullenlowe Salt, will share his insights and open this series of our podcast. I'm very excited to have you on the show. Welcome Andy and thank you.

Andy: Thanks Leon. Good to be here. 

So, would you mind introducing your company and also share your personal connection to purpose and positive impact? 

Andy: Sure, so Mullenlowe Salt. I set up the company Salt 21 years ago with my business partner and best friend Richard. We sold it to the Mullenlowe Group four years ago now, so we're now Mullenlowe Salt and we help businesses integrate purpose and sustainability into their businesses so it can make positive impact for the world and for their businesses.

Personally, my journey here started a long time ago. I've done a lot of work over the years and learned a lot from Unilever, great Anglo Dutch Company. I grew up near Port Sunlight, just opposite Liverpool, where Unilever was founded or Lever Brothers was founded and grew up hearing lots of the stories about the founding of that company and things like Lifebuoy Soap which was built, which was created as a brand to help people save lives. Say, protect their lives, but also, to help the company sell more salt.

So, that integration between business and society was there. From a very young age as a story and then many years later when I was working for Unilever.

I went to Kenya in 2006 and saw some of the programs Lifebuoy Soap was running there to help people protect their lives. But also drive business growth and that's what rekindled that rekindled the story for me and helped us create a business that was purely based on purpose and sustainability.

Leon: That’s super interesting. Thanks for sharing that. Before we continue, I would like to explain a bit about the setup of this interview. There are three segments. We will start with some key aspects to positive impact followed by one specific action that delivered on positive impact. And then we’ll finish with an organizational tool that you find helpful in your positive impact journey. 

So, first some key aspects to positive impact. I'm going to ask you 8 questions in 4 minutes. Are you ready? 

Andy: Okay. I am.

Leon: Great, there we go.

Key aspects to positive impact

As someone that's making positive impact work, you may need to push boundaries. When does it make sense to lead and when is it best to follow? 

So, our business, the biggest impact we can make is through - you know we're a consultancy - the biggest impact we can make is through our clients. So, our job is to push them to integrate purpose and sustainability more fully in their businesses. So, in that sense, we're advising them, we're helping them, but definitely they’re leading. 

How has leadership style changed to make purpose work?

I think we have to listen, and I'm as guilty at this as the rest, we have to listen to young people. Generation Z, the millennials are coming up. That has become easier for us as a business, I'll come onto this later, when we became a B-Corp. And us having that B-Corp status gave every young person in our organization a rallying call really and a stick to beat us with, if we ever weren't true. True to that essence.  

And what is the most effective behavior you see around you that supports positive impact? 

I think for me it's integrating it to business. Not being scared of business. Not being scared of linking purpose and positive impact to profit. Because if you don't do those things, positive impact, purpose, sustainability doesn't last. And that's the key for me. Always linking it to business and not being scared of the P word. The profit. P for profit word.  

Which three organizational tools do you find most useful in your positive impact journey?  

We have a number of tools that we use. That we've developed over the last 20 years. 

One is the Ascend model we use which helps ensure that social purpose is fully integrated to a business. 

Second one is something we called Swords and Shields. So, identifying all the different things a business should and can do to drive positive impact. Which of those are Swords with which you can go on the attack. And which of those are Shields which are just as important, but they are more reactive. 

And the third is a business drivers model we have, which is identifying which positive business impact a social program is going to deliver on, whether that sales or marketing, employee engagement or license to operate. 

Name the three types of stakeholders that have the biggest impact on your organization’s positive impact journey and rank them in order of impact. 

So, we are a consultancy, we are an agency. Our customers are the most important stakeholder for us. Because if we don't have customers, we can’t achieve, really can’t achieve much impact. And the big impact we can have is through these large multinationals we work with. So, they’re first. 

A close second is our people. We can't do the work without our people. We have a very motivated and expert group of people. They’re the second.

And third is probably our owners. The first 16 years of our journey were without owners. We've had owners who are partners for the last four years and our ability to achieve more is dependent on doing it through them and their network. 

And I’d rank them in that order. Customers, people and owners. 

How do you stay informed and connected to your highest-ranking stakeholder, so your customer? 

Talk to them. Talk to them, listen to their needs. To be empathetic to what they’re trying to achieve and the balances they have to find. And do good work for them. We’re only as good as our last project, so do good work for them and listen. 

Which benefits do you see from putting positive impact front and center for your organization? 

I think the two benefits for me, one it differentiates us. This is all we do. We work in purpose and sustainability, so it differentiates us from the competition. There are plenty of consultants and agencies out there who are talking about purpose now. The fact that we are genuine to it and that is all we do. That drives, gives us a competitive advantage in the marketplace. And the second is the talent we can acquire. Purpose and sustainability enable us to attract better, smarter young talent and that's a real benefit to us. 

And I'm sure there's also downsides. Which one do you notice? 

I think it's interesting. Purpose and sustainability tend to be an intervention we make in businesses, so most of our work has become project-based rather than long term retainer contracts and that brings difficulties. We’re constantly having to think about the next project. So that makes business planning a little more tricky. But we're getting used to it. 

Léon: Okay, thanks, that concludes the segment on key aspects.

Organizational positive impact action

Leon: Next, I would like to learn more about a specific action that has delivered on positive impact. So, could you name and describe the action and share why it matters to you? 

Becoming a B-Corp

When the B-Corp movement - we were obviously aware of the B-Corp movement, companies like Ben and Jerry's, Patagonia famously B-Corps - when it came to the UK – our business is based in the UK - in 2015, a number of the people involved in it got in touch and said, you know, are you interested? And we looked at it and it made a lot of sense to us as a business. As I say, we've been working in purpose and sustainability for a long time, but lots of people were beginning to talk about it. So, it was important for us to demonstrate that we were walking the walk as well as talking the talk.

Learning from the assessment

So, going through the B-Corp assessment. We were in the first batch of UK businesses to be accredited as a B-Corp. Going through that process was very important for us and very helpful. There are a number of things we were doing already in terms of. We are a business consultancy, so our environmental impacts weren't huge, but there were some things going through that assessment we could do more on, which we did. The positive impact we have through our clients was there, that was the work we did. But we were able to put in some more things to measure that impact more fully. 

And some of the way we ran our business. Again, we had set ourselves up to be a good business that treated its people well. But again, going through that accreditation process enabled us to sharpen up on a few things. So it was. It was a really important process for us.

And it threw up some challenges in terms of getting access to measurement. But also, the community we then became part of and the ability it gave us to say to clients, look, we want to help you go on a positive impact journey and we've been doing that ourselves and put ourselves, made ourselves open to external scrutiny and measurement, which I think is an important thing. So, it gave us that benefit as an organization to be able to distinguish ourselves. 

Attracting and empowering talent

And the second, the unexpected benefit was in terms of talent. As I say, it's a key stakeholder for us. The talent in our business. Becoming a B-Corp did give us a badge which was attractive to new talent coming want to work for us.

But then when they were in the business, I think it's. Lots of businesses talk about innovation and wanting flat structures and wanting to encourage ideas to come up from the more junior members of the team. But that's often easier said than done. And it's very difficult sometimes for a junior person to say to the senior people, look, I think your strategy is a bit wrong here. And that's a very difficult thing to say, however sort of open and friendly and amenable we tried to make ourselves. Becoming a B-Corp made that much easier for people. They were just able to. Anything we did, they were just able to ask the perfectly innocent question. Well, is that B-Corp? 

And that was a way I think of just giving them a voice and giving them a very strong voice. And once they've used that voice a couple of times, it becomes easier for them. So, I certainly think in terms of creating an organization which was open to new ideas and you thinking, and you can't. You know, you can't follow every idea that that comes up in the business. But it made us much more open to innovation and it's created a culture, I think, where that B-Corp helped us maintain a culture where people feel a sense of ownership and empowerment in the future of the business. 

Leon: It's very interesting. It creates a kind of a neutral playground. The fact that you're a B-Corp, then you become a neutral. It becomes neutral. You can discuss it, it's open, it's expected. 

Andy: Yes. Exactly. And that was unexpected from going through the process. So, we went through the process to differentiate ourselves from in the marketplace, but I think that's had a more lasting benefit for us inside the business. 

Organizational tool

Leon: I'm going to go to the last segment and that is about a tool. An organizational tool that you find useful in an organization’s positive impact journey. You already mentioned three but now I want to deep dive a bit. So, I want to ask you three questions about that. So, the first is which organizational tool did you choose and why? 

Swords and Shields

Andy: I'd like to talk about a tool we use call Swords and Shields. And I like that because it's brutally simple and I like simple things, but it's been very effective and with every year that passes we find ourselves using it more and more and it becomes more socialized across a lot of the work we do. And I think it's a really helpful tool that anyone could use. Should I describe it? 

Leon:Also it’s very graphic. Yes please. I think it's also very graphic because I immediately have this powerful image. 

Andy: Yeah. It lends itself to Lord of the Rings and Games of Thrones images in PowerPoint decks as well. 

So, it's just to say when companies do lots of things and can do lots of things, and when they've done those things, there's almost a sense that they want to talk about everything they've done. And I think one of the early ones of these is a great example of what we mean by Swords and Shields.

About Kimberly Clark

So, we were doing some work with Kimberly Clark. The world’s biggest paper company. They make toilet tissue brands, face tissue, nappies, feminine hygiene products. And you know 1 to 2 billion people everyday use one of their products. A huge, huge company. But because they're involved in paper, the whole notion of deforestation and sustainable sourcing of paper is front and center. Clearly a very important issue for them. Years ago they would be the target of Greenpeace attacks because deforestation was one of the big, is one of the big priorities for Greenpeace and organizations like that. So, Kimberly Clark had in place. It's in their interest to have sustainable sourcing of paper because they need to keep being able to source paper if they're going to have the products that they want to sell. 

So, they had sustainable sourcing in place and they wanted to talk about that quite rightly. And they had Forestry Stewardship Council logos on pack. But because they were doing so much, they wanted to talk about more and started bringing out Eco brands and those sorts of things. And they weren't really working with consumers very well and that they weren't working, I think for a couple of reasons. One, it wasn't core to their brand promise. Any fast-moving consumer goods needs to have a very straight forward and simple brand promise. Rather than trying to communicate too many messages in, especially in low consideration categories. 

One was the eco message was an additional message and secondly, it didn't really help with the sort of quality message they were trying to prove. If you look at the toilet tissues, they are all about improving the standard of clean. And adding a sort of eco message to that wasn't necessarily in line with that, particularly when you know consumers are spending two or three seconds thinking about which toilet tissue to buy. 

Applying Swords and Shields

What we said was, all the things you're doing on sustainable sourcing of paper. They are really important to you as a business. You have to do them because it's the right thing to do, because you're going to be attacked by Greenpeace and others if you don't, and because it will ensure you have a sustainable supply of paper, really important. But it's a Shield. It's not really a message to go out on the front foot with consumers because a) it's not the key message for any of the brands and b) it’s some, the message you're saying is, you probably weren't thinking about forests being cut down, but that's a part of potentially the sourcing of paper, but we don't do it in an unsustainable way. And that's not a brilliant message. It's really important to have in place. You need to have all the accreditation in place. You need to have it on your website for people who want to know. You need to be able to tell your retailers and your investors about it. But it's not necessarily a Sword to go on the front foot with consumers. 

However, a toilet tissue brand tackling the issue of poor sanitation is a great thing to do. It's a very obvious thing for a toilet tissue to be involved in. We helped them create a program. A pilot program in the UK to partner with UNICEF to tackle the sanitation crisis initially in Angola and Mozambique. That's now become a global program for Kimberly Clark across multiple markets and brands. And it enables them to stay true to the sort of core brand positioning of elevating the standard of clean. This is how we're elevating the standard of clean not only in the products you buy, but in other parts of the world where there's a sort of desperate need. But it also enabled them to form stronger relationships with retailers, who would then put the brands with the UNICEF Partnership front of store, which would help improve their sales. And I think that for me is a great example of Swords and Shields that both are equally important, but one is much more relevant for your marketing and consumer and communications to go on the front foot, whereas the other is a Shield. And if you going into battle you need Swords and Shields, but it's really important to understand which is which and to use them appropriately. 

Shifting the message from planet to people

Leon: I find it very interesting how you move from planet to people and then shift the message and then it becomes more natural and it becomes more interesting for people to align with it. 

Andy: I think that's true and we did a big piece of research with Gen Z five or six years ago now which found that they were much more engaged in people. People are more engaged in people issues, exactly the point. I think that's beginning to shift. I think the shifting focus and the imminent threat of climate change and the fact that we have generations growing up for whom climate change has been a reality throughout their childhood means that it is easier to engage people on environmental issues now. But it is easier to engage people on social issues about. As you say, people are interested in people. 

Leon: Yeah, I was thinking a little bit more about that because in the end people just want a product that works, so that's how to reach through them I guess more than the other benefits. 

Andy: But I also think that creating a social mission where that brand is driving a social impact that is relevant to that product category. As sanitation is to toilet tissue, that is in line with the brand story and also drive, say, a commercial benefit that is tied into the business. One of the issues with toilet tissue is it's relegated to a sort of the hidden parts of the store, and people don't think about it much. So, if you're able to do a program that brings it to the front of the store and attaches a sort of interesting and grabbing message to it, then it drives business. And that Ascend model I mentioned before is how we link a social program or an environmental program to the core business drivers, so it lasts. As to say, we developed this program for their toilet tissue Andrex brand in the UK in 2014 and it has become a global program because it links directly to the business. 

Leon:  Yeah, I find it super interesting and never thought of it that way. But I even visually see the difference between forest management or helping people with their sanitation. That's very interesting. 

Andy: Sure, and you have to do both, but you need to understand which is the Sword and which is the Shield. 

Leon: Exactly, thank you. Thanks for sharing that. 

Wrap-up

Well, that was the final segment. So, Andy thank you very much for sharing all your insights and for opening the show.

Andy: That went quickly.

Leon: Yes, it went super quick. It was a real pleasure to have you on the show. Great flow. Thanks.

I want to have a quick word with the audience. Please visit our website if you want to watch, listen or read this interview with Andy Last. Makingpurposework.com/blog

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Thanks for watching or listening. I hope to see you again on the next show, thanks.