The Challenge

Y.O.U Underwear, an award-winning ethical underwear brand with a commitment to body positivity, needed a fresh approach to their e-commerce and campaign photography. 

Their existing visuals didn’t fully reflect their brand essence: ethical, inclusive, and high-quality. Previously, they had relied on amateur photographers and had never done a studio shoot before, resulting in inconsistent e-commerce imagery that didn’t reflect the true quality of their products. This was significantly harming their conversion rate. 

They commissioned us to produce photography at scale that would showcase their products, embody their values, and drive conversions.

Across two large-scale studio shoots, with real Y.O.U customers as models, we reshot 90% of their core collection e-commerce imagery, and created enough static images and reels to fuel the confidence-focused campaign we designed for them for two years.

Our Approach

We developed a photography strategy that aligned with Y.O.U Underwear’s core principles:

• Authenticity & Inclusivity – We invited real customer models to reflect the brand’s commitment to inclusivity, ensuring every customer could see themselves in the imagery.

• Natural Aesthetic – Using soft, natural lighting and minimal retouching, with no airbrushing of models to stay true to their body positivity commitment, we created a warm, inviting feel that complemented the brand’s ethos.

• Conversion-Optimised Product Shots – We captured detailed, high-quality product images that highlighted fabric texture, fit, and comfort – key factors influencing purchase decisions.

• Storytelling in Campaign Imagery – We crafted a visual narrative that emphasised the brand’s mission: ethically made underwear that empowers women.

The Execution

Our team executed two full-scale photoshoots, blending e-commerce-ready product shots with lifestyle campaign imagery:

• Studio Product Photography: Clean, minimal backgrounds to focus on the product details and quality.

• Campaign Shots: Power poses showcasing the underwear’s comfort and versatility, reinforcing the themes of confidence and empowerment.

• Reels: Inspired by Holi festival and Bollywood dances to celebrate confidence and empowerment through engaging social videos, without the male gaze.

The Results

The impact of our photography was immediate and measurable:

• 7% Increase in Website Conversion Rates – High-quality, on-brand images improved product presentation, and a redesign of the site brought it up to date and in line with the brand.

• Stronger Brand Alignment – Customers resonated with the authentic representation and empowerment themes, reinforcing YOU Underwear’s ethical mission and increasing repeat purchases by 6%.

• Social Media Engagement Boost – The campaign imagery saw increased shares, saves, and interactions, extending brand reach organically and resulting in a 362% boost in sales from Instagram.

• 3% Growth in Average Order Value (AOV) – Higher-quality visuals contributed to customers purchasing more per order.

• 53% increase to overall sales.

Conclusion

By aligning YOU Underwear’s photography with their ethical and inclusive values, we helped refine their brand presence, boost conversions, and create a deeper connection with their audience. 

Purposeful, high-quality visuals aren’t just aesthetic—they drive real business results.

Challenge:

A leading ethical fashion brand approached us with a key challenge: while their sustainability mission was central to their brand identity, leading with it in top-of-funnel messaging was limiting their ability to drive conversions.

They wanted to grow their sales without compromising on their sustainability and impact storytelling.

Insight:

Most brands emphasise sustainability upfront, assuming it drives purchasing decisions.

However, behavioural science tells us otherwise.

Consumers are primarily motivated by price, quality, and convenience at the decision-making stage.

Sustainability messaging often creates friction, triggering skepticism or decision fatigue.

Instead, we leveraged the Peak-End Rule—the psychological principle that people judge experiences based on their most emotionally intense moment and how they end.

Solution:

We redesigned the brand’s post-purchase email flow to ensure the final impression of the customer journey was both emotionally resonant and brand-reinforcing.

Instead of pushing sustainability messaging pre-purchase, where it is less relevant, we strategically positioned it after the sale to validate customers’ choices, reduce buyer’s remorse, and build long-term loyalty.

Key Implementations:

• Personalised thank-you messaging: Every customer received an emotionally impactful thank-you email, highlighting that their purchase directly empowered three women and girls—a metric derived from the brand’s impact reporting.

  This approach tapped into virtue signaling, encouraging customers to share their impact with their networks. By making customers feel like ambassadors of change, this messaging leveraged word-of-mouth marketing to organically spread the brand’s mission and attract like-minded consumers.

• Sustainability validation: Instead of creating friction in the sales funnel, we positioned sustainability as a reward—reinforcing customers’ ethical choice after they had already committed.

  This not only validated their purchase but also gave them a compelling reason to share their positive impact, further strengthening brand advocacy and social proof.

• Optimised post-purchase flow: We transformed post-purchase emails from a passive touchpoint into a revenue-generating asset, increasing engagement and lifetime value.

Results:

The impact was undeniable:

• Revenue Per Recipient: £2.52 from post-purchase emails—traditionally considered non-revenue-generating.
• Placed Order Rate: 2.86%, directly boosting lifetime value.
• Returning Customer Rate: Increased by 6%, proving the power of ethical validation.
• Email Marketing Revenue Growth: +119.5% (from 4% to 7.41% of total revenue).
• Newsletter Open Rates: 52.26% (99.4% increase; industry avg: 31.82%).

The Peak-End Rule isn’t just a psychological theory—it’s a valuable tool for ecommerce brands. By shifting sustainability messaging to the post-purchase phase, we not only reinforced the brand values but also strengthened customer relationships and revenue streams.

The Challenge:
A pre-launch fashion brand was set to introduce a range of ‘elevated basics’ but had priced their products based solely on production costs. They hadn’t factored in the full cost of doing business—transaction fees, marketing expenses, cost of acquisition and customer expectations like free shipping and returns. They needed a pricing strategy that would sustain profitability from day one and support future expansion into wholesale.

Our Approach:
We started with a detailed cost analysis, identifying every hidden expense that would eat into their margin. Beyond production costs, we factored in the behavioural-driven elements that influence conversions—such as offering free shipping and easy returns, both of which are now standard expectations in the mid-luxury D2C space.

This exercise led us to a new price point that kept them positioned within the ‘everyday luxury’ category while ensuring a viable margin for both direct-to-consumer sales and wholesale expansion, where retailers demand at least a 50% margin.

But setting a price isn’t just about covering costs—it has to work for the customer, too.

Behavioural Economics Meets Market Research:
We always start with two key factors: disposable income and consumer spending habits. Market research shows that people typically spend around 5% of their after-tax income on clothing each month. To comfortably spend £75 per month on fashion, a customer needs an annual salary of at least £21,000. Given that these items wouldn’t constitute a shopper’s entire clothing budget in a given month (or be something they were willing to save for across multiple months), we set our sights on customers earning at least £48,000 per year—high enough to afford mid-luxury but without the expectation of designer-level exclusivity.

With this salary threshold in mind, we mapped out a target age range and social class, using UK salary data to refine the brand’s target audience.

Aligning Brand Positioning with Pricing:
A pricing strategy is only as strong as the brand supporting it. The company had already designed packaging and executed their first photoshoots, but we needed to ensure their brand identity aligned with their ideal customer. Would the messaging, visuals, and overall experience justify the price point? After a brand audit, we fine-tuned their positioning to resonate with the identified audience, ensuring consistency across all customer touchpoints.

Setting Up for Scalable Growth:
With a strong pricing foundation, we calculated the brand’s Cost of Acquisition using our category-specific ROAS benchmarks. From there, we developed a sales strategy that would allow them to scale profitably, hitting their revenue goals without eroding their margin.

The Result:
The brand launched with a sustainable pricing model from day one—profitably positioned for both direct-to-consumer sales and future wholesale expansion. Instead of playing catch-up on margins post-launch, they started with a pricing structure designed to support long-term growth.

Key Takeaways:

• Pricing isn’t just about production costs—it must account for the full cost of doing business and acquiring customers.
• Behavioural economics helps pinpoint the spending limits of your target audience.
• Your brand identity must justify the price you charge.
• A pricing strategy built for both DTC and wholesale ensures long-term profitability.

Be honest…are your campaigns getting cut-through?

A number of campaigning organisations approached us last year, feeling frustrated that the government wasn’t listening to them.

We’d been vocal about the fact that too many campaigners were ignoring the science behind effective communication and behaviour change.

And we knew that was why their messages weren’t getting through.

So we designed a campaign to fix it.

We decided to use our public affairs backgrounds, behavioural science expertise and communications experience to teach the sector how to put their issues on the political agenda.

And in just 12 weeks, we reached and engaged over 350,000 people (organically, with no advertising spend) and shifted the narrative in the climate and nature communications space.

Here’s the 3 comms tactics that made this campaign so effective…

1. Rhymes and puns

“Coughs and sneezes spread diseases”

“Beanz Meanz Heinz”

“You only get an oo with Typhoo”

There’s a reason why some of the most memorable advertising slogans in the world rhyme.

Behaviourally, rhyme increases believability.

Studies have shown that rhyming proverbs were 17% more believable than their non-rhyming counterparts. 

When tested with brand slogans, the rhyming versions were rated 22% more trustworthy, and the participants were 10% more willing to try the brands.

Rhyming also more than doubles memorability – a crucial factor if you want people to listen and take action.

However, it’s a tool that’s fallen out of favour in communications and advertising in recent years, especially as brands and agencies have focused more heavily on purpose messaging.

Behavioural marketeer Richard Shotton and colleagues argue that this is because agencies want to appear sophisticated and academic to justify their fees, and because their pay is not tied to the performance of their comms they haven’t got “skin in the game” so aren’t prioritising science-backed techniques that drive results.

(It’s one of the reasons we’re so proud of our industry-leading results, and why we do focus on science).

We knew we needed to include some hard-hitting messaging that would play into the doom-heavy messaging the sector had been using – to capture attention from the campaigners we wanted to engage, and add a sense of urgency to inspire action.

But we also know that doom and gloom doesn’t create behaviour change, it just triggers fight or flight and turns your audience off. 

So to make this work, we balanced it with a number of puns, rhymes and light-hearted slogans with a serious underlying message.

Again, it’s been proven that if you can trigger laughter or positive emotions from your audience when viewing your comms, memorability and persuadability increases.

We also played into people’s front-of-mind priorities, making climate messages and calls to action relevant to them and their families, and drawing on relatable cultural references to childhood books like ‘One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish” to create warmth, nostalgia and an emotional connection to the call to action.

The result was a balance of highly engaging, shareable and memorable content that got organic cut-through.

2. A reasonable ask

Too often, campaigning organisations are ignored because their asks don’t translate into policy, or make political sense.

Amending existing legislation is much quicker and easier than creating new legislation, yet campaigning organisations often push for new laws, for example.

While this campaign wasn’t about changing policy, we wanted to show what a reasonable ask would look like:

1.5% of parliamentary time dedicated to climate and nature issues.

Sounds simple. Feels obvious. Makes you wonder why the government isn’t already spending at least that much time. 

And that’s the point. 

As an ask it was easy to agree with, because it felt like common sense. 

Members of the public didn’t have to work hard to understand and support it, and for politicians, it didn’t feel like an overpromise that they wouldn’t be able to deliver.

From there, we would have started building the influence and relationships to campaign for how they use that time. (Although, in this case, we worked with our campaigning clients to do that through their organisations, driving change at COP28 and contributing to a number of government consultations on policy changes).

There’s nothing wrong with breaking your campaign plan into stages and aiming for a series of smaller wins rather than one big change. In fact, it’s good public affairs practice.

3. Trusted messengers

Well-established, trusted messengers are the key to successful messaging. 

Who is saying it is just as important as what they are saying, especially when it comes to advocacy campaigns.

The Edelman Trust Barometer shows that we are more likely to trust “someone like me” as a trusted expert, and we know from behavioural science that we’re more likely to do something that our peers are doing, thanks to social norms.

Once we’d captured the attention of campaigning organisations, we needed to teach them the principles of effective campaigning.

But to drive lasting behaviour change, we needed to do it with a trusted messenger, and de-risk the behaviour change by showing that it was already working for their peers.

While NGO representatives and CEOs rank as neutral for the general population, they are the “someone like me” we were trying to engage – so we knew that they needed to be our trusted messengers.

We designed a series of video interviews, called Sustainability’s Leading Voices, where we could put trusted CEOs, business and NGO leaders and seasoned campaigners in front of our audience, and have them share the campaigning techniques and policy changes that have worked for them.

We used livestreaming technology to make these as engaging as possible, and then had our editors create a series of short clips for Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts – even branding them in our guests’ branding for some of our speakers, so they could share them on their channels too. 

This highly engaging format worked with the algorithms to extend our reach, and get a longer lifespan out of each piece of cornerstone content too.

Did it work?

Not only did the campaign reach and engage over 350,000 people organically in 12 weeks, we also achieved our goal of changing how the sector talks about climate and nature to put these causes on the political agenda.

• The polling data we gathered during the campaign has been used by 4 NGOs and campaigns so far, to build an evidentiary basis for sensible policy asks in food waste, fair pay for farmers, plastic pollution and anti-deforestation policies.
  
  
• Our behaviour change messaging was adapted by 2 businesses and 1 NGO that we worked with following the campaign, to develop their advocacy and public affairs strategy in advance of the 2024 general election.
  
  
• Our positioning research has been used by 5 consultancies and comms agencies and turned into keynote speeches, webinars, out of home advertising campaigns and advisory work with their clients, creating the ripple effect needed to shift the narrative long term.
  
  

And, crucially, when the 2023 by-elections caused a rowing back on green policies across the political spectrum, we were ready. Our clients were fully briefed on how to respond, and were able to pivot their messaging to prioritise cost of living and keep climate and nature on the agenda.

We were proud to support a number of clients to implement this strategy in their advocacy work at COP28, which saw some historic outcomes for climate and nature, and we’re looking forward to supporting even more public affairs teams, campaigners and climate and nature focused organisations in the run up to the 2024 general election.

So if your climate and nature campaigns could benefit from greater cut-through, and you want to embrace the science to drive real change, do get in touch.

Category: Messaging & Campaigning
Sector: Sustainability
Results: 350,000 people reached organically in 12 weeks

Lovebrook & Green is the first new department store to launch in the UK in over 100 years and the world’s first ethical luxury online-first department store.

As an online-first business, its website and digital assets needed to serve as the cornerstone of the customer experience, seamlessly blending heritage, luxury, and sustainability.

The name Lovebrook & Green was chosen by the founder to reflect a deep commitment to nature and as a nod to James Lovelock, whose Gaia theory proposes that the Earth is a self-regulating system that supports life.

The visual brand needed to be distinctive enough to build recall and foster customer loyalty, driving long-term customer value, while working seamlessly alongside the hundreds of brands that Lovebrook & Green stock. Many of these curated brands were chosen for their commitment to regenerative practices and nature – principles central to Lovebrook & Green’s ethos, so we took this as the guiding inspiration for the visual brand.

Inspired by the Gaia hypothesis and sacred geometry, we created a primary wordmark, a secondary monogram, and an abstract logo mark inspired by the Seed of Life, mandalas and traditional filigree patterns – reflecting balance, nature, and connection​​. This distinctive identity balanced the heritage and status of department stores with the innovation of a modern digital platform.

A nature-inspired, quintessentially British, 18 colour palette was designed to span across 8 departments and was rigorously tested for digital accessibility.

We designed a tone of voice that is warm, elegant, and empowering, while the website and UX/UI design, informed by eye pattern trend research and neuroscience, ensured an intuitive, visually engaging user experience designed to drive conversions.

The result was a virtual storefront and visual identity that embodied Lovebrook & Green’s ethos and allowed the brand to stand out in a competitive luxury market while championing its ethical values.

Demographic Targeting
All visual brand projects should be designed with the target audience in mind to ensure that the branding resonates and drives engagement.

At the start of the project, our team applied its specialist expertise in microtargeting – an approach honed through successes with political campaigns and retail leaders.

Traditionally, department stores target a broad range of demographics, catering to mass-market audiences. However, ecommerce and digital advertising perform best when tailored to specific audiences aligned with the businesses’ price point and brand positioning.

For Lovebrook & Green, this presented a unique challenge: finding the balance between achieving broad mass-market appeal and building a highly targeted strategy to drive digital success.

Most sustainability-focused brands operate at luxury price points due to higher production costs, so we knew that Lovebrook & Green needed a luxury focus.

Guided by the Luxury Brand Hierarchy from Business of Fashion, we analysed the average price point and basket size of the brands Lovebrook & Green intended to stock. This helped us identify the disposable income threshold necessary for regular shoppers, defining the core audience as AB1 women aged 45+ in urban and suburban areas.

We complemented this analysis with insights from user-generated content (UGC) across competitor department stores, which revealed a secondary “little luxuries” market. This segment included younger or less affluent customers purchasing high-end consumables like tea, coffee, chocolates and small homeware items as gifts or personal treats. These purchases were often shared on social media as social signalling – demonstrating aspirational luxury within their means.

By contrasting this behaviour with insights from higher-spending “true luxury” shoppers, who typically do not feel the need to share routine purchases, we refined the brand’s positioning.

The result was a high-end “quiet luxury” identity that resonated deeply with the core audience while remaining aspirational to younger consumers who could “age in” to becoming loyal customers, maximising lifetime value.

Gestalt Principles in the Lovebrook & Green logo design

The Lovebrook & Green logo assets were meticulously crafted using Gestalt principles to create a cohesive and meaningful visual identity that reflects luxury, balance, and connection.

The principles of similarity, symmetry, and continuity were central to the design:

1. Principle of Similarity:
   Consistent use of flowing curves, elegant line weights, and mirrored patterns across the wordmark, monogram, and filigree logo mark establishes a unified visual language. Continuity was achieved by deriving the intricate filigree logo mark directly from the forms of the “L” and “G” lettering and ampersand in the monogram. This repetition ties the various elements together, creating harmony and reinforcing the brand’s identity as a high-end, nature-inspired retailer. The recurring motifs also reflect the interconnectedness central to the Gaia hypothesis.
2. Principle of Symmetry:
   The filigree logo mark is highly symmetrical, evoking a sense of stability, elegance, and timelessness. Drawing inspiration from the Seed of Life and mandalas, the balanced design mirrors the themes of regeneration and harmony found in nature. This symmetry appeals to the human eye’s innate preference for order, enhancing memorability and fostering trust in the brand.
3. Principle of Continuity:
   The flowing lines and smooth transitions in the typography and filigree encourage the viewer’s eye to move seamlessly through the design. This uninterrupted movement reflects the concept of connection – between nature, luxury, and the customer experience – and ensures a polished, professional aesthetic.

By focusing on these Gestalt principles, the logo assets achieve a harmonious and aspirational identity, perfectly aligned with Lovebrook & Green’s commitment to sustainability and quiet luxury.

Colour palette design

The Lovebrook & Green colour palette was developed using principles of colour theory to evoke luxury, harmony, and connection to nature. Inspired by the brand’s commitment to sustainability and the natural world, the palette balances soft, earthy tones with quintessentially British hues and muted tones, creating a sense of timeless elegance.

Each departmental colour palette features a distinct combination of complementary colours, ensuring both differentiation and cohesion across the brand’s divisions. For example, warm, inviting tones like “Chivalrous Walrus” and “Laguna Beach” evoke the heritage and sophistication of the fashion department, while cool, calming shades like “Breakwater” and “Smoky Teal” reflect serenity and refinement for the beauty department. These carefully chosen hues align with the emotional resonance needed for each department’s target audience.

The primary brand colours, “Cape Cod” and “Swan Dive,” were chosen to anchor the visual identity with a neutral, sophisticated foundation that seamlessly integrates with the departmental palettes. These tones convey balance and modernity while ensuring the brand feels cohesive across its digital and physical touchpoints.

To ensure inclusivity and usability, all colours were rigorously tested for digital accessibility, meeting WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) standards. This thoughtful approach not only enhances the user experience but also reflects the brand’s ethical and regenerative values.

Through the application of colour theory, the palette serves to visually articulate Lovebrook & Green’s ethos, reinforcing its identity as a luxury leader in sustainability.

The Lovebrook & Green project exemplifies the power of thoughtful, strategic brand design in creating a cohesive and meaningful identity that resonates with target audiences.

By combining in-depth demographic analysis, cutting-edge digital design, and a commitment to the principles of sustainability and quiet luxury, we developed a brand identity that not only reflects Lovebrook & Green’s ethos but also establishes them as a leader in ethical luxury.

Every element of the brand was carefully crafted to build recall, foster loyalty, and drive long-term customer value.

The design successfully bridges the heritage of traditional department stores with the innovation of a digital-first platform, ensuring a seamless and intuitive customer experience.

This case study highlights how strategic thinking and creative execution can transform a bold vision into a distinctive, market-leading reality.

Ready to transform your brand into a market leader? Book a discovery call with our team today and let’s bring your vision to life.

Y.O.U Underwear, the highest-scoring fashion B Corp globally, faced significant challenges in a crowded market. Competitors had matched their sustainability credentials, outspent them on advertising, and targeted the same audience. Meanwhile, their outdated website, inconsistent imagery, and small business storytelling-heavy marketing was failing to drive conversions.

In early 2024, Google algorithm change caused a drop in organic traffic, and competitors responded by increasing ad spend, leaving Y.O.U struggling to maintain visibility.

On top of this, their product range of “comfy basics” was seen as a convenience rather than an aspirational choice, that people were unlikely to seek out for single-point online purchase. 

These factors led to declining conversion rates and market share, with the brand relying heavily on income from their physical shop, until they hired us to fix it.

To counter these challenges, we redefined their audience, shifted their messaging to focus on confidence and empowerment, revamped their digital presence, and treated organic content like advertising to build brand recall without relying on a high ad spend.

Headline Results

In just 10 months we achieved:

• 53% increase in sales – achieved organically without ad spend
• Delivered a new competitive digital presence and strong market positioning
• Launched a fully built campaign in just 17 working days from photoshoot to launch, with enough assets to run for two years
• A 7% improvement in conversion rate
• A 362% boost in sales from Instagram
• Email marketing revenue up 119.5%
• 3% growth in average order value (AOV)
• Returning customer rate up 6%

The brand now stands out in a competitive market with a stronger, more empowered digital presence, a targeted audience, and a message that resonates deeply with women over 40.

Here’s what we did…

Redefining the audience

When we started working with them, Y.O.U were targeting women age 25-40. This audience was too broad, and lacked the disposable income to afford their products.

93%of women aged 40 to 60 make all or most of the financial decisions in UK households. 40+ women control 80% of the UK’s wealth, 1 in 2 is the chief income earner in their household and they are 90% more likely [than those under 40] to earn over £40,000. There are 8.5 million women in this category, spending an average of £92bn annually.

They prioritise self-care and have the disposable income to spend on themselves. 72% say it is important to treat themselves, while 60% say they deserve to do so once in a while. This demographic is tech savvy. 67% of women in their forties and older purchase shoes and/or clothing online at least monthly.

However, most brands ignore this demographic, and women over 40 tend to feel underrepresented in advertising and marketing, and underserved by brands. With all our competitors targeting 20 and 30 year olds, shifting focus to over 40 was a smart move to claim market share.

We identified that Y.O.U underwear could stand out from competitors and gain market share by focusing on a more personal and empowering message that brings the impact and the sales messaging together in a way that converts. We shifted Y.O.U’s focus to this untapped audience and a campaign that reflected their values: confidence, empowerment, and self-investment. 

Execution:

• Created relatable, aspirational campaigns showcasing high-quality, well-fitting products designed specifically for women 40+.
• Elevated Y.O.U’s offering from a convenience purchase to an aspirational self-care choice.
• Integrated behavioural insights, like relatability through imagery and care-driven messaging – putting real customers front and centre in photography and videography and showing women of all ages in a positive light.

Results:

Within 2 months of running the new campaign on socials, we increased % of 45-54 year old audience from 17.4% to 24.5%.

Confidence-driven messaging

Campaign Theme: “Confidence Comes from YOU.”

Most women treat everyday underwear as an afterthought, grabbing multi-packs from the supermarket while their minds are on everyone but themselves. 

To compete in a category dominated by convenience and price, and get women to seek out ‘essential basics’ online, we needed to do more than highlight ethical manufacturing or sustainable practices. We needed women to understand their own value – to show them that they are worth more than a £5 supermarket multi-pack.

The brand already had a buy-one-give-one model designed to tackle period poverty and empower women and girls around the world. Tapping into this empowerment messaging was a powerful way to connect to customers, but it needed to be connected to the product too.

We knew that a pair of underwear, no matter how ethically made, won’t magically give you more self esteem. So, we grounded our message in something deeper: ‘Confidence comes from YOU’.

This simple but powerful statement was more than a clever play on the brand’s name. It was a rallying cry for women to own their strength, their beauty, and their worth – on their terms.

We featured real customers in power poses – each one showing what confidence meant to them. Creating a long-term campaign that looks and feels different every time someone sees it in their feed. No preaching, no prescriptive ideas of what empowerment “should” look like – just a reflection of the many ways women can define strength for themselves.

When it came to creating campaign assets, instead of trying to cram sustainability credentials, ethical production stats and social good into one message, we let empowerment take centre stage, knowing that this would resonate most with the audience’s key purchase drivers.

We reframed Y.O.U Underwear as a brand that supports women in feeling confident, emphasising comfort and quality as enablers of empowerment. 

Results:

• Instagram sales increased 362%.
• Returning customer rate improved by 6%, reflecting stronger loyalty.
• Weekly views on social media increased 35%.

A digital makeover

Challenge: Y.O.U’s outdated website, fragmented small business-focused storytelling, and limited professional imagery failed to resonate with their target audience.

Solution:

• Demographic Targeting: We analysed their core buyers and designed the website for the 40-60 demographic, ensuring usability and alignment with their needs.
• Modern Features: Added mobile optimisation and introduced features such as ‘Shop The Look,’ to increase conversions.
• Streamlined Storytelling: Simplified navigation and leveraged the Peak-End Rule to emphasise Y.O.U’s impact story at the end of the purchase journey, increasing loyalty and positive reviews.
• Green Claims Compliance: Ensured all sustainability messaging adhered to the CMA’s Green Claims Code.
• Behavioural insights: Even small changes can make a big difference to conversion rates. For example, research shows that horizontal product displays on websites make people choose higher quality, more expensive products. Vertical displays encourage the choice of cheaper options. Switching the product page imagery layouts to a horizontal display put more focus on the quality of the product, playing into our messaging encouraging women to invest in themselves.

Results:

• Conversion rate increased by 7%.
• Average order value rose 3%.
• Delivered a visually cohesive, user-friendly website that enhanced trust and loyalty.

Imagery: professional and purpose-driven

Y.O.U Underwear had previously relied on amateur photography, which resulted in busy, poorly lit, and inconsistent imagery that failed to create a cohesive brand identity. To address this, we commissioned behavioural science research into best practices for ecommerce imagery in the fashion category to ensure the revamped visuals we created would resonate with customers and drive conversions.

Execution:

• Image Audit: We reviewed Y.O.U’s image library to identify their best-performing visuals and reused high-value assets.
• Photoshoots: Organised two full-day photoshoots in our Brighton studio, capturing:
  • Ecommerce imagery to show real customers wearing the products.
  • Power poses for campaign assets, emphasising confidence and movement.
  • Reels footage, providing enough high-quality social media content for two years of posting twice daily.
• Commitment to Authenticity: Stayed true to Y.O.U’s body positivity values by featuring real customers and avoiding airbrushing.

Results:
The imagery overhaul provided Y.O.U with:

• A complete ecommerce library
• Enough social media content to post twice daily for two years
• High-quality, relatable visuals that significantly boosted customer trust and engagement

By leveraging cutting-edge research and scientific insights, Y.O.U’s new imagery not only reflected their brand values but also directly contributed to improved performance across digital channels.

Email marketing overhaul

Y.O.U Underwear’s previous email strategy leaned heavily on small business storytelling, which engaged supporters but failed to drive conversions. We revamped their email marketing to be product and benefits focused, ensuring the content was aligned with what mattered most to potential buyers.

The welcome sequence was redesigned to emphasise comfort, fit, and quality while tying seamlessly into the wider confidence campaign.

To further enhance results, we shifted all impact messaging pre-sale to focus on Y.O.U’s recycling program, leveraging behavioural science research from Boston University which shows that take-back initiatives boost customer engagement and profits. Studies revealed that consumers were willing to pay 39.1% more for a pen and 12.2% more for an IKEA armchair with take-back programs, while brand loyalty increased by 19.4% for clothing brands. A 65.3% majority chose a more expensive shirt ($11.90 vs. $10.15) with a take-back program.

By incorporating these insights, the recycling program messaging effectively connected Y.O.U’s sustainability values to actionable benefits, driving stronger customer loyalty and conversions.

The post-purchase sequence was also carefully redesigned using the Peak-End Rule, a behavioural insight showing that people judge an experience based on its most intense moment and its conclusion. We ensured that Y.O.U customers’ final impression of their purchase journey was positive and impactful by incorporating personalised thank-you messages tied to the company’s wider impact – showing that each purchase helps to empower 3 women and girls (data we calculated during the impact reporting process).

This approach reinforced Y.O.U’s brand values while strategically positioning sustainability and ethics in the post-purchase stage, where it serves to validate the customer’s decision. By doing so, it enhanced brand loyalty, positive reviews, and word-of-mouth marketing, avoiding the risk of triggering the attitude/behaviour gap that can occur when these messages are emphasised pre-purchase.

As a result, this sequence was transformed into a revenue-generating flow, achieving an impressive £2.52 in revenue per recipient and a 2.86% placed order rate, far exceeding expectations for post-purchase.

Results:

• Revenue from email marketing grew 119.5% (from 4% to 7.41% of total revenue).
• Deliverability score improved from 18 to 92.
• Newsletter open rates surged to 52.26% – a 99.4% increase (industry average: 31.82%).
• Welcome sequence click rate increased from 6.17% to 6.79% (industry average: 6.25%).
• Welcome sequence placed order rate surged from 0% to 3.15%, significantly outperforming the industry average of 0.08%.
• Revenue per recipient from the welcome sequence reached £1.59

Social Media Campaign

We created a bold social media campaign tailored to the 40-60 demographic, prioritising visually dynamic, product-focused content to drive engagement and conversions.

Reels Strategy: Letting the Product Speak
We transitioned from founder-led storytelling to short, unscripted Reels showcasing real customers interacting with the products. 

This leveraged the IKEA effect – a behavioural phenomenon where people value something more when they help to build it. Research shows participants are willing to pay 63% more for something they’ve built themselves.

Our Reels focused on women feeling confident, dancing to salsa music, and wearing the products. The visuals were designed to reflect empowerment without catering to the male gaze. Instead, the energy and joy in these videos resonated with women, encouraging them to see themselves in the moment.

The videos were intentionally highly energetic to increase watch time. Research has shown that high-energy video ads – those that feel fast, loud, and dynamic – are less likely to be skipped by viewers. High energy stimulates excitement, keeping audiences tuned into the ad. This approach drew on research by Joonhyuk Yang (University of Notre Dame), Yingkang Xie and Lakshman Krishnamurthi (Northwestern University), and Purushottam Papatla (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee), which highlights the link between stimulation and sustained attention.

To ensure this strategy was as effective as possible, we also commissioned heat mapping and eye-tracking research grounded in neuroscience. This research tested our visual design to predict engagement levels and revealed which elements were most likely to build brand recall. Insights from this research informed the use of movement, transitions, and layouts to optimise viewer retention and maximise the impact of the Reels.

Optimising Visual Design Across Static and Dynamic Content

To ensure our strategy achieved maximum impact, we complemented the analysis of Reels with in-depth testing of static posts. By commissioning heat mapping and eye-tracking research rooted in neuroscience, we evaluated the effectiveness of our visual assets across multiple formats.

Key Findings and Insights

1. Static Post Engagement: The research assessed how elements such as imagery, colour balance, and typography drew viewer attention in static posts. This provided clarity on which design aspects held the audience’s gaze and guided their visual journey.
2. Reels and Motion Content: The analysis of dynamic content, such as Reels, predicted how movement and transitions could sustain viewer engagement. It also highlighted opportunities to reinforce brand recall through well-timed focal points and storytelling sequences.
3. Design Principles Across Formats: The insights revealed cross-format strategies to build consistency and retention. For example, layouts that balanced high-impact visuals with clear calls-to-action performed well in both static and motion content.

By applying science-backed methodologies, we ensured that both static and dynamic content not only captured attention but also fostered a cohesive brand experience that resonates across platforms.

Key Metric:
Our primary KPI was the average percentage of the video watched, as longer watch times correlate with stronger ad recall and algorithm performance.

Results:

• Product-focused Reels achieved an average watch time of 38.91%, a 185% improvement over small business storytelling videos (13.66%).
• Weekly reach grew 48%, and weekly views increased 35%.
• Contributed to a 3% increase in AOV and a 6% rise in returning customer rate.

Staying Product-Focused:
With Meta allowing Instagram users to reset their algorithms in 2024/25 and a much stronger focus on interest-based content, clarity in content strategy is more critical than ever.

Overemphasising broad, feel-good sustainability messaging risks confusing the algorithm, alienating potential buyers and attracting the wrong audience.

By centring on product benefits, we positioned Y.O.U as a brand focused on quality and comfort, ensuring alignment with both audience expectations and platform trends.

Creating Brand Recall:

According to Forbes, 70% of people don’t return to a brand for a second purchase, even if they liked the first purchase. Fostering brand recall and staying memorable is essential, but increasingly challenging in the fast paced digital environment.

The neuroscience insights we commissioned guided the inclusion of branded end cards in every Reel, featuring the “Confidence Comes From YOU” message, brand colours, and logo. This helped reinforce brand recall while ensuring the content was optimised for boosting and turning into ads.

By combining behavioural insights, energetic visuals, and cutting-edge research, Y.O.U’s Reels strategy delivered exceptional results, driving engagement and deepening brand resonance with the target audience.

Treating Organic Content Like Advertising:
With Y.O.U unable to compete with competitors’ advertising budgets, we treated every piece of organic content like advertising. This approach was not only budget-conscious but also highly effective in the current digital landscape, where 37% of people use ad blockers (eMarketer, 2021).

Research shows that excessive ad repetition can annoy viewers and reduce ad effectiveness:

• General advertising is best capped at 3 repetitions per person to avoid annoyance
• For engaged audiences (e.g., website visitors), up to 6 repetitions is effective
• Rotating different creatives reduces annoyance and increases tolerance

Drawing from research by Vilma Todri (Emory University), Anindya Ghose (NYU), and Param Vir Singh (Carnegie Mellon University), our approach focused on diversifying visuals and messaging to keep the content fresh, ensuring consistent messaging that looks different every time someone sees it in their feed, so that they still engage.

By designing Reels and static graphics as distinct, high-quality pieces of content, we built brand recall and ad frequency without risking fatigue or turning off potential buyers.

Results:

• Product-focused Reels achieved an average watch time of 38.91%, a 185% improvement over storytelling videos (13.66%).
• Weekly reach grew by 48%, and weekly views increased by 35%.
• Contributed to a 3% increase in AOV and a 5% rise in returning customer rate.
• As a result of the campaign, non-followers reached each week rose by 14%, indicating broader reach to new audiences.

Summary:

By combining behavioural research, creative strategy, and scientific testing, Y.O.U’s Reels strategy delivered exceptional results, turning budget-friendly organic content into a powerful brand-building tool.

The social campaign drove substantial engagement improvements, with higher views, expanded reach, and a growing proportion of non-followers engaging with the content. These results underscore the campaign’s success in boosting visibility and extending audience penetration.

Through strategic insights and precise execution, Y.O.U Underwear achieved a 53% sales increase in just 10 months. With a competitive digital presence, a high-performing campaign, and assets ready for two years, Y.O.U is now positioned for sustained success.

Ready to transform your brand’s performance? Book a free consultation today.

Category: Growth Strategy
Sector: Fashion ecommerce
Client: Y.O.U Underwear
Results: 53% increase in sales

Y.O.U Underwear is the highest-scoring fashion B Corp in the world. Since its inception, the brand has donated over 50,000 pairs of underwear, improving the lives of more than 15,000 women and girls globally. 

In 2024, Y.O.U Underwear commissioned 181st Street to produce their annual impact report, a critical tool to showcase their achievements, engage stakeholders, and meet their B Corp and Fairtrade reporting requirements.

181st Street’s involvement went beyond simple report production. Acting as strategic consultants, we helped the brand set ambitious yet realistic impact targets, benchmark their progress against the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and ensure compliance with Green Claims Code standards.

Behavioural science played a central role in making the report’s impact more relatable. We reframed data into tangible outcomes, helping customers and stakeholders connect with Y.O.U’s achievements. For instance, we crafted post-purchase email sequences which revealed how each order helped improve the lives of three women or girls – fostering loyalty and advocacy and increasing sales.

isual storytelling brought the report to life with bold design, vibrant imagery and data visualisation, making it both engaging and accessible. Year-round communication assets ensured Y.O.U’s impact remained top-of-mind, creating a unified narrative aligned with customer motivations to avoid triggering the attitude/behaviour gap.

The result was a report that celebrated Y.O.U Underwear’s achievements, strengthened connections with stakeholders, and drove measurable business outcomes, setting a benchmark for purpose-driven impact reporting.

Strategic consultancy: setting and communicating goals

We began with a strategic review of Y.O.U Underwear’s sustainability initiatives to ensure their efforts were measurable, impactful, and aligned with global standards. 

We helped the brand set ambitious yet realistic goals, benchmarking their impact against the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and B Corp standards, and establishing year-on-year KPI tracking to demonstrate continuous progress.

We conducted a comprehensive audit of their data to ensure compliance with the Green Claims Code. 

One standout initiative was the brand’s takeback and recycling program. In 2023, Y.O.U recycled 282kg of materials. With 181st Street’s guidance, Y.O.U set a bold target to recycle or donate 563kg annually by 2027 – doubling their current efforts. 

This commitment not only supports their environmental goals but also positions the brand to meet future Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation.

Behavioural science: making impact relatable

Large numbers, while impressive, can feel abstract and impersonal. For instance, Y.O.U’s donation of 47,365 pairs of underwear since 2020 is difficult for audiences to visualise. 

181st Street used their behavioural science expertise to reframe this data and make the brand’s impact more tangible. We highlighted that these donations had improved 15,788 lives and further broke it down: in 2023, every 10 customers supported 33 women and girls – a figure that’s relatable, akin to the size of an average school class.

This granular storytelling extended to post-purchase communications. Customers were informed that their individual orders helped improve the lives of three women or girls, a small but meaningful number that was easy to visualise and share. These messages leveraged the Peak-End Rule, ensuring customers were left with a lasting positive impression and a compelling story to pass on.

We also designed an impact calculator to help the brand turn their large impact figures into a ‘per purchase’ amount going forward.

By aligning sustainability messaging with customer values, we avoided the pitfalls of the attitude-behaviour gap, where excessive altruistic messaging can unintentionally hinder purchase intent.

Enhancing visual storytelling

While the 2022 report (which the brand had produced themselves) provided detailed content, its design lacked the engaging elements needed to fully captivate stakeholders. 

For the 2023 report, 181st Street completely reimagined the visual storytelling:

1. Dynamic visuals: bold typography, vibrant imagery, and real photographs of beneficiaries brought the brand’s mission to life.
2. Data visualisation: we transformed raw statistics into clear, memorable infographics, ensuring stakeholders could quickly grasp key insights. Behavioural science suggests that well-designed visual data is more likely to be remembered and shared, increasing engagement.
3. Brand alignment: a refined colour palette evoked trust and positivity while aligning with Y.O.U’s brand identity.
4. Improved narrative flow: the 2023 report employed a more intuitive layout, guiding readers seamlessly through sections such as milestones, challenges, and future goals. This approach ensured clarity and retained attention throughout.

These design enhancements made the report not only more informative but also more engaging for a diverse audience.

Improving sales through impact messaging

By leveraging behavioural insights, 181st Street transformed the brand’s impact messaging into a compelling story:

• Psychological ownership: Customers felt they were reducing waste by participating in the recycling initiative, and could clearly see the positive impact per purchase on the brand’s mission to empower women and girls – deepening their emotional connection to the brand and allowing them to feel they made a personal contribution. (This leverages the ikea effect – behaviourally people value something more if they help to make it: research shows participants are willing to pay 63% more for something they’ve built themselves).
• Post-purchase engagement: We designed an email sequence highlighting tangible outcomes, such as how each order contributed to recycling efforts and empowering women, which are sent immediately after checkout was completed. This personalised storytelling leaves customers with a strong emotional impression, increasing loyalty and inspiring advocacy.

The results were exceptional:

• Revenue Per Recipient: £2.52
• Placed Order Rate: 2.86%

For a functional product like underwear, we wouldn’t normally expect the immediate post-purchase sequence to generate revenue. These metrics highlight the power of blending sustainability with strategic messaging to drive both engagement and sales at specific points in the customer journey. In this case, leveraging the peak-end rule to leave customers with a positive experience at the most memorable part of the journey.

Communicating impact year-round

Recognising that only a small percentage of stakeholders read full PDF impact reports, 181st Street designed a series of social media graphics and email campaigns to share Y.O.U’s achievements throughout the year. 

These assets distilled key accomplishments into concise, visually appealing messages, ensuring the brand’s impact remained top-of-mind.

Previously, Y.O.U Underwear struggled with fragmented messaging around their B Corp and sustainability credentials, which diluted their story and negatively impacted their sales.

We streamlined their communications, focusing on the most relevant aspects of their impact. By aligning their messaging with customer motivations, we strengthened connections with stakeholders and avoided the risks of greenwashing.

The campaign we designed to align their product with their empowerment mission increased sales by 53%.

Communicating impact with stakeholders: a segmented approach

To share Y.O.U Underwear’s 2023 Impact Report with their audience, 181st Street designed a segmented email campaign tailored to subscribers’ purchasing behaviour. This strategy ensured that the messaging was personalised and the impact felt tangible, fostering a stronger connection and driving engagement. Messaging emphasised the number of lives improved, directly tying customer purchases to tangible outcomes.

The average open rate for the campaign (39.56%) was 51% higher than the brand’s usual open rate – and better than industry average (31.82%).

The click rate (2.17%) was 32.3% higher than the usual click rate (industry average is 1.64%), reflecting the effectiveness of personalised content.

We later went on to redesign Y.O.U’s email marketing strategy, which led to a 119.5% increase in annual revenue from email marketing.

Conclusion

The 2023 Impact Report was more than a document – it was a strategic tool that celebrated Y.O.U Underwear’s achievements, strengthened stakeholder relationships, and drove measurable business outcomes. 

By combining strategic consultancy, behavioral science, and engaging design, 181st Street helped position Y.O.U Underwear as a leader in ethical fashion and a powerful force for good.

Ready to transform your impact reporting and drive measurable results for your brand?

Book a discovery call with our team today to explore how 181st Street can help you achieve your goals through purpose-driven strategy, behavioural insights, and world-class design.

In the midst of a cost of living crisis, with consumer spending down, and at the most competitive time of year for online marketing, 181st Street was tasked with designing a digital retail campaign to elevate over 100 small ethical businesses and increase their sales – without a penny in advertising spend.

Our high-impact #ShopEthicalInstead campaign achieved an organic reach of 4.7 million people and increased participating brands’ sales by an average of 18% in ‘Golden Quarter’ – the most important time for small business revenue.

These unrivalled results were thanks to the 181st Street team’s academic knowledge, exceptional communications skills and their ability to apply groundbreaking techniques never seen before in the sustainability sector.

Here’s how we did it…

The background

#EthicalHour has been the voice of the sustainable business sector since 2016. Their ​​community and training has launched and grown thousands of ethical and eco challenger brands, and in 2017 they started #ShopEthicalInstead as a positive alternative to Black Friday.

From a behavioural perspective, anti-Black Friday campaigns don’t work. They deviate too much from the social norm, at a time when record levels of advertising spend and marketing exposure are re-enforcing mass consumerism messages. 

But many sustainable business owners feel uncomfortable promoting mass consumption, and often don’t have the margins to offer huge discounts. 

While the giants of the sector have achieved cult-brand status with their subversive messaging – such as Patagonia’s 2011 “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign – the truth is that small brands don’t have the audience, budget or access to the communications expertise needed to run this type of campaign. Most struggle to even get cut-through and conversion with standard persuasive sales messages.

That’s why #ShopEthicalInstead was always positioned as a positive alternative. A collaborative effort between ethical brands, calling on consumers to “vote with their wallet” and redirect money they would be spending anyway, into ethical and sustainable supply chains.

This messaging clearly resonated with the #EthicalHour audience. In 2020, the campaign reached 1.7 million people in November and December, and was featured in prominent industry press including Vogue Business, Ethical Consumer Magazine and Edie.

Feedback from participating brands was positive, praising the additional exposure and engagement the campaign brought them. Anecdotally, the team knew that it was driving sales, based on audience feedback, but there was no tangible way to track this built into the campaign, and little infrastructure available to scale to more reach, and support more brands.

Which is why they approached 181st Street to take the 2022 campaign to the next level. 

Under the skin of the problem

The average ethical small business has less than 6,000 followers, and achieving any level of cut-through is getting harder. 

These businesses usually make up to 80% of their annual revenue in Q4. If sales are slow, survivability isn’t guaranteed.

Consumers spend more of their disposable income during Q4 than at any other time of year, buying gifts for loved ones and treats for the holiday season. Which means it’s also the most competitive time for brands to be marketing online.

Total US advertising spend was $23 billion in 2018. $6bn of that – 25% – was spent in the 4 day shopping period from Black Friday to Cyber Monday. That’s simply too much noise for small brands to compete with.

However, achieving organic reach without ad spend is getting harder. Instagram shows your posts to less than 10% of your total audience, unless it gets significant levels of engagement. But in 2022, the average engagement rate on business accounts was only 0.54%.

And, in 2022, the average e-commerce conversion rate across all verticals was 2.5%. The amount of reach and engagement a brand needs to achieve to actually generate significant sales is becoming virtually impossible for small brands.

When it comes to Golden Quarter sales, the odds are stacked firmly against small businesses.

An amplified voices approach

One social profile can only achieve so much reach, even with a large audience.

At the most competitive point of the retail calendar, it makes no sense for small ethical businesses to be competing with each other for airspace, when they’re competing against those big ad budgets too.

That’s why we invited them to take a more collaborative and strategic approach – working together to communicate one clear message, amplify everyone’s products, and create levels of engagement, brand recall and cut-through that a small business simply couldn’t achieve on their own.

While #EthicalHour had started the foundations of this with the #ShopEthicalInstead hashtag, and key points of engagement built into the campaign (in the form of their weekly Twitter chats), the campaigning infrastructure we built for them meant we could take this even further, drawing on techniques used in successful political campaigning.

In October, we ran a pre-launch campaign on the #EthicalHour socials, conducted brand research and did cold outreach to recruit over 100 ethical brands.

We then centralised content production to give every brand their own mini-campaign for their social channels. All the brands had to do was copy, paste and upload the content into their social media schedulers. We even gave them a calendar and guideline posting schedule to create peak moments of campaign awareness.

We also conducted founder interviews to create engaging video content focused on messaging most likely to drive engagement, from a behavioural perspective.

Most small businesses don’t have the resources to create the significant amounts of social content needed to get cut-through. Having our team create this for them not only increased their output, but helped drive engagement too. 

The campaign launched publicly on 1st November. With even big brands feeling the financial pinch, we knew that advertising budgets would be reserved for the end of the month – targeting payday and Black Friday. By releasing our messaging earlier, across over 100 social accounts with a combined audience of over 1 million people, we were able to drive awareness before online channels became too saturated, giving the brands time to get the combined audience into their sales funnels and work on conversion.

The methodology was proven in politics, but has never been applied in retail before. Thanks to our team’s academic expertise in behavioural science, and our audience-first approach, we were able to translate these techniques effectively.

But we knew it wouldn’t work without the right messaging…

Reframing the message to reflect the times

Last year, there were 5.5 million small businesses in the UK, making up 99.2% of the total businesses in the country.

We are proudly a ‘nation of shopkeepers’, and while not all our high streets are the vibrant, independent spaces they used to be, the innovation, creativity, care and craftsmanship of small businesses has shifted their shopfront online.

Every purchase from a small business supports the vibrant, independent business community. Every purchase supports a shopkeeper. Every purchase matters.

2022’s #ShopEthicalInstead campaign fell in the midst of a cost of living crisis. Consumer spending was down. The cost of doing business was up, and ethical SMEs were feeling the impact more than most.

The campaign needed core messaging that would resonate with audiences in a tougher financial climate, in order to get cut-through and drive sales. That’s why we focused on humanising the economic argument – showing how ethical businesses pay living wage, support fair trade and take a stand against poverty.

Sustainable products often face criticism for being more expensive than their mainstream alternatives, and in a cost of living crisis, they can be seen as a luxury – even to the campaign’s target demographics, who still have the disposable income to shop from ethical SMEs. By focusing on this messaging, we were able to simplify complex sustainability arguments, and empower those consumers to shop with brands actively working to end the cost of living crisis.

For many of the brands involved, who often focus their marketing on their eco credentials, this new position showed them that sustainability isn’t their core selling point, and empowered them to try new messaging, backed by behavioural science and proven to drive more sales.

Micro businesses and small brands often can’t afford, and don’t need, a full-service agency on retainer to manage their social channels throughout the year. But that does mean they often fall into the trap of leading with ideological messaging – great for driving engagement within the echo-chamber, but not high-converting in terms of sales.

Which is why, as part of our pro-bono giveback to #EthicalHour and its members, we offered every brand involved in #ShopEthicalInstead a free marketing review session at the end of the campaign – to talk about how they could use batch production and content-through-process throughout the year to increase their social media output, and identify which behavioural-science backed messages would resonate best with their audience to drive sales.

The results by numbers

• 105 small businesses supported for free
• 4.7 million people reached in November/December
• 5,858 brand sales over Black Friday weekend
• 5,858 trees planted thanks to impact partner Ecologi
• 18% uptick in sales as a direct result of the campaign
• 23 free marketing reviews conducted 
• 33 video interviews conducted
• 132 video clips produced
• 1,050 social graphics created
• 15 gift guides produced
• 263% click through rate on gift guides in November

#ShopEthicalInstead’s impact

#EthicalHour asked us to help assess the campaign’s impact against the Sustainable Development Goals:

Goal 12 – responsible consumption and production

The 2023 campaign put ethical consumption firmly on the agenda during the most active time for consumer spending. By tracking sales data, we could prove an 18% uptick in sales for brands involved.

Over the Black Friday weekend, the brands received a total of 5,858 sales. Assuming an average order value of £50, that’s £292,900 spent with small, ethical and sustainable businesses. Given the 18% uptick in sales as a direct result of the campaign, that’s £52,722 that would not necessarily have otherwise been spent in this responsible way.

Goal 8: Decent work and economic growth

To be selected for inclusion in the campaign, brands had to be committed to living wage supply chains and ethical employment practices. We made Real Living Wage a key message within the campaign’s narrative, which reached 4.7 million people during November and December.

We supported 105 small business owners directly, helping to up-skill them in marketing throughout the campaign, and by delivering 23 free, bespoke marketing reviews, to help their businesses grow.

Goal 15: Life on land

We partnered with Ecologi to plant a tree for every sale made with participating brands during Black Friday weekend, which resulted in 5,858 trees being planted in Tanzania.

An FMCG brand in the food and beverage industry had an email marketing database of over 30,000 subscribers, and were sending regular communications. Their revenue from email accounted for around 50% of total D2C sales from their website, but sales had been falling for around 8 months.

They came to us to fix it. These are the headline results we achieved within 2 months:

• Increased conversion rate to 90% above industry average
• Increased revenue from email by 67%
• Increased revenue per recipient from 32p to £5.49
• Achieved an average open rate of 88.67% (up from 46.81%)

Here’s what we did…

Performance analysis

We started with a deep dive into their email marketing performance data. This gave us a clear understanding of what was and wasn’t working, what KPIs they should be monitoring going forward, and what actions to take to increase email revenue.

From this analysis, our key findings concluded that:

• The brand was doing no relationship building/nurturing with their list. Although they were emailing regularly, they were only ever contacting subscribers when they wanted to sell. This was harming their engagement, and they were missing out on a valuable opportunity to turn their most loyal audience into superfans, to leverage word-of-mouth marketing.

• Offering too many discounts was devaluing their brand and harming their sales – engaged subscribers were waiting for the next discount code to make a purchase, which was impacting cash flow and profit margins.
• Despite sending regular sales messages, 89% of their list had never made a purchase with them online. This reinforced our finding that they weren’t doing enough to nurture their subscribers and give them a reason to buy.
• 58% of their list was no longer engaged, and this was leading to a higher than average spam score – which would become a problem for the brand when Google implements their new spam regulations (senders who are frequently about a spam threshold of 0.3% will not be able to send to Google emails – including Workspace, from February 2024).

We cleaned and re-engaged their list, bringing their engaged and very engaged subscribers up to 90%.

Working with their in-house marketing coordinator, we developed a new list-building strategy and a strategy for competitions and collaborations – which was their primary list-building method but was leading to low quality leads and high spam scores, due to lack of follow-up nurturing.

We also implemented a number of design changes to ensure brand consistency across all types of automated emails, added in social proof (awards they had won, supermarkets they were stocked in etc) to the footer of all emails, and began including a short line to remind subscribers of how they got onto the list – to help reduce unsubscribes and spam reports.

Going forward, we built them a new email marketing schedule, so that they would be able to implement the 70:30 ratio of content designed to build and nurture a relationship, and content designed to sell.

We segmented their list based on previous engagement and purchasing behaviour, and incorporated this into the strategy to ensure that each segment received highly-relevant, conversion-optimised content and targeted offers that reflected where they were in the customer journey.

Building a high converting welcome sequence

The first email you send to a new subscriber is statistically the best performing in terms of open rate and engagement, if it’s automated to send on subscribe.

You’re contacting them at the exact moment they are opting-in to hear from you, when they are highly engaged, and it gives you the opportunity to welcome them to your brand and control the narrative as they become a warmer lead.

76% of consumers expect to receive a welcome email immediately after subscribing to a list, so not sending one is likely to break trust with your new subscriber.

Based on the findings from our initial analysis, we knew that this brand needed to do more relationship building before asking for the sale, and the welcome sequence is the perfect place to do this.

Their previous welcome sequence was too complex and too sales focused. The first email had a very high unsubscribe rate of 4.5%, suggesting that there was a mismatch between subscribers’ experience and expectations of the brand online, and the experience created in the welcome email.

The brand were incentivising subscribers by offering 10% off first order – a common lead magnet for FMCG brands, but the welcome sequence was too heavily focused on pushing the discount and not on giving people a reason to buy. Only 15% of subscribers were using the discount code, so we knew we needed to do more to warm leads up and get them ready to purchase. The discount itself wasn’t enough of an incentive.

The first 2 weeks of being on your list are statistically the highest engaged part of the subscriber lifecycle. With this in mind, you can afford to send more emails during this time than you normally would, but only if they are highly relevant and engaging.

Our client’s original email sequence was running for 4 weeks, so we cut this down to 5 days, one email per day. We focused on telling the brand story, bringing the benefits of the product and tasting notes to life with beautiful imagery, descriptions and content, and layering in the brand impact and values in a way that created a sense of community and involved the subscriber. We also leveraged personalisation throughout the sequence to increase engagement.

After A/B testing best-performing subject lines, we were able to increase the welcome sequence open rate to 71.6% (a 50% increase in performance).

We increased the click rate from 2.45% to 17.9%, and increased the placed order rate by 1,663% – putting them in the top 1% of FMCG food and beverage brands.

Our work left them with an incredibly high performing, highly engaging welcome sequence they can use to nurture their customer base long term.

Optimising their abandoned cart sequence

E-commerce brands lose $18 billion in sales revenue per year because of cart abandonment. An automated abandoned cart sequence is the perfect opportunity to win back the 70% of consumers that fill their basket but don’t check out the first time.

The brand we were working with had a placed order rate of just 1.06% on their abandoned cart sequence and a revenue per recipient of 98p.

They were sending 3 emails as part of the sequence, which is industry best practice. However, the first email was set to a time delay of 4 hours after the cart was abandoned. The second email was 20 hours, and the third was 3 days.

Within 24 hours, people will have forgotten, changed their minds or purchased from somewhere else. Research shows that to increase conversion significantly, all 3 emails need to be sent within 24 hours, with 1 hour seeing the highest conversion rate.

We used A/B testing to optimise the sequence for open and click rate, re-wrote the emails based on the successful sales messaging already tested in the welcome sequence, and adjusted the sending schedule in line with research-backed optimum send times.

As a result of our optimisation, placed order rate increased by 35.71%, from 1.06% to 4.17%. Revenue per recipient increased from 98p to £1.33 – a 293.4% increase.

Bringing them above industry average

• Prior to working with us, their average open rate was in the 48th percentile (meaning that they were performing better than 48% of FMCG brands in their peer group). Within 5 weeks, we were able to move them into the 86th percentile – meaning that they are now performing better than 86% of their industry peers.
• Their average click rate was in the 45th percentile. In 5 weeks, we moved them to the 77th percentile.
• Most importantly, their conversion rate was in the 16th percentile at just 0.04%. We brought this up to the 90th percentile, achieving a conversion rate of 6.5% and putting them in the top 10% of FMCG brands.

Our strategy and optimisation increased their revenue per recipient from 32p to £5.49.

Revenue per recipient tells you how much spendable revenue you’re getting from each subscriber on your list. The higher your RPR, the more each member of your list is worth, which also has an impact on your advertising budget.

In less than 3 months, we increased their email marketing revenue by 67%.

If you would like to see similar results, book a free consultation call.

A well-established sustainability-focused SaaS firm wanted to understand the reputation and regulatory risks they were exposed to before their next investment round.

The business held a significant first-mover advantage, established by coming to market with a sophisticated tech stack 18 months before any competitors, and they wanted to maintain this by mitigating as much risk as possible and identifying opportunities to stay ahead.

Operating in the sustainability space, the business was facing increasing regulation and reporting requirements from the Advertising Standards Authority, Competition and Markets Authority (specifically the Green Claims Code) and the Financial Conduct Authority. They needed to ensure compliance and stay ahead of incoming regulatory changes that might affect their operations or communications.

181st Street’s team of analysts and reputation specialists were commissioned to analyse the company’s risks, provide recommended mitigation strategies and map out incoming regulatory changes the company should be aware of.

To understand the full scope of their reputation risks, we began by producing a detailed stakeholder analysis. This identified priorities and expectations from their investors, staff, clients and other key stakeholders.

We mapped their customer journey for each product and ongoing customer service and support, to fully understand the brand experience from an end-user perspective and identify any areas for improvement and optimisation.

We then undertook media monitoring, social listening and sentiment analysis to identify any relevant themes and risks, taking into account both the company’s current position and the 24 month future roadmap, to ensure potential future risk areas were highlighted and included.

This exercise provided our client with valuable insights into how their stakeholders viewed and engaged with the firm and its products. It highlighted a range of media opportunities, outlets and key influential publications that the client should be engaging with, which we were able to embed in their PR strategy going forward too.

To identify risks in the wider marketplace, we undertook a detailed competitor analysis, including brand audits, media monitoring and sentiment analysis for their 5 biggest and most significant competitors.

Finally, we audited the client’s website, adverts and marketing materials for Green Claims Code compliance, and produced a detailed roadmap of current and upcoming regulatory requirements that the client must comply with, including guidance on areas where changes would be needed to meet these requirements.

The client received a full risk report, grading the risks from severe to minor to help them prioritise, with detailed mitigation recommendations prepared by our reputation team.

We supported senior leadership to fully understand the risk report, regulatory requirements and next steps with a debrief session, and helped managers across the organisation turn the recommendations into a workable action plan for their teams.

By the end of the process the client had clear visibility on a series of reputation risks, and the sources of those risks, as well as upcoming regulatory changes, that they had previously been unaware of.

Within 3 months of receiving the final report and working with our team, all major risks had been mitigated following our recommendations and they were able to maximise valuation and open their next round of investment.

If you would like to see similar results, book a free consultation call.

The Challenge

Royal London’s internal sustainability team was preparing to roll out green claims compliance across the business, aligning with the Green Claims Code (UK), the Green Claims Directive (EU), and finance-industry-specific regulations.

However, they recognised that effective compliance required company-wide engagement, rather than a siloed approach.

To achieve this, they needed a way to educate and empower all staff on sustainability and the risks of greenwashing.

The Solution

As part of Royal London’s internal Eco Week, a week-long initiative to engage employees in sustainability, our Senior Managing Partner, Sian, was invited to lead a breakfast session.

A senior sustainability leader at Royal London had read her book, Buy Better, Consume Less (Icon Books, 2022), and saw an opportunity to bring her insights to the team.

Focusing on Chapter 1: The 7 Sins of Greenwashing, (which was published in the iPaper), Sian’s session introduced employees to the key principles of identifying misleading eco claims and understanding the true credentials of sustainable products. The training provided:

• A clear framework for identifying and avoiding greenwashing.

• A consumer-level introduction to green claims compliance, helping staff connect with the topic on a personal level.

• Practical insights to help employees engage more deeply with Royal London’s sustainability commitments.

The Impact

The session was a resounding success:

• 99% of participants agreed or strongly agreed that they felt more confident navigating sustainability claims.

• The training helped foster cross-departmental engagement, ensuring compliance was seen as a shared responsibility.

• It set the stage for future sustainability initiatives within Royal London, supporting their broader compliance strategy.

Beyond Royal London

We offer tailored sustainability training for businesses looking to engage their teams on green claims compliance and purpose-driven communication.

Our training formats include:

• Engaging Breakfast Briefings & Lunch and Learns

• Practical Workshops

• Full-Day Interactive Training

• Ongoing Mentoring & Consultancy

We’ve delivered sessions for clients including eBay, The Arts Marketing Association, CIPR, Social Enterprise UK, the British Association of Fair Trade Shops and The Greenhouse, a private member’s club for corporate sustainability leaders.

If you’re looking to up-skill your team on sustainability and compliance, we can help.

The subscription box market is booming, but creating loyalty in a world where customers’ options are practically endless isn’t easy.

A vegan beauty and self-care box, focused on showcasing other brand’s products to help customers discover exciting new vegan brands, was losing 80% of their subscribers within the first 3 months, and didn’t know why.

181st Street was commissioned to create a subscription box retention strategy, and tasked with increasing their 6+ month retention by 20%.

We increased it by 92%.

These outstanding results were thanks to the 181st Street team’s academic expertise in audience targeting and customer behaviour, exceptional digital marketing skills and ability to create breathtaking experiential branding moments that drive engagement and loyalty.

Here’s how we did it…

The background

As a small team passionate about finding the best vegan self care, beauty and wellness products for their monthly boxes, our clients were on a mission to smash stereotypes and take the vegan lifestyle mainstream.

The monthly subscription box model presented an exciting opportunity for them.

From a behavioural perspective the convenience appeals to customers. Challenger brands see inclusion in subscription boxes as a valuable route to their target audience, and financially, the recurring revenue is an attractive prospect in a market where demand is high. 

In 2021, 81% of households were signed up to at least one subscription box. 

While meal kits and food boxes dominate the market with a 31% share, there is still plenty of room for personal care, beauty and even pet-themed subscription boxes, which are all growing in popularity.

But our client was facing a retention problem, with 80% of customers cancelling their subscription within the first 3 months. 

This isn’t uncommon. Industry statistics show that 70% of subscribers typically cancel in the first 6 months.

However, data shows that if you can retain them beyond 6 months, they are likely to stay subscribed for 12 months. 

Our client didn’t have a great handle on their data, wasn’t collecting customer feedback to identify why people were cancelling, and their low retention rate was making it hard to predict cash flow, build new brand relationships and plan for growth.

As a small team, their efforts were focused on product sourcing, fulfilment (which they were still doing at their kitchen table) and social media to acquire new customers. 

Without a clear subscription box retention strategy, they were stuck in user churn and unable to grow.

They didn’t have the expertise in-house, or the time, to understand how to optimise for better retention.

That’s where we stepped in.

Under the skin of the problem…

The vegan values and desire to make the lifestyle more mainstream was the driving force behind our client’s business. 

They’d falsely assumed this would be the driving force for their subscribers too.

On social media, their values-driven content was driving good engagement – because who doesn’t love fluffy animal pictures? But without any data collection, our client couldn’t tell us who was subscribing, why they were buying or why they were cancelling.

We started with our signature audience-first approach

We created a detailed demographic and psychographic profile of the target customer most likely to buy a subscription and stay subscribed. 

Widening this out beyond “beauty lover with vegan values” helped our client understand more about their customers’ reasons for purchasing, which helped inform their choice of products to include in the box.

At first they were understandably hesitant to focus less on the vegan lifestyle.

However, it was clear that by putting such a heavy brand emphasis on this, they were only attracting people who were already vegan, and therefore not achieving their goal of making the lifestyle more accessible and mainstream.

When we showed them the science behind the attitude/behaviour gap, and how a heavy focus on ethical and sustainable values can actually stop customers buying (even if they love what you stand for), they were comfortable making the changes necessary to build the brand their customers wanted to buy from.

Previously, the client’s messaging had focused heavily on the products and brands featured in the monthly boxes. As they were selling a combination of different products from different brands every month, they had struggled to create an identity for their own brand, beyond their vegan values. They suspected that people were cancelling to buy direct from brands they had discovered in the box. 

Building a brand identity

We knew we needed to create a standout brand experience that complimented the showcase brands but was strong enough to garner customer loyalty. 

Our branding team took the client through a full reposition. 

That meant a new tone of voice, new content pillars for social media, a new and consistent photographic style to bring their brand to life with every product post, and a new focus on the benefits of subscribing (to the customer not the animals!)

Research suggested that curated subscription boxes maintain a higher retention rate across the market, regardless of category. 

With this in mind, we supported the client to take a more curated approach to each box, so that every month had a theme, and positioned this as a monthly ‘edit’ to align with the luxury fashion magazines and Instagram culture their target audience were highly engaged with.

From there, we walked through every step of the customer journey from first look, to initial purchase, to receiving the box through the post. 

Maximising retention

We optimised product sales pages to manage expectations and reflect the brand experience.

We introduced a new automated welcome email sequence to introduce the brand, set expectations, build excitement and create a sense of belonging as soon as the subscriber signed up (92% open rate on first delivery).

This was enhanced by an ‘anticipation sequence’ in the days running up to the first or next box arrival. 

We designed this multi-day anticipation sequence to be changed for each box and lightly personalised based on the customer’s subscription length. 

It included product sneak peeks, personal insights from the team as to why they had selected the products, self care tips and fun and engaging content to bring the vegan values to life post-purchase, creating a ‘feel good’ factor, all designed to build anticipation and ensure that the customer opened their box as soon as it arrived. 

Behaviourally, the dopamine hit of happy hormones we get from shopping comes when we add to cart, not when we checkout. As we pay we actually experience flares in our insular cortex – the area of the brain that handles emotional processing and pain perception.

Researchers have found that pre-payment models, where you pay first and experience the benefits later, help to numb this pain, which is good news for subscription services. 

To ensure we were maximising positive experiences throughout the customer experience, we timed the anticipation sequence to begin on the day the customer was billed each month, to keep them focused on the benefits of their subscription and excited for the products to come.

Creating a beautiful unboxing experience

Our packaging designers worked with the client to improve the unboxing experience, making it feel more luxury and high end, in line with audience expectations and the self care focus. This included a redesign of the packaging materials, box design and inserts, and consultation on how to pack the boxes to maximise the unboxing experience.

By encouraging customers to share photos and videos of them opening their latest box on social media (and incentivising this with a monthly giveaway) we were able to create a body of user generated content to enhance the client’s social media channels, humanise the anticipation sequence with a sense of community, and leverage social proof.

Making it easier to leave…

74% of UK adults wish companies made it easier for them to self-manage their subscriptions.

The Subscription Economy Benchmark Report analysed 90 million subscriptions and found that companies that allow customers to make more changes to subscriptions, grow faster.

While it sounds counterintuitive, one of the keys to increasing subscription box retention is to actually make it easier to cancel.

Our client was handling cancellations manually, asking people to email them to cancel. We worked with them to embed subscription management technology that allowed customers to cancel with one-click, and gave them the option to pause their subscription for up to 3 months.

We then highlighted this in the pre-sale FAQs, on the product pages, and promoted the pause option as a benefit for people going on holiday or wanting to take a break to use the products they already had.

…But giving them a reason to stay

Research for Barclays Payments showed that some of the most popular reasons for subscribing to monthly boxes across categories included: highly tailored products (52%), good value (54%), and access to exclusive content (57%).

We highlighted the value of the boxes by adding an RRP to the product listing that reflected the total value of all the products included, and ensured that this was mentioned every time the client talked about the upcoming monthly edit.

With a tighter focus on who the target customer is and what they want from their subscription, the client was able to highlight how each edit is tailored to their lifestyle and how the products are chosen and curated for them.

We then worked with the client to explore their brand partnerships and create a strategy for sourcing new products pre-launch – giving the brands a guaranteed distribution channel and social buzz, and giving subscribers access to exclusive products before the mainstream market.

The results

Thanks to our deep market research, science-backed customer and behavioural insights, and granular approach to optimising the customer journey, we were able to bring our client’s brand in-line with the audience most receptive to their product.

From there, we designed an experience that kept them engaged, built brand loyalty, and created a sense of community built around the brand values.

As a result, we increased 6+ month subscription retention by 92% in just 12 months.

If you would like to see similar results, book a free consultation call.

In the UK the Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) and Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) regulate green claims that companies make in their marketing, advertising and external communications.

Fines for breaching The Green Claims Code can be up to 10% of global turnover, and potential director disqualification. Accusations of greenwashing can also damage your brand reputation, supply chain relationships and have a lasting impact on stakeholder trust.

Even businesses with a sustainability focus need to understand the Green Claims Code – you may already have the data to make you compliant, but the Code covers how you present it and talk about your credentials in your marketing and advertising.

With the regulators recently releasing stricter guidance on green claims – particularly around whole business context, future net zero targets and end of life processes, and regulations moving to be more sector specific, compliance is becoming increasingly challenging for marketing and sustainability teams alike.

In January 2023, the CMA announced it would be expanding its scrutiny of misleading green claims to the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector, making green claims compliance a priority for FMCG brands.

Although The Green Claims Code has been designed to make existing trading standards legislation easier to understand and implement with a sustainability lens, the guidance is substantial, and companies need to have robust compliance processes in place for the green claims they make regularly, and any new claims they introduce.

A multi-million pound turnover, market leading FMCG brand approached us to support with their green claim compliance.

They had recently closed a significant investment round to fund expansion into Europe, and while they already had a full lifecycle analysis in place and third-party verified Climate labelling for their products (making them the most sustainable product in their category), they understood that green claims compliance is as much about how you present your evidence as it is about what evidence you hold. 

They wanted to make sure that all their marketing and communications were compliant with UK regulations, and that they were well prepared for incoming EU regulations as they expand, so they commissioned a Green Claims Audit.

The scope of their audit included all green claims being made on their website, blog, packaging and latest impact report, which had not yet been published. 

Our team of analysts read through all the content on these channels to create a list of all the green claims currently being made. 

In total, they identified over 370 green claims, although a significant proportion of these were variants of the same claim that would require a different evidentiary basis due to slight differentials in current wording or presentation – so we were able to standardise their green claims and achieve a level of efficiency that would support their comms team moving forward.

Once all the claims have been identified, we align each claim to the relevant clauses in the regulatory frameworks (in this case, the CMA guidance on environmental claims on goods and services, and the ASA’s latest CAP guidance on ‘The environment: misleading claims and social responsibility in advertising’ for both broadcast and non-broadcast), which gives a quick and clear overview of what compliance looks like.

Our analysts then grade the risk level of each claim. 

We have developed a bespoke ranking system for this that takes into account the nature of the claim and scope of evidence required, how significant the claim is within the whole business context and full product lifestyle, and other factors (including presentation) specified by the regulators. This then gives a risk rating based on the Government’s Defence Intelligence Probability Yardstick. 

Risk ranking helps give the audit process and our clients a viable and sensible way of seeing where their compliance gaps are and prioritising the gathering and presentation of evidence.

From there, our senior Green Claims compliance experts go into the audit and add notes to each claim about what will be required to make it compliant – both from a data and evidentiary perspective, and a presentation/design perspective.

Our analysts then pull together a list of all the evidence required, and work with our clients to audit their existing data and map this to their claims. 

At this stage, we can see what claims are already compliant, what claims require a different presentation of data to be compliant, and where any gaps are. 

If required, our sustainability, circularity and impact strategists (who have previously been senior staff at brands like B&Q, Ben & Jerry’s and eBay) can step in to help develop new practices in business operations and supply chains to make the business more sustainable and provide more evidence for their claims – although for this particular client that was not required, as their practices were already robust.

In this case, the client opted to make the changes to their green claims in-house, so the audit was presented to the comms team responsible for design, copy and website upkeep. They went away to produce an evidence page based on our recommendations, and make the necessary changes across copy and design.

We then repeated the audit process to review the evidence and presentation, ensuring that all green claims are now compliant and rated low on our risk register.

The client told us that the audit process was clear, easy to follow and saved a significant amount of time, whilst also supporting their in-house comms teams to manage green claims compliance going forward.

At 181st Street, we specialise in Green Claims compliance for FMCG brands. Find out more about how we can help with your Green Claims Code compliance journey. If you would like to arrange a green claims audit, training or compliance support, book a free consultation call.

181st Street supported a major political party with their strategy for the 2023 UK local elections. 

Our demographics team undertook detailed demographic and psychographic analysis on a ward-by-ward basis across 5 cities, to inform the design of bespoke local comms strategies.

Our communications team worked closely with our policy team and the party’s national policy guidance to design localised key messages for all target wards.

We then trained local candidates and their volunteers to run their social media channels in line with national party campaigning guidelines and Electoral Committee compliance, using our demographic and psychographic profiling to create content and engagement aimed at high likelihood voter conversion.

Our reputation specialists provided media training for candidates and our PR experts consulted on a range of media opportunities and “get to know me” engagement moments across the target regions, to raise candidate visibility.

As a result of our strategy, training and support, there was a significant increase in local and regional press coverage, a 20% uptick in social media engagement in target constituencies and  higher on-doorstep awareness.

If you would like to see similar results, book a free consultation call.

Operation London Bridge was the codename of the plan for what would happen in the days following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

In September 2022, we directly advised and supported 59 organisations, ranging from household name consumer brands to charities, councils, housing associations and specialist environmental and sustainable organisations to navigate this sensitive situation and the weeks that followed.

Operation London Bridge had significant implications for social media, digital publishing, lobbying and campaigning, PR activities, event planning, security at venues, events and employers.

The impact on the country and the economy was significant. 

There were cultural changes to prepare for, and significant public grieving. The vast majority of British people had never known life without the Queen, and in August 2022 she was polling at 82% popularity.

Across sectors, and regardless of personal opinions about the monarchy, Operation London Bridge was rated by risk advisors as highly likely to have an organisation-wide impact. 

Several of the organisations we advised have Royal patronage, and for the Housing Associations we support in London, their daily operations were heavily impacted by security arrangements and shut down areas of the city for the funeral.

For ongoing clients, planning for Operation London Bridge had been a standard part of the  operational and communications risk assessments that 181st Street provides, so the organisations had a broad understanding of how it may affect them and how they should respond well in advance.

On the day of the Queen’s death, we had a full 18 page briefing document on our clients’ desks 2 hours before the official public announcement was made on the BBC.

We outlined what would happen throughout the official mourning period and funeral, and how organisations should prepare and respond. Our policy team provided polling data on the Monarchy and Queen, so that organisations could understand the implications for their audiences and stakeholders.

Our reputation team prepared initial CEO and corporate statements and content in line with government guidance, and our digital team rolled this out across 236 social media channels and 72 websites. Our digital team also supported all clients to pause pre-scheduled social media content, marketing emails and advertising where necessary and facilitated the timely release of the statements, so that all the organisations we support were seen to respond in a timely and appropriate manner.

If you would like to discuss reputation management, pubic affairs or any of our services, book a free consultation call.

181st Street was commissioned by an innovative tech hardware startup targeting the sports market, to provide senior advisory and investor relations support.

The company first approached us during early product development to support an initial raise of seed funding to support prototyping and IP protection.

To date we have provided 18 months of strategic advice on growth, investment, business strategy and routes to market, across D2C, retail and wholesale.

The retail price point positions the product at the high end of the market, so we have been supporting the client to develop a luxury brand identity and identify well-aligned retail opportunities and corporate partnerships.

With our guidance, the client has successfully raised £750,000 over 3 rounds: an initial seed funding round, a second round based on operational targets, and a third to-market round now that the product has successfully passed testing and is going through tooling. The client has increased market valuation and increased share price valuation with every round.

We have helped them maximise their first mover advantage as the first to market with a product of this kind, and analysis places them between 24-26 months ahead of any significant competitors. 

They are now in promising talks to be stocked in Duty Free, a number of airline carriers, an elite national fitness chain and to form a number of high level corporate partnerships that will open up significant further investment or purchase opportunities.

If you would like to see similar results, book a free consultation call.

A prominent media outlet commissioned 181st Street to design and implement a strategy that would double their readership within 12 months.

As an established organisation, the client was able to provide a wealth of analytics data from their website, social media, digital marketing and online presence, which our demographics team used to assess who was currently engaging with the news site and how.

Our researchers analysed the wider news landscape, consumer trust and levels and methods of engagement with news content and media outlets, based on cutting-edge research from Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford. 

They combined this with a detailed competitor analysis exploring brand positioning, content, online presence, SEO and digital audience engagement of similar-sized media organisations and several large market leaders, to identify competitor strengths and potential opportunities for growth.

We then used this research to create several micro-targeted audiences based on detailed demographic and psychographic information, which would allow the client to widen the age ranges they were attracting without losing their core existing audience.

This formed the basis of our growth strategy.

Our designers undertook a brand refresh and introduced a new, more modern, vibrant colour palette with on-trend neons, optimised for mobile engagement with news, and specifically designed for maximum cut-through on social media and mobile devices in dark mode. 

PEW Research Centre found that more than eight-in-ten US adults (86%) get their news from a digital device, and as 81.9% of people use the dark mode on their phones, this brand refresh was designed to increase engagement by stopping people in their scroll.

Our UX experts restructured the site and recategorised the content based on analysis of the current user journey and the demographic data, which identified specific content categories that were highly likely to garner more engagement from target audience groups. 

We facilitated an expansion into lifestyle content to widen the readership base, increase engagement beyond news, meet audience expectations (as determined by the demographic research) and increase both time on site and pages per visit.

With the brand refresh, new content and improved UX in place, we then designed a full social media strategy designed to increase brand recall, engagement and maximise click-through rate. 

The organisation already had a strong presence and significant audience on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and we widened this to include YouTube, TikTok and LinkedIn, in line with the new micro-targeted audience groups.

Our creative team produced an extensive library of video content to support ongoing sharing of evergreen lifestyle and business-focused content, with the aim of maximising social engagement and dwell-time in social newsfeed – a key factor in algorithm discoverability.

We implemented a category-based social sharing system, allowing the client to scale up frequency of high-performing content, and quickly pivot to cover key topics during awareness days and key political moments, so they could jump on trending topics and achieve greater cut-through.

Our social team scheduled and ran all social channels for an initial 3 month testing period while we optimised the strategy and content and trained the client’s in-house team for long term channel management and content creation.

Within this 3 month optimisation period, we increased the average number of link clicks received per day on Twitter by 250%, and by creating highly shareable content in a conversational style, we increased mentions by 54.5% and profile views by 37.9%.

Within 6 months, year-on-year visitors were up by a monthly average of 80% and year-on-year page views were up 130%, with the site experiencing a 79% total audience growth quarter-to-quarter.

We were recommissioned by the client in July 2023 to establish their presence on Meta’s Threads, update and optimise their content library and manage their Threads presence while the social platform was too new for scheduling tools.

If you would like to see similar results, book a free consultation call.

Project Details

Category: Brand Strategy & Messaging
Sector: Fashion ecommerce
Client: Y.O.U Underwear
Results: 53% increase in sales

The brief was simple, yet bold: create a campaign that takes a stand.

Our client, the world’s highest-scoring fashion B Corp, had already empowered over 15,000 women and girls through their buy-one-give-one model, providing essential underwear to keep girls in school during their period.

But this wasn’t just about purpose.

With plans to scale from a small business to a national brand in a crowded category, they needed more than just an impact message – they needed a movement with a commercial edge to cut through.

The challenge?

Most women treat everyday underwear as an afterthought, grabbing multi-packs from the supermarket while their minds are on everyone but themselves. It’s not self-care, it’s survival mode – picking up school uniforms, thinking about dinner, running through their endless to-do lists.

But what if we could turn that around? What if we could get women to value their daily essentials as more than just a routine purchase, but as an investment in themselves? That was the campaign’s heartbeat: empowerment with authenticity.

The big idea: Confidence Comes From You

To compete in a category dominated by convenience and price, and get women to seek out ‘essential basics’ online, we needed to do more than highlight ethical manufacturing or sustainable practices.

We needed women to understand their own value – to show them that they are worth more than a £5 supermarket multi-pack.

The first thing they put on every day, and the most intimate thing they wear, should empower them – not be something they can’t wait to get out of!

We knew we needed to tap into the brand’s purpose, and weave in its use of real customers – no airbrushing, no professional models – because they’d already committed to showing diverse, unfiltered beauty after learning that 61% of adults feel negative about their bodies most of the time (UK Parliament).

This campaign wasn’t about the advertising industry’s standard view of “perfection”; it was about self-worth.

Authentic empowerment, not empty promises

The advertising world has a history of making women feel inadequate to sell a temporary fix.

From cellulite being invented as a “problem” by beauty magazines, to the rise of unattainable body standards on screen, the industry has long profited from undermining self-esteem.

Two-thirds of women believe that advertising is at least partly to blame for a rise in eating disorders among young women (37% between 2016 and 2019).

The Guardian’s research has found that 75% of women in the UK say “the way models look in advertising makes women feel bad about themselves and are harmful”.

Women over 40, in particular, are often the forgotten demographic – written off as no longer caring about beauty, fashion, or even their own desires.

Our approach was different.

This wasn’t another “you can have it all” message or a hollow empowerment trope that shifts the blame onto women.

Instead, we championed authenticity.

We knew that a pair of underwear, no matter how ethically made, won’t undo decades of harmful messaging.

So, we grounded our message in something deeper: Confidence comes from YOU.

This simple but powerful statement was more than a clever play on the brand’s name. It was a rallying cry for women to own their strength, their beauty, and their worth – on their terms.

Real women, real confidence

 We featured real customers in power poses – each one showing what confidence meant to them.

Creating a long-term campaign that looks and feels different every time someone sees it in their feed.

No preaching, no prescriptive ideas of what empowerment “should” look like – just a reflection of the many ways women can define strength for themselves.

This approach was designed to bring the brand’s mission to life in an authentic way that resonated, not just with the already-engaged audience but with new customers who can see themselves reflected.

It is empowerment made real, backed up by a 6 year strong legacy of empowerment through their buy-one-give-one promise.

Cutting through the noise

In an industry that often dilutes empowerment messaging with clichés, we designed a campaign that would cut through by staying true to the brand’s purpose.

As a small business, they couldn’t afford a large-scale campaign that would need a big budget refresh every 6-12 months.

We needed to give them a strategic direction strong enough to sustain long term.

With only two full-day photoshoots to work with, we had to generate enough photography and videography to create enough content to last a full year.

This meant every decision – every pose, every shot – had to be versatile, on-brand, and enduring.

When it came to creating campaign assets, instead of trying to cram in sustainability credentials, ethical production stats and social good into one message, we let empowerment take centre stage, knowing that this would resonate most with the audience’s key purchase drivers.

But before committing the brand to this long-term creative direction, we ran some initial messaging tests to validate its strength. We had to be confident that the positioning would hold up.

The results?

Our initial tests led to 97% increase in reach and a staggering 686% boost in engagement for static posts featuring real customers in power poses.

For video content, we saw Reels reach jump by 76%, with engagement up 77%, and watch time up by 144% – a direct result of prioritising empowerment over small business storytelling.

Watch time is a crucial metric that Instagram’s algorithm uses to decide whether to push your content to a wider audience. By increasing watch time, we ensured the brand was seen by more people organically – an essential win for a small business working without a big advertising budget.

Prioritising empowerment over small business storytelling wasn’t just a creative choice – it was a strategic move to maximise performance.

By embedding empowerment into the brand’s DNA, we ensured they had enough content to run fresh, diverse messaging for 12 months, making it not only more cost-effective but also more consistent.

“Brands that lay the right foundations and lean into consistency take advantage of memory encoding, cognitive ease, and familiarity bias and see exponential gains in creative quality, brand strength and business effects.” – Andrew Tindall, System1

Validating predicted effectiveness with advanced testing

To ensure our brand assets resonated effectively with the target audience long-term, we also employed advanced testing methodologies rooted in neuroscience and behavioural science. These techniques allowed us to assess how consumers interact with and respond to various elements of our branding.

Key insights and learnings

1. Engagement Analysis: Testing visual assets helped us measure levels of attention and emotional impact, providing crucial data on which elements captured consumer interest most effectively.
2. Memory Activation: The analysis revealed how well our brand elements activated memory retention, ensuring they left a lasting impression and contributed to long-term recall.
3. Behavioural Predictions: By examining patterns of consumer reactions, we gained insights into predicted behaviours, such as purchase intent and overall sentiment toward the brand.

By integrating data-driven insights into the creative process, we ensured our approach not only captured attention but also fostered deeper connections with our audience and gave the client confidence that this shift in brand position would work for them.

This isn’t just a campaign, it’s the start of a long-term brand position.

With the foundation of authenticity, we showed that empowerment can be real, tangible, and impactful – not just another marketing buzzword.

“Confidence Comes From You” isn’t just a tagline – it’s a call to action. One that invites women to leave behind routine purchases for something more meaningful.

With cost of living on the rise, a D2C ethical and sustainable beauty brand was noticing a drop in sales and commissioned 181st Street to fix it.

Their products were high quality and made with premium ingredients, but their visual branding and price point was positioning them as a mid-market brand and making it difficult to achieve cut-through. 

Faced with rising costs and tighter margins, the brand wanted to increase their price, but with sales in decline as customers faced rising costs of living, they were scared of alienating their existing customer base.

They also wanted to break into wholesale to maximise growth potential, but with rising costs their margins didn’t make this a viable option.

We began the project by mapping the beauty landscape from mid-market to luxury, to identify where our client’s product fit and where there were opportunities for greater cut-through. 

Our demographics team analysed data from the client’s social media, website and digital marketing to identify who was engaging with the brand, and who was buying. They were able to identify that the current customer base had the disposable income for premium-luxury and valued the high quality of the brand’s signature product, suggesting that the client could afford to reposition themselves at the higher end of the market without alienating their base.

62% of shoppers rate having natural ingredients as an ‘important’ consideration when making a beauty purchase and nearly half (44%) of shoppers have chosen one product over another because it had better sustainability credentials.

While too much focus on sustainability in marketing and advertising messaging triggers the attitude/behaviour gap, consumer research shows that audiences are starting to expect sustainability credentials as standard. This is particularly true at the luxury end of the market, where recent research by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Comité Colbert shows that 65% of consumers “take into account companies’ commitment to sustainable development when deciding on their purchases”.

The client already had a premium-luxury product. With branding, packaging and messaging properly aligned to this market segment, they had the opportunity to raise prices, unlock wholesale opportunities, increase margin and achieve significant growth.

To achieve this, our design team refreshed the brand with a new colour palette and photographic style more suited to premium-luxury, and created a messaging hierarchy to focus their copy and content on customer benefits, product quality and premium natural ingredients. 

This refresh was rolled out across the website and our UX team restructured the customer journey in line with the premium luxury positioning.

We redesigned the packaging to fit the premium-luxury market and maximise brand recall on-shelf in preparation for wholesale, and we focused on creating a premium unboxing experience for D2C customers to support the positioning shift.

Using the demographic audience data and market research, we designed a new advertising strategy, supported by a digital and social growth strategy. We engaged new influencers to grow the premium-luxury audience base and ran a highly segmented advertising campaign to promote the brand to new and existing customers.

The reposition achieved a 4% increase in margin and within 12 months of implementing the new marketing, advertising and growth strategy, we increased D2C sales by 75%.

The brand is now well positioned for buy-out or significant investment.

If you would like to see similar results, book a free consultation call.

A well-established B2C SAAS company commissioned 181st Street to support their pivot into the B2B market. 

The business had already achieved a strong user base and multi-million pound annual turnover from their B2C offering, and wanted to maintain presence in this space, but bring their new B2B offer to market.

Our corporate communications and branding experts worked with the client to design a strategy to maintain and grow early adopter loyalty, and leverage social proof from both user generated content and organisational driven content featuring those early adopters to expand audience targeting across a range of sectors.

We designed a B2B-appropriate tone of voice that would compliment B2C communications to ensure consistent presence on multi-audience channels, and designed B2B specific messaging, which we then rolled out to a social media, email and video content strategy.

Our reputation team provided media training for the CEO and senior leadership team, and worked with our communications team to develop a thought leadership strategy that would leverage and showcase internal expertise and build trust with B2B audiences. 

To support a wider roll-out of the B2B offer, our PR specialists secured media coverage in the financial press as well as industry specific thought leadership pieces from the senior team.

Within 12 months, the client achieved a 19% growth in B2B audience base thanks to our strategy and continued advisory support, and they were well positioned to go into a growth investment raise.

If you would like to see similar results, book a free consultation call.

The challenge

Liberation Foods, a bold and purpose-driven brand, needed a fresh suite of product photography to support the launch of new SKUs and enhance their digital presence. With an expanding range of vibrant, flavour-packed snacks, their imagery had to do more than just display products—it had to bring their essence to life. The challenge? Creating visually compelling, e-commerce-optimised images that drive engagement and conversions across multiple channels.

The solution

At our professional photography studio, we crafted a dynamic and playful visual identity for Liberation’s entire product range, that aligned well with the existing imagery they had.

Using vibrant backdrops, meticulous lighting, and creative compositions, we ensured that every shot captured the brand’s bold personality and the richness of its flavours.

Our approach blended technical precision with visual storytelling.

We delivered a suite of high-quality images tailored for:

• E-commerce platforms – Clean, high-resolution pack shots optimised for online retail.

• Website & digital assets – Engaging imagery designed to enhance product pages and boost conversions.

• Advertising – Eye-catching visuals for digital ads, designed to grab attention and drive clicks.

• Social media – A bank of creative content, providing Liberation with 50+ days’ worth of high-quality assets.

For brands like Liberation, where taste, quality, and storytelling are key, outstanding product photography isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a growth driver.

Product pages featuring high-quality photography attract 95% more organic traffic and see higher conversion rates.

Quality product photography has also been shown to increase ecommerce sales by 9%.

With a single studio session, Liberation received enough premium imagery to fuel their content strategy for months, while simultaneously enhancing their digital presence and boosting conversions.

At 181st Street, we thrive on helping sustainability-focused e-commerce brands align their values with sales strategies that truly resonate. This year, we worked with a fashion retailer to transform their Black Friday approach – and the results exceeded all expectations.

Here’s how we increased their sales by 113% year-on-year, without compromise:

Breaking free from counterproductive boycott messaging

In previous years, this retailer leaned into anti-consumerism campaigns around Black Friday, including participation in a #DontBuyIt initiative. As part of this campaign, they shared a list of 16 questions for shoppers to consider before purchasing, including complex prompts like:

• “What’s the company’s record on human rights?”

• “Was it made sustainably?”

While these questions originated from an NGO, they proved highly impractical for a retailer whose business survival depends on customers purchasing their products. Worse, the guilt-heavy tone discouraged engagement and alienated the very shoppers the retailer needed to thrive.

Compounding the issue, the retailer sent this list of questions to their newsletter subscribers – people who had specifically signed up to learn more about their products and make a purchase, not to be dissuaded from buying.

This approach shifted the burden of responsibility onto the consumer, asking them to research complex human rights and sustainability issues within supply chains. This ran counter to the brand’s own commitment to ethical practices and transparency. Instead of empowering customers to make confident choices, the campaign inadvertently created friction and undermined trust, achieving the opposite of what the brand had intended.

The results were predictable:

• Flat sales during critical retail periods like Black Friday.

• A disconnect between the retailer’s messaging and their audience’s expectations.

• A high spam score and unsubscribe rate, leading to long-term email deliverability issues.

Our solution: A “Buy Better” approach

Behavioural science offers a simple truth: consumers are more likely to act when they feel empowered, not shamed. Our strategy focused on celebrating the retailer’s products and their customers with a positive, relatable message that overcame purchase objections and celebrated the choice to “Buy Better.”

Here’s how we made it work:

1. Riding the wave, not fighting it

Shopping is an inevitable part of Black Friday. Instead of resisting the social norm, we showed why buying from this retailer was the better choice – ethical, impactful, and guilt-free. Using data from their impact report, we demonstrated the power of an individual purchase and tied messaging back to their give-back program, encouraging people to spend without guilt.

2. Personal, relatable messaging

Customers don’t buy products simply because they are ethical or sustainable; instead, these attributes act as a differentiator between brands once key purchase barriers, such as price, convenience, functionality and quality, are overcome.

For this year’s Black Friday campaign, we leaned into social proof by showcasing real customers interacting with the product. This not only highlighted its exceptional quality but also worked to counter the unconscious bias that sustainable products are often perceived as lower quality.

Our messaging was empowering and relatable, focusing on how the products aligned with the customers’ lifestyles and values, rather than abstract climate messaging that preached what people should do or shamed them for unsustainable behaviour.

3. Building the bandwagon

Herd mentality is a powerful motivator. We spotlighted the collective impact that the brand’s customers were already making, creating a sense of community and shared purpose. Real customers were featured prominently across BFCM content to amplify this social proof.

4. Precision over volume

Using audience segmentation, we tailored messaging to resonate with key customer segments, ensuring relevance and emotional connection.

The Results

By rethinking their Black Friday strategy, we achieved:

• 113% year-on-year sales increase over the BFCM weekend

• 17% growth in average order value

• 23% rise in returning customer rate

• 115% boost in conversion rate, thanks to site optimisation

All of this was achieved without any discounts, protecting their profit margins and reinforcing their brand value.

Why it worked: the behavioural science behind the campaign

1. The power of positive emotions

Positive emotions drive engagement and action far more effectively than guilt or negativity. Celebrating the customers’ thoughtful choices created an emotional connection that inspired loyalty, increased sales, and won repeat business.

2. Overcoming the attitude-behaviour gap

Many sustainability campaigns fall into the attitude-behaviour gap, where consumers agree with values but don’t act due to perceived purchase barriers. By focusing on personal benefits and guilt-free actions – and keeping their product front and centre – we turned intentions into purchases. This approach also demonstrated that discounts aren’t necessary to thrive, even on Black Friday.

3. Making shopping easy and enjoyable

Reducing friction in the buying journey and emphasising the joy of choosing quality products encouraged action. Optimising the website experience and customer journey played a critical role in the conversion boost.

Key takeaway

Sustainability and sales don’t have to be at odds. By shifting from guilt-based rhetoric to empowering, customer-first messaging, brands can achieve outstanding results.

If your brand is ready to rethink sustainability marketing and create meaningful impact, let’s start the conversation.

Ready to transform your brand’s performance? Book a free consultation today.

A luxury ethical accessories start-up commissioned 181st Street for audience targeting, social media strategy, messaging, PR and media relations to launch and grow their brand.

We built them a target audience profile based on detailed demographic and psychographic data, which helped them identify their position in the market and highlighted several competitive advantages and unique selling points, which formed the basis of their core messaging. 

To avoid triggering the attitude/behaviour gap that comes with ethical and sustainable products, we supported them to position their values messaging in a hierarchy that predominantly focused on heritage skills and high quality craftsmanship – themes which the data showed would resonate with their audience and behaviourally make them willing to spend more.

Our behavioural branding experts then leveraged the ‘peak-end rule’ to further showcase the company’s ethical values, sustainability credentials and charity give-backs without triggering the attitude/behaviour gap. 

This psychological concept shows that we remember a memory or judge an experience based on how we felt at peak moments, as well as how we felt at the end. 

For ethical brands, featuring values-focused messaging with impact-driven storytelling in post-purchase email sequences and order confirmation pages anchors the experience of purchasing as a positive one, leaves the customer feeling good and opens up the opportunity for social sharing and virtue signalling, which can be harnessed for referral marketing and word-of-mouth.

With this in place, we were able to create a photographic style that reflected their high-end luxury brand status and heritage style, creating assets for social media, lifestyle imagery for the website, and a lookbook to send to key media contacts.

Once the brand was successfully positioned and optimised for the target audience, we successfully nominated them for a prestigious Independent Designer Award. Their victory opened up new international markets in the USA and Asia, gave them the opportunity to exhibit at trade shows in New York, and came with mentoring from industry experts, which led to a feature at London Fashion Week.

Media coverage included: Vanity Fair, Forbes and The Telegraph, and thanks to this momentum, the brand were able to secure a listing in Selfridges and several other high end retailers.

If you would like to see similar results, book a free consultation call.

81st Street’s regulatory experts supported senior electrical engineers at a FTSE 250 built environment firm to understand and implement the UKGBC Net Zero Carbon Buildings Framework.

They had been commissioned to design and build new school buildings across the UK. Under Department of Education policy, All new school buildings must be net zero in operation. 

We supported their engineering team by analysing, summarising and advising on the UKGBC Net Zero Carbon Buildings Framework, requirements for Net Zero Operational Carbon and accounting implications for energy purchased from the national grid.

Our team will be supporting the client with ongoing regulatory roadmapping, alerting them to any changes in regulation or updated guidance they need to comply with, and supporting them to upskill their team.

As a result of our support, they have been able to position themselves as Net Zero specialists to secure further contracts.

If you would like to see similar results, book a free consultation call.

A scale-up multinational refurbished tech marketplace with presence across 20 European countries and the USA was looking to grow presence in 3 of their European markets and sustain growth in an additional two locations where new competitors were gaining market share.

181st Street was commissioned to build a brand and comms strategy to achieve this goal. 

The client’s existing audience research had identified broad profiles of 3 consumer groups most likely to purchase refurbished tech online, with varying levels of eco-awareness. However, with a sole focus on sustainability, the brand was at risk of triggering the attitude/behaviour gap and limiting their reach and conversion. 

No work had been undertaken to turn this broad psychographic profiling into micro-targeted audiences, or understand how these profiles would translate across international markets. This left on the ground marketing teams with limited customer information on which to base branding decisions.

Our demographics team began by reviewing these profiles and expanding them with detailed demographic and psychographic data. They then reviewed the core target markets to determine the best strategies for advertising and brand cut-through in these geographies.

Using this data, we identified the core benefits of the service, as aligned to the audiences’ priorities (rather than the previous sole focus on the eco-benefits). We established customer pain points and transformation to create outcomes-driven, emotional messaging based on behavioural science, and tailored this to each target market, to maximise conversion.

Our research showed that across markets, consumers faced a trust barrier to engaging with refurbishment services, based on a preconception of low quality products. 

Using this data, our team were able to create micro-targeted audience profiles and aligned core messaging to build trust, overcome barriers, highlight product quality and maximise the emotional connection people feel to their mobile devices in all advertising and marketing messaging to maximise conversion.

We then undertook cultural understanding and sensitivity research to help tailor the messages and approach for each region, embed culturally-informed buyer behaviour and ensure high cut-through and conversion in each market. Our regulatory experts conducted a nation-by-nation regulatory review to ensure campaign compliance in each country, and once we were confident that the messaging was compliant and optimised for conversion, we worked with the client’s regional marketing teams to roll it out into campaigns.

This messaging was rolled out across all 5 target growth regions, leveraging digital and Out Of Home campaigns and shifting focus from sustainable tech to a lifestyle brand for highest possible audience engagement, to increase conversion, maximise lifetime customer value and secure regional growth.

If you would like to see similar results, book a free consultation call.

A beer company that brews their beer from surplus bread were preparing to roll out a nature-focused rebrand – expanding their impact in the food waste space to incorporate action for nature.

They commissioned 181st Street to undertake audience profiling and market research and use the findings to design a business growth strategy that would increase their B2B stockists, attract more on-trade customers and convert them to off-trade regular purchasers to improve supermarket sales.

They also leveraged our advocacy communications expertise to help develop their impact strategy, define their nature narrative and design a campaign that would make more on-the-ground impact and attract PR, raise brand awareness and contribute to their business goals.

The result was a ‘Food Heroes’ focused, hyper-localised campaign tapping into existing communities with a shared mission, which unlocked £5,000 in funding for grassroots organisations creating real change.

The brand already had strong connections in the food waste community and a loyal core audience that supported the brand’s environmental purpose, but they needed to expand their reach if they wanted to meet their revenue goals.

Influencers only reach 5% of their audience per post, and become a very expensive way of tapping into existing audiences. 

Commercially, we had already increased their email marketing revenue by 67% and optimised their advertising to perform at 500% ROAS, but they wanted a way to raise awareness of their food waste mission and attract more PR.

By working with strategic partners that share the brand’s values, we knew that they could expand their reach in a hyper-targeted way, to bring brand awareness to values-motivated audience segments most likely to become loyal repeat purchasers, and create PR worthy moments in the process.

All while increasing the brand’s positive impact on their cause.

Which is why we designed a food heroes focused campaign.

In communities around the country, unsung heroes, underdogs and everyday folks that care are solving problems big and small. Instead of battling algorithms to build a community, we designed a strategy to take the brand to the tribes that already exist, and become a champion of Food Heroes.

The business was already donating profits to charity, but without any clear strategy in place for this.

With this in mind, we suggested the creation of a fund – allowing communities and aligned strategic partners to nominate their heroes (expanding reach and audience engagement) and for the brand to provide financial backing to grassroots impact projects, where the impact of the funding could be directly tracked for Green Claims Code compliance and BCorp standard impact reporting. 

This would also create PR worthy media engagements that uplifted the grassroots organisations that couldn’t afford marketing support, as well as the brand funding the impact.

The brand partnered with a community engagement platform to create an initial fund of £5,000, to be distributed to 4 ‘Food Sustainability Heroes’ working to fix the food system.

We were pleased to see that the campaign won the Social Impact Award at the Footprint Drinks Sustainability Awards 2024.

If you would like to see similar results, book a free consultation call.

181st Street previously worked with this charity client to develop a communications strategy to support the roll-out of a national, digital service, to identify their communications needs as an organisation, position their employer brand for recruitment and build their in-house team.

They are a small charity with a £500k annual turnover, but have a national presence for service delivery, key delivery partnerships with the NHS, several UK-wide institutional organisations and larger charities. They were also recipients of Government and National Lottery funding.

When the charity was approached with the offer of a CSR partnership with a well-known FMCG brand, the Trustees commissioned 181st Street to conduct a risk assessment and provide senior advisory services to help them determine how to proceed.

The potential partner had recently faced some high-profile reputation issues, and the CSR partnership would form part of their rebuild. Their products were also in a potentially controversial retail category given some of the charity’s key service users. However, the donation on offer was too significant to turn down without consideration, which is why the Trustees wanted a full risk assessment to provide oversight and clarity about the risks and options available. 

Our reputation experts analysed how the partnership would align with the charity’s mission, conducted a full stakeholder analysis to determine how it would potentially be perceived by all key stakeholders (including service users) and how it would be perceived by grants and trusts they were currently working with, and intended to apply to for further funding.

We provided a comprehensive overview of the risks involved, rating them from severe to minor and outlining potential mitigation strategies and possible outcomes, to help the Trustees weigh up the financial value of the donation vs the potential damage to brand trust, stakeholder engagement and fundraising.

Based on our assessment, which highlighted several key risks without strong options for mitigation, which the Trustees hadn’t previously identified, the decision was made to turn down the CSR partnership at that moment in time.

If you would like to see similar results, book a free consultation call.

A UK university with the ambition to become one of the top business schools in the country commissioned us to redesign their startup and research commercialisation programme to be more impactful, generate more long-term success stories and be more cost effective after European funding came to an end post-Brexit.

Based on our research and programme design, they successfully secured £330,000 to implement the new model of support.

Here’s how we did it…

UK higher education institutions provide startup incubator and accelerator programmes to commercialise research, support graduate outcomes, engage the business community and contribute to the local economy. They are assessed on the strength of their programmes through the Knowledge Excellence Framework (KEF).

Typically, most universities were funding this activity stream through ERDF funding from the European Union. However, the final round of funding post-Brexit came to an end in 2021/22, leaving universities in the position of needing to find alternative funds or self-fund their programmes.

One university saw this as an opportunity to redesign their programme to achieve more successful startups and become the highest ranking in their KEF cluster.

They commissioned 181st Street to undertake a research project to design a ‘Best in Class’ enterprise programme for both student/graduate startups and the commercialisation of research.

We undertook a comparative study, assessing current support provision at the best performing universities in the UK (based on the Times league table, KEF clusters and best for number of successful startups per year and post 3 year survivability), and the other universities in the same cluster as the one that had commissioned us.

We broke support provision down into 7 stages:

• Engagement in Enterprise
• Pre-start engagement
• Pre-start skills development and ideation
• Startup (registration of company)
• Pre-launch/pre-funding
• Launch journey/second stage growth
• Post-launch/post-funding

Plus an additional assessment of specific support for research commercialisation.

We undertook a literature review of papers on best practice in student and graduate entrepreneurship, research interviews with staff and support providers at the commissioning university and other institutions, as well as graduate entrepreneurs who had participated in the programme, and assessed their KEF data submissions and publicly available information about their support programmes on their website.

From there we were able to determine key KPIs for the enterprise provision – the main one being 3 year startup survivability. While the national startup survivability rate is 57.6%, universities average between 15% and 40% survivability.

Most universities were focused on providing short term ‘sprints’ or isolated activities, but the most successful programmes focused on provision of enterprise skills throughout a student’s time at university and beyond. The programmes with the best engagement and survivability had a centralised hub for communications, external comms support and a hybrid model of in person and e-learning, along with strong regional networks, partnerships  and the provision of funding grants.

Universities without a clear funding path and VC relationships had much lower survivability rates.

Based on our findings, we modelled a ‘Best in Class’ programme designed to meet Key Performance Metrics for the KEF, HESA, Times World University rankings, University Impact Rankings (aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals), AACSB Accreditation and the Small Business Charter. 

We designed a best practice model of provision for each stage, including partnership networks, funding, coaching, training and communications plan to drive engagement.

From there we undertook a feasibility study to ensure that our recommendations could be practically implemented, and then designed 3 models of delivery: a physical presence model with heavy staffing requirements and a physical university innovation hub and co-working, a mixed provision model with a smaller central hub and less internal staff, and a digital first model with limited physical presence on campus, specialist provision from a coaching firm and a monthly retainer with a comms provider so that it could be staffed by one internal manager.

We then provided a cost analysis for each model, covering year 1 and set up costs, and then a 2+year forecast.

Based on our recommendations, the university restructured their provision and built a revised offer in partnership with other higher education institutions in the region, specialist third-party providers and the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), adopting the hybrid model we designed.

Since the publication of our research, the Business School has doubled the number of professors on staff, putting this expansion down to the ‘attractive offering’ and strong aspirations of the school. They also welcomed their largest ever student cohort.

They secured a fund of £330,000 from Research England to support the commercialisation of research and develop an innovative new startup programme based on the best practice models we suggested.

The Deputy Director of Research & Enterprise at the university said:

“The approach we will be adopting is genuinely novel and innovative in itself. Following the loss of European Regional Development Funding, this investment is a real boost to the local economy”.

If you would like to see similar results, book a free consultation call.

181st Street was commissioned by a housing charity to prepare their annual Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) report, under the Sustainability Reporting Standard for Social Housing.

We worked across the organisation to gather the data required to respond to the Reporting Standard’s 48 criteria, which demonstrates the organisation’s commitment to sustainability, residents and communities and robust and effective governance.

We worked collaboratively with a specialist impact verification partner to validate the data against the reporting requirements, and our corporate communications team identified a series of core themes for narrative building, to make the report engaging for stakeholders and reflective of the organisation’s mission, vision and impact.

Our photography team produced a library of images featuring residents, staff, buildings, facilities and activities to support the visual design of the report and provide the client with a bespoke image library for their PR and social media activities.

181st Street’s writers, graphic designers and regulatory compliance experts worked together to produce an engaging report that met reporting standards and the organisation was proud to share with their stakeholders.

The client was so happy with our streamlined approach, expertise and high quality output that they recommissioned us on a monthly retainer to handle all their regulatory reporting. We now produce their Annual Report, ESG Report and Report to Residents, which their regulator requires.

To support their wider stakeholder engagement strategy and internal communications, we now produce a communications campaign to support the release of every report. Our comms team take the key narratives, case studies and success stories and turn these into video and graphic assets and social media posts, as well as internal and external communications assets the organisation uses to engage residents, stakeholders and the media.

If you would like to see similar results, book a free consultation call.

181st Street was commissioned by a multinational built environment firm to establish their market leadership across a number of key verticals and strategically selected areas of expertise relating to Net Zero.

The firm was looking to raise £5 million over 3 years and reach listed PLC status on the London market.

Partners at the firm each had strong reputations and established client bases, but the business as a whole was struggling to cross-sell. We knew that if we could bring the partners together under a strong brand which still empowered them to leverage the strong relationships they were so skilled at building, we could increase lifetime client value by facilitating cross-selling across the business and maximise value to support their upcoming financial raises.

Our senior advisory team worked with the client’s senior leadership team to develop a 3 year IPO strategy and roadmap with an integrated communications strategy. 

With clear oversight of where the business was going, and how this aligned to their investment and fundraising goals, we were able to identify key areas of opportunity to establish thought leadership and build their reputation in a way that aligned with and supported these aims.

Our design team took the entire firm through a brand refresh to bring consistency across the divisions and set the foundations for establishing a clear brand identity. 

We designed and built a new website to reflect this identity and showcase the thought leadership areas they wanted to grow, and our investor relations team worked on financially focused web content that would build a strong foundation for pitching the financial press and approaching new investors.

Drawing on key thematic areas from the content strategy, our reputation team media trained 9 senior partners and we built a tailored thought leadership strategy for each one, to showcase their area of expertise, and embed this in wider corporate communications across the business.

If you would like to see similar results, book a free consultation call.

Project Details

Category: Product photography
Sector: FMCG Food & Beverage
Client: Toast Brewing

For three months, we worked with Toast Brewing, a company on a mission to fight food waste by brewing beer from surplus bread.

As they prepared to launch their rebrand and new can designs, they needed product photography that would not only showcase their fresh look but also bring their sustainability mission to life.

We provided a versatile suite of imagery, including:

• E-commerce imagery – High-resolution shots optimised for online retail.

• Website imagery – Stunning visuals to elevate their newly designed website.

• Advertising assets – Bold, dynamic photography for digital and print campaigns.

• Social media content – Engaging and shareable images to drive brand awareness.

• Trade show prints – High-quality photography designed for large-scale displays.

Our work was featured in Waitrose magazine, further amplifying the brand’s reach and impact.

Drawing on our extensive experience in financial services, 181st Street took a private wealth management firm with a general high and medium risk portfolio structure through a full reposition and rebrand, to establish them as a specialist ESG wealth management firm.

We developed and implemented a full visual rebrand and website rebuild.

We undertook stakeholder mapping to identify priorities, risks and opportunities within the reposition process and implemented a stakeholder engagement communications plan to support the move to full ESG compliance.

Leveraging our investor relations experience and expertise, we implemented an investor and shareholder communications strategy and campaign to offset the loss of 20% non-ESG customer base, and used demographic targeting to identify new investors to secure growth.

We developed a CSR strategy for the firm and supported the set up and activation of a Foundation to support underprivileged young people in BAME communities across London to manage their money. Our team created the branding, messaging and comms strategy and undertook outreach to schools and community groups to help establish the Foundation.

Our regulatory team conducted a full FCA, AMA, CMA and Green Claims Code communications review and produced a communications compliance strategy for the firm to support their reposition.

If you would like to see similar results, book a free consultation call.

A heritage department store and established PLC commissioned 181st Street to deliver a full digital transformation, helping them break into the e-commerce market as a luxury high-end retailer.

Our design team worked closely with our brand and UX experts to create a digital experience that would attract and retain high value customers across the look, feel, tone of voice, photographic style and customer journey.

Strategically, we identified that the most significant growth opportunities were in the gifting market, and that this presented the highest potential for maximising lifetime value and locking in customer loyalty.

Working with our trusted team of developers and UX experts, we designed a suite of innovative wishlist and gifting features, including personalised occasion reminders, gift recommendations and chat-based personal shopping.

Over 60% of people in the UK admit to forgetting birthdays and anniversaries.

Using the reminder system (specifically data about the occasion, gift recipient and relationship to the shopper), we were able to deliver personalised gift recommendations by email and in a section of the home page when shoppers logged in, to make the gifting experience seamless, stress-free and optimised for maximum conversion, reflecting the same level of high quality and personalised care customers would expect to experience in-store.

If you would like to see similar results, book a free consultation call.

A city farm social enterprise working with vulnerable adults and providing a connection to nature for inner city families on low incomes had a significant amount of funding pulled at late notice, and urgently needed to raise £30,000 to cover their running costs.

They approached us to support a fundraising strategy, corporate engagement programme and PR to raise awareness.

We worked closely with their marketing manager to develop a social media and email marketing campaign to support a Crowdfunder, highlighting the value and impact of the project and encouraging individual donations.

Our PR team provided some free media training to one of the spokespeople for the campaign and pitched them to the local radio stations and BBC, securing a number of opportunities to raise awareness of the fundraising appeal during peak listening hours (breakfast shows and drive time). Our press release was also picked up by the local media outlets which resulted in several written features and a televised interview with the local BBC news, filmed at the farm.

Through our corporate engagement strategy, they were also able to secure a match funding pledge to double individual donations, from a major company’s CSR fund.

As a result of our strategy, the social enterprise raised over £51,000 to secure their future. They went on to replicate this strategy again in their next fundraising appeal and successfully secured over £31,000.

If you would like to see similar results, book a free consultation call.