Amy Williams – CEO and Founder of Good-Loop

I started Good-Loop after working at a global advertising agency. One of my main clients was Unilever. This was back in 2015, Unilever had just done a study that showed their social and sustainable brands grew 50% faster than the rest of their portfolio. To put it in another way, they sold more soap when they do good in the world. For me, that was just such an exciting idea, because of the scale of Unilever, when they make tiny changes to their product or their messaging, they change the world. I just couldn’t stop thinking about that, so I left my job at an agency. I flew around the world, ended up in Argentina. I was volunteering at Commodore.

Commodore is like a soup kitchen, but it’s just for small kids. These guys do a fantastic job feeding over 40 kids every single day. Their weekly budget is less than $10. I come from an industry where we spend literally hundreds of millions of dollars buying and selling this cheap commodity of our attention. These guys can feed 40 kids for less than a tenner. I was really inspired to harness this advertising industry and use it as a force for good, so I flew back to the UK and I started Good-Loop. Initially, it was just an idea.

I went to so many of my old colleagues, my friends, interviewing them about the idea, getting their feedback, getting them to pick holes in it and ask me questions. Slowly, the business model started to form and my confidence started to grow. I found my co-founder, who was building white label advertising technology, based up in Scotland. Together, we started the business in 2016. I’m so pleased and proud to say that we have delivered on that original mission. We are the world’s first and only advertising technology company to be certified as a B Corporation. We’ve also raised over £1 million for amazing charities by working with our brands. With Unilever, we supported the UN Women. With Domestos, we supported UNICEF.

With Pepsi, we supported CARE International. We’ve funded beach cleanups and homeless shelters and malaria net. All of this is done with a commercial objective. We are not a charity. We are a business, and we give money to charity because it drives engagement in advertising. It drives 45% higher ad recall, 29% uplift in brand perception. It drives brand love. It builds loyalty. These metrics are the metrics that matter for our clients. I think that’s what I love most about Good-Loop, is that we are evidence, tangible proof that you don’t have to choose between ethics and effectiveness. Good-Loop delivers performance by baking purpose into an advertising campaign. That is something I’m incredibly proud of.