How we do it

We believe in the power of creativity to transform human behaviour.

Everything in business begins and ends with two things: people and their behaviour. Beyond all the jargon and marketing models, that's what matters. What people do.

HumanKind is our approach to uncovering a brand's "human purpose" and connecting it with people's behaviours.

This process combines analytic rigour with passionate curiosity. It meshes hard-edged business thinking with bold creative thought. It takes our own humanity and pushes us to think provocatively about a brand's future.

Everything we do follows a singular and simple set of beliefs enshrined in what we refer to as the new 4-Ps of marketing:

• People and their behaviour is what we study obsessively and where everything we do begins and ends. Behaviour change is always the desired outcome – and our creative brief asks simply ‘who are we talking to?’; ‘what behaviour are we trying to change?’; and ‘what is the best thing we can say or do to change it?’.

• Purpose is what we believe a successful brand needs – a reason for existing, beyond making money. Something a brand can commit to doing and pursue restlessly, forever (or until it has changed the world, whichever is sooner). Something from which all marketing acts can come – be they innovations or communications.

• Populism is the creative flavour we believe in. Put simply: we like our work to inhabit the popular imagination. We believe that originality at the expense of humanity is prancing exhibitionism; and humanity at the expense of originality is mawkish sentimentalism.

• Participation is how we think about engagement. We measure the depth and scale of human participation in an idea. And we build ideas with this in mind. We care less about the message conveyed than we do about the extent to which people, emotionally or physically, have joined in. With this as a focus, the distinctions between different creative disciplines evaporate, because they all seek this same basic outcome.