B Corp Certification for Agencies

Should your agency get certified as a B Corp?

That’s a question that may be on your mind as you hear more and more about B Corps.

Yet what are the benefits? What happens after you become a B Corp?

I recently had the opportunity to speak with three B Corp agency founders about their experiences. Maiya Holliday (Mangrove), Tim Frick (Mightybytes), and Rai-mon Barnes (Consciously) generously shared their insights as we got real about what B Corp certification means for agencies.

This is an especially relevant topic since the large industry publications have started highlighting the certification, such as PR Week’s article about “Why More Agencies are Becoming B Corps.”

The Many Benefits of B Corp Certification

B Corp Certification is a notoriously long and rigorous process, since a company must meet the B Corp requirements and then go through a verification process with B Lab, the nonprofit that oversees the certification.

Once a company goes through that process, however, they can realize several benefits.

One of the foremost benefits is that it provides a framework to build a values-aligned business. Going through the B Impact Assessment, the online tool that needs to be filled out to become a B Corp, is inevitably a learning process. Furthermore, once a company is certified, they need to recertify every three years; continuous improvement is built into the certification.

“It really created this infrastructure and this path in which, as we grew, there were a lot of things that I hadn’t considered prior to that that did align with our values,” Maiya said. “It gave us a path to actually continue moving in that direction.”

For Tim, although they originally went through the certification process to codify some practices, the community really emerged as a key benefit.

“The certification process itself really opened our eyes, but then we were like, now what?” he recalled. “After certifying for the first time, we randomly started calling up other B Corps, mostly to introduce ourselves and ask how they were using their certifications. To my amazement, every single one of them got back to us with advice on how to take advantage of our certification and continue the journey of self-improvement. That process really helped me realize how valuable this community is.”

Rai-mon, who grew up watching his grandfather run a gas station in a way that took care of the community, believed that was just the way that to do business. The certification for him was a way to manifest how the company was already operating. He also observed that, “That’s our take on why anyone should get certified, especially an agency, since agencies know the power of a brand, they know what a certification can do.”

Sustainable Marketing in Action

B Corps are committed to an economic system that is equitable, inclusive, and regenerative.

What implications does this have for how B Corp marketers might need to do things differently from their non-B Corp peers?

For Mightybytes, this has meant including accessibility and sustainability as part of website projects by default, rather than as special add-ons. The company has even developed a theory of change for these features, more often a framework for social change rather than an agency tool.

They’re also helping their clients to think about marketing as an engine of well-being rather than simply as an engine of growth. This core component of sustainable marketing – recognizing that the marketing industry may itself directly contribute to our sustainability challenges – challenges agencies to fundamentally rethink their role.

Having these conversations with clients may not be easy, but Tim noted, “We’ve been banging this drum for 12 years now, and it’s finally starting to be pretty well-acknowledged that there are practices around how to make more sustainable websites. We’ve redesigned our business several times to focus on things like this. If we’re going on this continuous journey, what can we do better? How can we create levers within our business to keep our stakeholders in mind throughout every step of the process?”

This process of rethinking how to make their websites accessible and sustainable is integrated into the website development process by placing a high priority on education, which includes having discussions – sometimes uncomfortable ones – with clients about data privacy, good governance practices, ethical marketing practices, inclusive communications, and website accessibility.

As part of this process of continuous improvement, this also means that the agency itself should be considering its own sustainable marketing stack: are the companies that you’re working with ethical companies? For example, is your email marketing provider powered by renewable energy or not?

This does require balancing tradeoffs between the sustainability practices and the necessary features required to get the job done, but it’s this process of asking the questions and following the answers that enables forward-thinking agencies to push the boundaries of sustainable marketing.

Living the B Corp Values

When people think about B Corp certification, they may see it as the end goal – you got certified, yes!

However, B Corp certification really marks the beginning of a long journey of continual learning and introspection, of defining what the company actually is.

What does it mean for an agency to truly live the B Corp values?

For Rai-mon, this has meant connecting values with value, which really is the only way to be unique since there will always be others who do similar work to what you do.

“For us, it’s super important to know who we are because there are certain clients that we’re going to work with and certain ones that we’re not. There are certain ways that we want to show up in the world,” he explained. “For example, privacy is super important, yet as marketers we’re leading the way in people just giving up their privacy. Instead, we’ve actually gone about finding vendors that provide alternatives to Google analytics and to their browsers so that we’re not anonymously collecting user data.”

The question of which clients a marketing agency is going to work with is critical, since the very purpose of an agency is to amplify client’s messages and reach.

Ultimately, each agency has to decide for itself: which messages are we going to amplify? Ones that move us towards an economic system that is equitable, regenerative, and inclusive, or ones that keep us where we are?

This is not an abstract, philosophical question, but rather one that directly impacts the integrity of the B Corp certification and the unique role that agencies have in communicating the value of the certification.

When a prominent marketing company lost its B Corp certification for working with Shell, it was called out for greenwashing by the Clean Creatives group (including 27 B Corp marketers) and other industry peers who joined with them to put pressure on B Lab.

As B Lab works to implement new standards, they are increasingly taking a close look at the clients that B Corps are working with and making it clear that the certification cannot be used as a cover for greenwashing.

The combination of peer pressure and accountability from within the B Corp community and the examination of agency clients as part of the certification process makes it clear that greenwashing will not be tolerated.

Being a B Corp During Challenging Economic Times

Another misconception that people may have about B Corp certification is that being a B Corp will somehow result in immediate financial gain.

Maiya noted that more than half of B Corp agencies have been certified in the past three years, as B Corp certification has become more popular.

“Just having the certification doesn’t have as much leverage as it once did because of how many B Corp agencies now exist,” she observed. “However, there’s still a lot of value once you get in front of a client, if [the certification] is truly a representation and validation of your ethos and the way that you operate.”

In practice, this means that during tough economic times, an agency might need to scale back on some things if it doesn’t have the bandwidth, funds, or capacity that it used to. However, it still needs to think about how to live out its B Corp values even during the lean times.

For Maiya, a central question has been, “How do we show up with transparency and care and wellbeing? How do we show up for our workers even when we’re going through layoffs and other difficult moments?”

While there aren’t easy answers, these questions are different for B Corp agencies vs. non-B Corp agencies – and especially so for those B Corp agencies that are committed to centering purpose and values in everything that they do, rather than as a thin veneer on top of business-as-usual practices.

Because B Corps are held to a higher standard – both publicly and ideally internally as well – the certification may require soul searching.

“If you’re using B Corp as a form of ‘values-washing,’ don’t bother. If it’s not at the heart of what you’re doing, it’s a lot of work to get and it’s a lot of work to maintain,” Maiya pointed out. “If you don’t already have a foundation of these B Corp values at your core, it’s not going to serve you from a marketing perspective or a brand strategy perspective. (Maybe think about getting rid of that big oil & gas client before getting certified.)”

Rai-mon added that, “There are a lot of things to fight for in this world, and what you choose to fight for says a lot about who you are and who you’re not. You have to be willing to let go of clients to say that you have values, otherwise they’re not values – they’re just platitudes.”

Ultimately, B Corp certification isn’t just a matter of completing the B Impact Assessment and then putting it aside for three years until it’s time to recertify.

Rather, it’s about looking at everything that you do to run your business on a day-to-day basis through a B Corp lens and to hold yourself accountable for putting your B Corp values into action.

Effectively Engaging with the B Corp Community

Once an agency has gone through the certification process, which can take 12-18 months, then the opportunity to join the community is something that every B Corp agency should leverage, and each founder had tips for effective engagement:

  • Reach out to your peers and be honest with them, since the B Corp community is quite generous.
  • Keep meeting people and focus on this new way of making a living, rather than justifying bad things as a way to do business.
  • Find a B Local (groups of regional B Corps) and go to their events.
  • Join the B Hive, the online community for employees of Certified B Corps.

B Corp Certification can be a great option for agencies. Once you do it, you’ll be part of an amazing community leveraging the foremost impact framework to use business as a force for good, which can help you to build a better business.

It’s a great option, so long as you go into it with open eyes and a willingness to do the hard work that may be required.

The full webinar is available in this recording if you’d like to hear from these amazing speakers themselves.

Interested in Becoming a B Corp?

Fill out the form below to get in touch and learn more about B Corp certification for your agency.