Last year, the All or Nothing team doubled down on using our energy to seek out and support brands, businesses, people and organisations that want to make a positive impact as much as we do. One of the early descriptions of ourselves as an agency was ‘a bunch of pissed-off optimists helping our planet and its people’—I’ve always felt strongly about it. I am pissed off (perhaps not even nearly enough so). I do want to help our planet—and even some of its people are alright, I suppose.
‘Greta’ didn’t always instantly conjure up the image of an unapologetic Scandinavian girl with braids, and we weren’t always on board with “no one is too small to make a difference.” What a difference she’s made to whose voices we listen to.
I’m constantly amazed by people like her, who smother the niggling ‘it won’t make a difference’ voice in the back of their head and just do what they believe in. I wonder what kind of world we would live in if we were all a bit more confident to do so?
People have been standing up for what they believe for centuries in big ways. We can look much further than Greta’s Skolstrejk för Klimatet—think Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela or Malala Yousafzai. They’ve become household names to most of us, but even they started small.
From where I sit, change isn’t necessarily always groundbreaking. Here’s a cliche we use for a reason: every little bit helps. For example, as an agency, we wanted to find a way to talk about tricky topics, so we created a kids book called ‘What A Mess’. Addressing parents via their kids was a great way to both simplify the messaging and avoid any ‘talking down’ or finger pointing. Ultimately it’s about having constructive conversations and imagining (and working towards) a future we want, together.
Lawyer, writer and mother Mea Campbell started her 2020 project ‘Connected AU’ in response to sobering statistics on loneliness in Australia—connecting tens of thousands of people through handwritten letters. Peter Drew has been plastering striking, handmade posters up all over the country for years, making us think about what it is to be Aussie, and who we are (and aren’t) welcoming. And at a much smaller scale I look at Aline Joyce, a friend who, after being made redundant during Covid is working hard at setting up an urban farm donating produce to those having a hard time.