We are delighted that Cocoa Life, the flagship sustainability programme at our client Mondelez International has triumphed at the Business in the Community Awards. Cocoa Life won the Global Development Award which is reserved for the business that demonstrates the most impact against the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Cocoa Life is an independently verified programme that aims to support sustainable cocoa farming, securing a positive future for cocoa farmers, their families and their communities. Cocoa Life directly connects buyers to farmers in order to turn them from subsistence operations to sustainable businesses, by growing crop yields, driving up incomes and strengthening community development.

From its inception in 2012 to the end of 2017, Cocoa Life had improved the lives of 120,500 cocoa farmers in 1,085 communities. By 2022, Mondelēz will have invested $400m to reach 200,000 cocoa farmers and one million people in cocoa growing communities in Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Indonesia, Brazil, Dominican Republic, and India.

In a highly competitive category, Mondelelz beat sustainability programmes from Barclays and The Coca-Cola Company.

See the full release here:

http://www.mynewsdesk.com/uk/mondelez-uk/news/cocoa-life-wins-global-development-award-at-bitc-responsible-business-awards-313186

Hot on the heels of last week’s recognition at the BusinessGreen Awards we’ve had some more good news this week: two of our campaigns have been shortlisted for the first ever Campaigns for Good Awards. 

The new awards have been launched to recognise the leading creative campaigns that have had a positive influence on society. They have been initiated by PRWeek, Campaign and Third Sector, who have joined forces to celebrate the creative campaigns that improve and enhance the world we live in. 

As passionate advocates of causes for good – and working with amazing clients who actively push for positive change every day – we’re thrilled that two of our campaigns have been shortlisted: 

• Borough Market – Leading the way on drinking fountains
  We provided strategic communications support for Borough Market’s installation of drinking fountains and plans to stop the sale of single use bottled water in the Market. More than 100 articles across a range of high profile media helped sales of bottled water drop by a third, with the fountains being used 6,000 times per week. Bottled water has now been phased out and Borough Market are regularly cited as an example to follow as more and more businesses and local authorities offer drinking fountains. 

• Hubbub – Square Mile Challenge
  The campaign piloted the first large-scale paper cup recycling facilities in offices, coffee shops, stations and on the streets in the City of London. It recycled 500,000 cups in the first month and has now gone on to recycle over 4 million cups. We generated more than 200 pieces of coverage for the launch in 2017, raising awareness and funding and helping position Hubbub as a go-to commentator for media on coffee cup reuse and recycling – with over 600 pieces of media coverage for them on the subject so far this year. 

The full shortlist for the Campaigns for Good Awards 2018 can be found here: http://www.campaignsforgoodawards.com/  

This week we were delighted that Barley was recognised by the judges at the BusinessGreen Leaders Awards for the second year running. Following our win as PR Agency of the Year in 2017, we were Highly Commended in the category of Communications Agency of the Year for the impact delivered by our campaigns – tackling a range of environmental issues including single use plastics, litter, food waste and textile waste

We were equally thrilled that two of those campaigns were Highly Commended in their own right.

Hubbub won recognition for the Square Mile Challenge in the hotly contested Environment Awareness Campaign of the Year. The campaign piloted the first large-scale paper cup recycling facilities in offices, coffee shops, stations and on the streets in the City of London. It recycled 500,000 cups in the first month and has now gone on to recycle over 4 million cups. Hubbub’s pioneering role in this has seen them give evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee and form a partnership with Starbucks to trial a 5p ‘latte levy’ to encourage more uptake of reusable cups. We generated over 200 pieces of coverage for the launch in 2017, raising awareness and funding and helping position Hubbub as a go-to commentator for media on coffee cup reuse and recycling – with over 600 pieces of media coverage for them on the subject so far this year.

Borough Market‘s installation of drinking fountains and plans to stop the sale of single use bottled water in the Market saw them Highly Commended in the CSR, Marketing and Advertising Campaign of the Year. Borough Market and its traders put the environment ahead of profit and over 100 articles across a range of high profile media helped sales of bottled water drop by a third, with the fountains being used 6,000 times per week. Bottled water has now been phased out and Borough Market are regularly cited as an example to follow as more and more businesses and local authorities offer drinking fountains.

It was a pleasure to see these campaigns honoured and to celebrate the incredible work done by all those shortlisted for the awards.

Last night we were honoured and delighted to be named Green PR Company of the Year at the BusinessGreen Leaders’ Awards.

We set up Barley just over a year ago with a clear mission – communication that matters – and there can be no doubt that the fight to tackle climate change fits that mission.  Over the last year we have been thrilled to partner with the sustainability charity Hubbub to deliver behaviour change campaigns to:

• reduce food waste – supporting Unilever in a series of seasonal campaigns encouraging gifting of unwanted food with Travellers Check, getting kids cooking for Grandparents’ Day with Cook Something Grand and encouraging people to eat their Halloween pumpkin carvings with Pumpkin Rescue. These campaigns also saw Hubbub pick up the award for Marketing/Advertising Campaign of the Year, earning praise from the judges for the “impressive media reach” achieved.
• tackle textile waste – working with Mothercare on the Gift a Bundle campaign to get used baby clothes out of lofts and back into circulation and launching Bright Friday, Brighton’s alternative to Black Friday
• combat litter – getting to the source of ocean litter by tackling littering in the Thames with For Fish’s Sake
• recycle coffee cups – collaborating with the City of London Corporation, Network Rail, Simply Cups and major coffee retailers and paper cup manufacturers to launch the Square Mile Challenge, the UK’s first large scale initiative to address coffee cup recycling

The judges said: “This new venture on the green PR scene impressed the judges with their vibrant entry and their high profile Bright Friday festival and Square Mile Challenge coffee cup campaigns. After only a year in business, the company has emerged as an exciting new player in the environmental communications market who look poised to go from strength to strength.”

It really has been a fantastic first year.  As well as the sustainability work that won us this award, we’ve worked on communications programmes across a range of important issues – helping Stoll to tell the stories of vulnerable Veterans, giving local people a voice with the NHS and getting women active with the World Heart Federation to name just a few.

There have been so many highlights, but across all of our work we’d say there are three things that drive our success:

A laser focus on making a difference

Everything we do is focused on IMPACT. Every piece of work starts with a deep understanding of our clients and their business goals and each campaign has a clear thread from strategy through to delivery.

A sheer love of what we do

As we only work on the things that matter to us, we approach every piece of work with gusto and work tenaciously to delight our clients.

An utterly brilliant team

By setting aside the shackles of a full time office and a requirement to be at a desk all day everyday we’ve been able to bring together a crack team of smart, strategic experts in behavior change, communications strategy, stakeholder engagement, content development and media relations.

We hope that this is the first of many awards as we continue to build Barley. Next up we’re shortlisted for New Consultancy of the Year at the forthcoming PRCA Dare Awards.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help you achieve your business goals, do contact us, we’d love to hear from you.