Get in touch

We'd love to hear from you.

Feel free to contact us on 08000 025 889 or by emailing hello@barleycommunications.co.uk

Book in a Barley comms clinic

As part of Barley’s ongoing commitment to support organisations that are making a positive change in the world, we offer a free comms clinic.

We’re here to provide advice and a confidential sounding board to help you navigate your communications challenges. Share your details below to book a session with Barley’s senior communications experts.

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A different kind of agency

When you work with us, we want you to be able to say that:
• Barley is great to work with: we act with integrity and operate in a transparent way
• Barley gets results: we produce high-quality work and deliver impact
• Barley is good value: providing senior expertise, advice and creativity at competitive rates.

Driven by purpose

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Focused on impact

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A brilliant team

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Driven by purpose

As one of the first genuine purpose-led agencies, we don’t purpose-wash or greenwash and we never will. We have been supporting clients on communication that matters since Barley was founded and we remain committed to this.

We’ve brought together these commitments to purposeful work to create our Purpose Plus approach. Through Purpose Plus, we uphold Barley’s values in three core themes; people; work and our clients; the environment and wider world.

  • Our people

    Our 2025 survey showed that team members rate their experience of working with Barley at 4.73 out of 5.

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  • Work and our clients

    Our 2025 client survey showed that 100% of our clients would recommend Barley to others.

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  • The environment and wider world

    We are a Certified B Corporation with a score of 114.1.

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Our people

Employee ownership

We are employee-owned, meaning Barley is run for the benefit of its people.

Representation and zero pay gap

We have a zero gender and ethnicity pay gap and majority female representation at director level.

Flexible working

We have flexible working practices designed to retain and attract talented people. This is particularly beneficial to working parents and those with other caring responsibilities.

Competitive rewards

Our business model and low overheads enable us to reward Barley colleagues competitively and we offer unlimited holiday to our employees.

Commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion

We’ve worked with the Social Justice Collective to build a roadmap to a more equitable, diverse and inclusive company. We support colleagues through the creation of an inclusive workplace, and our learning and development programme has covered topics such as inclusive communication, unconscious bias, neurodiversity and mental health awareness.

Learning and development

Our wide-ranging learning and development programme is built on Barley’s core value of curiosity. We blend formal training sessions at our monthly B-Hive meet ups with peer-to-peer Brilliant Work showcases, where we learn from each other. We use our B-Curious zone to share wider opportunities to keep our thinking fresh.

Work and our clients

Our mission

All our work supports our mission of delivering communication that matters: we only accept briefs that are aligned with our values.

Accessibility of our work

Our graphic design work is developed to AA Accessibility standards.

Awards recognition

The impact of our client work has been recognised at industry awards such as UK Green Business Awards, Global Good Awards, Purpose Awards, Better Society Awards, Association Excellence Awards and The Drum Awards for Social Purpose.

Comms clinic

We run the Barley comms clinic, a free consultation service for those needing to unpick their communications challenges.

The environment and wider world

Commitment to sustainability

Sustainability is in Barley’s DNA, and we were one of the first agencies to be a signatory of Creatives for Climate Movement. We’ve implemented a three-year partnership with Greenly to measure and reduce our emissions. Our virtual agency model has intentionally kept our environmental impact low – our most recent audit showed we had annual CO2 emissions of only 51 tonnes. Nevertheless, we continue to seek out ways to reduce this.

Volunteering

We love getting involved in volunteering activities as a team, using our time and energy to support causes that matter to us. From creating bug hotels with the RSPB to helping Plan Zheroes connect businesses with charities through food waste collections, we get hands-on wherever we can. It’s a great way to give back, learn something new and strengthen our connection as a team.

Social value

At Barley, every project is a chance to create lasting benefit beyond the brief. We build social value into our work by sharing our time, skills and experience with others—through free communications workshops for charities, mentoring early-career professionals, and supporting local initiatives that promote inclusion and sustainability. We also choose to work with suppliers and partners who share our commitment to responsible practice and positive impact. For us, social value isn’t an add-on; it’s an integral part of how we work and how we help strengthen the communities we serve.

Supporting a more diverse communications industry

Our diversity audit conducted in 2024 shows that whilst Barley generally matches or outperforms the wider communications industry across a range of characteristics, the industry itself has some way to go to be representative of the UK population. We are therefore focusing our efforts on encouraging a more diverse group of entrants into the industry and support their developing careers. We’re doing this by providing mentoring, running sessions on careers in communications for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and working with specialist diversity recruiters.

Focused on impact

We spend a lot of time listening to leaders of purpose-driven organisations. They tell us they’ve worked with too many agencies where a great strategy hasn’t worked its way through to delivery, or where they are bombarded with a bunch of creative ideas with no link back to their strategic goals.

In response to this, we developed our IMPACT model which we apply to all of our work. This begins with a deep understanding of our clients – their goals, communications objectives and target audiences.

From this we pin down what matters most and where we can make the greatest difference. We make sure that this flows through our detailed planning process and into the campaigns we deliver, with carefully crafted content and channel strategies designed to engage and influence target audiences.

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I mmersion

Getting to know you.

  • Understanding your business goals and strategy
  • Identifying issues and challenges
  • Researching audiences and stakeholders
  • Auditing and analysing your competitors
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What Matters

Agreeing on objectives.

  • Constructing a timeline and key milestones
  • Challenging the status quo
  • Linking back to business goals
  • Setting clear expectations
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P lanning

Developing cohesion and consistency.

  • Crafting strategy
  • Applying insights
  • Building narratives and messages
  • Developing brand foundations
  • Propelling creative work
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A udience

The people who need to see you.

  • Segmentation
  • Customer personas
  • Testing and polling
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C ontent & Channels

How your audiences see you.

  • Developing relevant and compelling messages
  • Delivering seamless campaigns across traditional and digital media
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T iming

When your audiences see you.

  • Knowing the news agenda
  • Flagging opportunities, proactively
  • Handling crises
  • Reviewing and flexing
  • Evaluating against objectives and KPIs

A brilliant team

Since we launched Barley, we have operated with flexible working practices and have embraced remote working. This enables us to work with some of the brightest minds in the industry, united by a passion for purpose.

We take care to assemble teams that are perfectly matched to the requirements of each brief – bringing together the right skills, experience and sector understanding – and never forcing square pegs into round holes.

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How can we help?

We act as a one-stop shop for all our clients’ brand, engagement and communications needs.

Are you rebranding, developing a digital strategy or planning a behaviour change campaign? Or maybe you’re wondering how media relations or social media can help you achieve your goals or where to start with influencer marketing or stakeholder engagement.

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Want to chat?
Feel free to contact our team.