Our story
Good Business was founded by Giles Gibbons and Steve Hilton in 1996, back when they were working for Saatchi and Saatchi. They saw the power of brands to change the world for the better – an idea so big that they felt it had to catch on.
Good Business was founded by Giles Gibbons and Steve Hilton in 1996, back when they were working for Saatchi and Saatchi. They saw the power of brands to change the world for the better – an idea so big that they felt it had to catch on.
Our people have all sorts of backgrounds – from marketing and politics to investment banking, futurology and the charity sector. This means we speak the languages of the private, public and charitable sectors, have experts from a wide range of fields, and bring multiple perspectives to every problem.
We all hate writing about ourselves so we got someone else in the team to say a few words about each of our directors.
One of the fathers of Good Business. He’s been at it for 20 years, but still comes into the office every day with the energy and excitement of a school boy.
Never happier than when presenting people ideas that are better for them, better for their organisation and better for society.
Claire is our Hannibal from the A-Team. She always gets the best out of the team and she loves it when a plan comes together. Without her proposals wouldn’t get written, bills wouldn’t get paid, and clients wouldn’t get what they want, when they want it. She claims that in her 12 years here there’s never been a dull day – but maybe that’s just because she came from investment banking.
In his first two years at Good Business Andrew claims he saw more smiles from clients than during his 20 years in the ad industry. He says it’s down to the fact that the work we do genuinely excites clients.
He loves the fact that the possibilities to harness the power of brands and organisations to effect positive change seem endless.
He might be quiet, but it’s the quiet ones you always have to watch. Passionate about sport, desperate to inspire the telecoms sector to realise its full potential, and intrigued by how the world of finance is changing.
Always thinking about the most practical way to get the job done.
Whether it’s Tokyo, New York or London Larissa is always at home translating research and consumer insights into progressive strategy.
Her secret weapon is her ability to turn complexity into simplicity faster than most of us can make a cup of tea.
One of the fathers of Good Business. He’s been at it for 20 years, but still comes into the office every day with the energy and excitement of a school boy.
Never happier than when presenting people ideas that are better for them, better for their organisation and better for society.
Claire is our Hannibal from the A-Team. She always gets the best out of the team and she loves it when a plan comes together. Without her proposals wouldn’t get written, bills wouldn’t get paid, and clients wouldn’t get what they want, when they want it. She claims that in her 12 years here there’s never been a dull day – but maybe that’s just because she came from investment banking.
In his first two years at Good Business Andrew claims he saw more smiles from clients than during his 20 years in the ad industry. He says it’s down to the fact that the work we do genuinely excites clients.
He loves the fact that the possibilities to harness the power of brands and organisations to effect positive change seem endless.
He might be quiet, but it’s the quiet ones you always have to watch. Passionate about sport, desperate to inspire the telecoms sector to realise its full potential, and intrigued by how the world of finance is changing.
Always thinking about the most practical way to get the job done.
Whether it’s Tokyo, New York or London Larissa is always at home translating research and consumer insights into progressive strategy.
Her secret weapon is her ability to turn complexity into simplicity faster than most of us can make a cup of tea.
Although we’re not looking to add to our team at the moment, we’re always interested in hearing about inspiring and enthusiastic individuals that want to make good things happen. If you think you should be part of our team email David and tell us more.
We are an energetic, creative and collaborative team. We are passionate about what we do, and about the way in which we do it. We value good ideas and different ways of thinking, and we welcome people who want to challenge the status quo and change things for the better.
We care about the world, society and the environment and really believe in living our values. We are highly professional, but not at all corporate. We have a great 'open-door' office environment that values the opinions of the junior members of our team as much as those of our Directors. Everyone makes the tea here. Being a young team, our culture is fun and relaxed, and whilst we always ensure we are delivering the best to our clients we also make time to enjoy the benefits of working so close to some of London's best pubs!
We are an established thought leader on the role of business in society, and have over a decade's experience in helping organisations deliver social change. We work with organisations of all shapes and sizes - from multinationals and household brands to start ups and charities - to help them develop strategies, approaches and programmes that reflect and achieve their social purpose. We combine marketing techniques, behavioural science and sustainability insights, and put these to work to change social attitudes and behaviours.
From creating international cause related marketing campaigns for some of the world's biggest brands to developing and embedding responsible business strategies for Global FTSE100 companies, and running social marketing campaigns that tackle some of the biggest issues facing the world, like working with teenagers in Africa to stop them taking up smoking, we are lucky to be able to have, and see, a real impact across all of the work that we do. Every client is different, every client is interesting, and every client needs a fresh way of thinking. What sets us apart is our ability to tangibly add business value (and profit) to our clients’ brands whilst adding real ethical values to what they do.
We care, a lot, about the quality of all aspects of our work - we’re pedants and perfectionists and proud of it. We strive to ensure our thinking is of the absolute highest order – creative, strategic and just plain smart. We want the strength of our ideas to be what sets us apart.
We work on a wide variety of different things for all sorts of very different clients, and bring learnings from all the work we do to each piece of work - layering insights, building context, seeing where things fit together. We look outside our own walls too, as we believe the bigger our field of vision and the more connections we can make, the richer our thinking will be.
We believe in progress. We’re optimistic about change and we believe our work can help create it. This drives and galvanises us, it’s why we’re happy to come to work. We believe what we do matters, and that matters to all of us.
We want to know how people are doing. We want to have real relationships with the people we work with. We value empathy and we always try to see the emotional as well as the rational side of life. Good things happen as the result of people coming together around the desire for change. It’s humanity that makes progress.
We’re like a human pyramid made up of minds not bodies – supporting one another, building on each other, and coming together as one. We like each other too! Sounds lame but it’s true. We enjoy working together. We think our office is a nice place to be.
We’re going with the old adage that you can tell a lot about someone by the company they keep, largely because we think some of the organisations we’re connected to – or in some cases that we created – are pretty great!
Our network of friends and family also ensures that we can always offer our clients a complete solution to their problems. Whatever we need, we’ll know someone that can help and it will be someone we know we’ll work well with.
We also like calling on our contacts when we’re grappling with an issue just to see what they say. We like talking to them, and we like new perspectives. It makes our thinking better.
So our friends and family mean a lot to us. Check them out!
Jericho Chambers is the go-to set for Progressive Communications: radical, transformative and democratic. And we are part of the network.
2CV research is a full service, integrated consumer market research agency who are a close partner for the work we are carrying out for the Gates Foundation.
A not-for-profit initiative which aims to make UK restaurants global leaders in sustainability.
Perfect Day Design Studio - a creative communications agency specialising in advertising, branding, web development and design for digital, print and interactive media. We work very closely with them to create design work for our clients.
Shift, formerly known as We Are What We Do, is a social enterprise with ten years experience designing consumer products that address social problems by helping people make better choices.
The British Paraorchestra is an orchestra consisting entirely of musicians with disabilities. Giles is a Trustee and we helped to set them up.
The Social Business Trust is a partnership of world-class businesses that use their combined resources to invest and accelerate growth in social enterprises.
ukactive exists to improve the health of the nation by getting more people, more active, more often.
Our IT partner, Fluid IT, aims to make high quality IT systems and support an affordable reality for SMEs.
The Clean Space Partnership are our office cleaning partner with strong ethical values in what they do and how they do it.