Why Cox Inall Ridgeway Only Works with Clients Who Drive Social Good

In 2007, Tim Powell and Dr Aden Ridgeway founded an agency with a difference. The managing director of Cox Inall Communications and former Australian senator (respectively) set up shop in Walsh Bay, Sydney, in the lands of the Eora nation. There, they created Cox Inall Ridgeway, and worked to provide policy, research, evaluation, community engagement, and creative communication projects across the country.

“When you look at First Nations communities, particularly here in Australia, we have more than 65,000 years of expertise in storytelling and creativity. What we're doing here is continuing that tradition. So there's a lot to be learned.”

So says Yatu Widders Hunt, general manager at Cox Inall Ridgeway. She’s worked with the agency for six years now, having come from a background of public service work, and long-standing commitment to social justice.

Yatu Widders Hunt

“My dad was on the first Aboriginal Arts Board, and was very active politically. He actually went on the first indigenous delegation to China, so I grew up surrounded by activists, and with a broad understanding of the importance of social justice… Comms always fascinated me too! I was one of those teenage nerds that had election night parties; always thinking about how to change the mood of a nation, how to convince people to buy ideas rather than products. And that's what really inspired me to come over here.”

Yatu heard of Cox Inall Ridgeway when the agency was first founded, and was immediately impressed. “What appealed to me was the kind of work being done here. We live by a philosophy that, first, what we do will drive social change, and, second, not that agency knows best, but that community knows best.”

Although Dr Ridgeway (a Gumbaynggirr man and nationally respected Aboriginal activist and policy maker) has recently stepped away from the business, his leadership over almost 15 years has made the agency an unmatched force for innovation and messaging among Australia’s First Nations communities, with an approach and structure deeply tied to that mission.

“We partner with communities or people who have lived experience of issues from day one. It's never too early to engage with people. Rather than us coming up with ideas, and then going in to focus test it, we create campaign ideas together, we create the work together,  and people with lived experience feature in the campaigns themselves. It’s a much more collaborative co-creation idea, rather than a “create and test” model. It embeds First Nations expertise and thinking in everything, and it anchors everything in the lived experience of people who can bring that expertise that we don't have.”

What does that First Nations expertise and thinking look like? Well, for one, the sense of community obligation is a deep and serious truth within Cox Inall Ridgeway. Dentsu owns 49% of the agency, with 51% being indigenous owned. “We have a trust which holds the shares on behalf of all First Nations staff”, Yatu explains. 

“We work between the Western business model and Aboriginal governance, so, for instance, we all have different roles. We don't like to say we have different levels. We have a fairly open door policy on most meetings. So staff across the business are welcome at finance meetings, or at business meetings, and we actively debate new business opportunities with each other to identify whether it's ethically right for us as a business… there have been times, even recently, where we’ve chosen not to pursue particular work, because it doesn't align with our values. If, for instance, we believe a government campaign is tied to policies that may do harm to community, we won’t work on it.”

The obvious question, then, becomes what kind of campaigns Cox Inall Ridgeway does do. Well, earlier this year they launched the Heal Our Way campaign - a platform designed to provide support, tools and advice on having safe conversations around suicide. 

“The team had advisory groups,” Yatu begins, “they had Aboriginal experts with backgrounds in psychology, health work, social and emotional well being, which also represented people who had direct lived experience of suicide to create campaign messaging, execution materials, all those kinds of things. So it was a very grassroots-driven campaign.”

It was also an example of an instance where a Cox Inall Ridgeway staff member featured in the campaign itself, thanks to her lived experience. Shannay Holmes, senior consultant, shared her story of dealing with grief and depression (in response to losing her brother) on SBS, and helped promote the platform.

“That's the interesting thing about being in an Aboriginal agency,” Yatu explains. “We have a professional role, but we're also still part of a community. We have many hats… We're not always just behind the scenes, we're actually walking in partnership the whole way through the process.”

In her time in the industry, Yatu describes the industry’s approach to indigenous concerns as evolving from a DEI initiative (“something to be done in NAIDOC week,” as she puts it) to a more totalising concern. “Events like BLM and the ongoing fact of deaths in custody that we face here in Australia, together with the upcoming referendum, have all shifted people's thinking. I’m seeing a lot of brands and organisations and agencies acknowledging that this is part of who they need to be, rather than something that sits in a silo of a corporate social responsibility pillar or a diversity inclusion pillar.”

WIthin that context, the space to incorporate First Nations thinking on a broader scale seems immense. Yatu notes Cop26 consultations with First Nations leaders worldwide on climate management, and describes with palpable excitement how these principles are ready to help reshape global thinking.

“First Nations cultures are still living. We're continually reimagining what that means from a First Nations perspective. So it's not just an ongoing tradition, anchored in ancient thinking, but it's also extremely contemporary and cutting edge. There's definitely a lot to be learned.”