Your Shot: How the Ad Industry Inspired the City of London to Demand a Living Wage
London is expensive. The UK’s capital currently ranks as the 23rd most expensive city out of 436 metropolises in the Cost of Living Index, ranking as less affordable than affluent cities including Copenhagen, Toronto and Amsterdam. To keep up with the combination of intimidating rent, expensive groceries and the lifestyle costs that come with city living, wages need to match that. That’s why the Living Wage Foundation has set its Living Wage at £10.55 an hour, significantly higher than the UK statutory minimum wage of £7.83 (for over 25s).
The City of London - the capital’s oldest square mile that serves as the home of much of the UK’s financial and professional services industries - employs 513,000 people, which is 10% of Greater London's employment, and 1.6% of the country’s total employment. All of which makes the City of London Corporation's new campaign by Creature - calling for companies within its jurisdiction to pledge to pay the London Living Wage - a welcome sight for many Londoners. With income inequality on the rise it’s nice to see a municipal governing body coming out on the side of workers rather than businesses.
The posters’ message pressurises financial and professional services to pay the London Living Wage, borrowing the visual language of the stock market, with negative statements in red and positive in green as though rising and falling in value. They are currently on display at nine of London’s busiest tube stations, including Liverpool Street, Euston, Victoria and Paddington as part of a two-week campaign that’s expected to reach over 1.3 million people across the capital.
LBB’s Alex Reeves asked Creature CEO Dan Cullen-Shute and creative team Megan Egan and Poppy Cumming-Spain (collectively known as Megapops) for a bit more context on what went into the ads and to find out where the idea came from.
LBB> Where did the idea originally come from? Was the subject of a living wage something the client already wanted to talk about or did it come from you as an agency?
Dan> Creature's history with the Living Wage goes back a fair few years. We were one of the first IPA Agencies to secure Living Wage accreditation, and have always been active in pushing it through the industry - culminating in a programme we launched last year with Wieden + Kennedy called the Real Living Wage Pledge, in which we attempted to persuade the entire industry to agree to pay everyone who worked in it, be they full time, placement, intern, or work experience, a real living wage. The City of London had been looking to develop a Living Wage campaign for the City, and the Real Living Wage pledge prompted them to choose us for their campaign, to see if we could help them do for the Square Mile what we'd done for the advertising and media industry
LBB> Why was this crisis in need of a body like the City Corporation stepping in?
Dan> One in five people who work in London don't earn a wage they can live on - and the irony is that paying people properly isn't just good on a moral or human level, it's good for business. This point of this campaign is to remind people that there really is no excuse for not doing the right thing. The City is home to the financial and commercial heart of the UK – there are 24,000 businesses in the City of London and one in 63 UK workers are employed within it, but there are only just over 150 registered Living Wage employers in the City. The City Corporation thought more could be done to celebrate businesses who are committed, and to encourage those who are not, to become accredited.
LBB> Strategically, what were the early discussions on how you'd go about it?
Dan> Our Real Living Wage Campaign had thrived on celebrating the people who were already doing the right thing, and by doing this, we inadvertently shone a light on the people that weren't. Our campaign for the City of London Corporation was 100% built on those same foundations; albeit with a slight bias towards the celebratory. Layer on top of that an opportunity to drive home the business-positive message in language the C-suite would understand, and we were on our way.
LBB> How did you write the script for the outdoor ads? It's quite a tight copy-led campaign! What were the major decisions?
Megan and Poppy (Megapops)> Understandably, the client (the City of London Corporation) had a lot to say about paying the London Living Wage. It’s an important topic that most people know little about, despite how crucial it is to the people who earn it and the businesses they work for. So, we took a look at all of the information we had and pulled out the bits we absolutely had to tell people - the bits that would mean something to everyone. And that’s why we led with the most astonishing fact we found: one in five people in the capital don’t earn a wage they can live on.
From there, the process was somewhat of a balancing act. We needed to show the problem and the solution, that there are personal and business benefits, and we wanted to push companies to sign up while also celebrating those who already have. We managed to squeeze all of that into 447 characters, so we’re pretty happy with that.
LBB> What were the biggest challenges or hardest decisions in creating the campaign?
Megapops> The biggest challenge was resisting the urge to point and wag our fingers at businesses who haven’t signed up to pay the London Living Wage. Our City is nothing without its people, so we need businesses to look after them. We had to find a way to create a sense of ownership that would drive more City businesses to sign up, without any finger-pointing or wagging.
LBB> Beyond the advertising part of the campaign, how is the City going to apply pressure to businesses to ensure they pay their staff properly? Is Creature playing a part of that?
Megapops> The work isn’t done until every business in the City is signed up and every worker earns a wage they can live on. It’s an ambitious aim, but something we passionately believe.
LBB> How do you feel about the response it's got so far? It seems to have gotten people talking!
Megapops> The response so far has been great. It’s wonderful that people have already proven that this campaign wasn’t just close to our hearts, as we suspected. Paying people enough to live on is what’s going to keep the City we all know and love running. It’s something that we all have to stay engaged with.
Having said that, the best response we could get is a call from the Living Wage Foundation to say that a bunch of businesses have signed up to pay their staff the London Living Wage.
LBB> Anything else you'd like to add about your experience on this project?
Megapops> Just a bunch of HUGE thank yous: to the City of London Corporation for coming to Creature with such a wonderful brief, the Living Wage Foundation for firstly existing and secondly supporting us throughout this process, the big dogs at Creature for letting two recently hatched creatives run their first campaign, the City businesses who’ve already invested in their people by paying the London Living Wage, and all the businesses who will sign up soon.
