Don’t know which sustainable marketing agency to pick? Akepa reduces the rigmarole with our rules and picks for sustainable agencies that will grow your brand.
You’re ready to hire a marketing agency for your sustainable brand. But who to pick?
A quick Google might leave you feeling overwhelmed. Marketing agencies are lining up to claim the sustainable label. Choosing the one that will create value for you isn’t easy.
Akepa is here to help. We advise you what to look for in a partner to save you wasted enquiry time. We then select a lineup of top agencies to get you started in your search, wherever you are on the planet.
What is a sustainable marketing agency, anyway?
A sustainable marketing agency is different from a traditional marketing agency as sustainability is at the core of what they do. There’s a higher knowledge of the complex topic of sustainability, a specialisation in sustainability marketing, and an accustomed practice to working with sustainable brands.
When it comes to sustainable marketing agencies, it’s about great marketing for brands that do good. Marketing gets a bad rep for being misleading and deceitful. But marketing can also be done responsibly, for brands that are trying to make the world a better place. The goal is to propel these brands in the race against those unethical brands that are sadly among the most successful today.
Importantly, a sustainable marketing agency is not about one sustainability-related marketing campaign. It’s about driving brands forward who are purpose-driven. Because the right marketing means nothing if it contradicts brands’ actions.
Regular marketing agency vs. sustainable marketing agency
Here’s a quick lowdown of how a sustainable marketing agency can differ from a classic one. Although bear in mind there are always exceptions to the rules.
How to find your sustainable agency match
1. Sustainability
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: all sustainable brands need a sustainable marketing partner. We find that sustainable brands on a budget sometimes forget this and choose a vanilla agency. They shouldn’t for two reasons:
- A sustainable agency has the knowledge you need. A sustainable agency understands how your people think. They’ll know the keywords to use. They’ll know the messages that make folk nod along. And they’ll know how to avoid every sustainable brand’s nightmare – accidental greenwashing. Well, hopefully. Not all sustainable agencies are the same and we might have to do a bit of research to make sure they aren’t greenwashing themselves! We address this at the end of the article.
- A sustainable agency shares your mission. Doing business sustainably means sourcing suppliers that fit your mission. This also goes for your laptop-based services. We recommend holding your marketing providers to the same standard you hold your own business – your brand deserves nothing less.
2. Fit
Digital marketing covers a dizzying number of specialisms. So make sure your agency has experience where it pays for your brand.
This isn’t as easy to figure out as you might think. Some agencies will offer a laundry list of services around their core offering. Between content marketing, influencer marketing, badger-based marketing (we may have made the last one up), it’s hard to know where they excel.
Our best advice is to check the case studies on the site, like ours here. Case studies cut to the important stuff: the results an agency can achieve for your brand.
To start you out, we’ve made a note of the marketing specialisms for our chosen agencies below.
3. Location
Check that an agency can work well where you are. The surge of remote work means an agency can offer a service from anywhere in the world. But just because they say they can, doesn’t mean they have optimised their business to work remotely.
While Akepa is a remote-first agency, others still emphasise an in-person model. This can be costly and involve unnecessary travel, or even flights. When contacting an agency, don’t forget to ask how they plan to transform your brand from far away.
Now let’s move on to the agencies:
- Akepa
- Futerra
- Peaceful Media
- Enviral
- Wholegrain Digital
- The Influence Agency
- Creative Wilderness
- Little Fox Design
- GrowRoom
- On Purpose
- The Big Sky
- The Ethical Agency
- PAPER & PAGE
- Young Folks
- LACICLA
- Legacy
- Agencia Verde
- We2
- GOOD
- Yellow Dot Studios
Agency 1 – Akepa
Location: EU & UK
Expertise: Data-driven growth marketing
Website: https://thesustainableagency.com
Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/company/akepa
Akepa is the sustainable marketing agency that helps brands who share our passion for sustainability grow and succeed.
Focusing on sustainability means we get your climate-conscious folk and know how to talk to them. Our expertise has enabled sustainable clients to run authentic ad and content campaigns that increase online reach by as much as 15 times in two years.
If you arrived here from a search engine, then that’s a demonstration of our serious skill with SEO and content marketing. We could help you reach audiences the same way.
The pure remote-work setup we roll with doesn’t only mean a low-carbon service for global clients. Cutting wasteful flights and office space allows us to offer a premium service at affordable rates for clients of all sizes.
And now onwards to some other fine agencies focused on sustainability…
Agency 2 – Futerra
Location: Worldwide; UK-based
Expertise: Sustainability strategies and creative campaigns
Website: https://www.wearefuterra.com/
If you’re a larger brand with an ambitious budget, then why not take a peek at Futerra? The female-led B-corp helps corporate giants like Mars, Google, and Danone define their sustainability strategy.
A mix of sustainable know-how and creative design drives their eye-catching sustainability campaigns. All under the daring slogan ‘Make the Anthropocene Awesome’.
For smaller brands who aren’t quite ready for Futerra (yet), we still recommend following their work for inspiration.
Agency 3 – Peaceful Media
Location: Oregon, USA
Expertise: Digital & growth marketing
Website: https://www.peacefulmedia.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/peaceful-media/
Since way back in 2008, prescient Peaceful Media has been a beacon for brands striving to make a positive impact on the world. With a mission rooted in creativity, commitment, and the desire to drive change, they offer integrated expertise across branding, web development, and marketing. Their ‘goodbye chaos, hello growth’ approach has fueled significant growth for clients like Soil Food Web School, James Van Praagh, and a transformative website redesign for Sonia Choquette.
Peaceful’s unique potency lies in rejuvenating websites and brand identities, alongside advertising & SEO for enhanced visibility, and managing full sales funnels for brands selling online.
Beyond marketing successes, Portland-based Peaceful Media champions the sustainability conversation through their podcast, ‘Marketing for What Matters,’ underscoring their commitment to collaborative progress in sustainable marketing. We stan, we’ve subscribed and we hope to be involved in the conversation at some point in the future.
Agency 4 – Enviral
Location: Worldwide; UK-based
Expertise: Combined communications and marketing for sustainability
Website: https://www.enviral.co.uk/
Need help defining your purpose before marketing your products? Enviral’s combined marketing and communications support will do the trick.
Enviral works with companies of all sizes to find their unique voice in the crowd. Their expertise in e-commerce, paid media, and email marketing then gets your freshly-crafted message to the people that matter.
Enviral is worth a click alone for its handy set of guides for sustainable brands, such as the one above. Its Campus features tutorials from vision statements to Instagram, perfect for one-person marketing departments.
Agency 5 – Wholegrain Digital
Location: Worldwide; UK-based
Expertise: Web design
Website: www.wholegraindigital.com
Unhappy with your underwhelming website? Wholegrain Digital could be your go-to web designer.
Wholegrain works only with positive businesses to design clean and intuitive WordPress sites. Their 15 years of experience in digital strategy and user experience will transform your site into a beautiful online resumé for your product.
Every sustainable brand should read Wholegrain’s impressive list of commitments to sustainability, some shown above. It shows convincing joined-up thinking on sustainability that all brands can learn from.
Agency 5 – The Influence Agency
Location: Worldwide; Canada-based
Expertise: Influencer marketing
Website: https://theinfluenceagency.com/category/sustainability/
Over half of Gen Zers look to influencers for product recommendations. So if you have a large Gen Z or millennial audience, consider an influencer marketing agency.
Though not a sustainability-first business, The Influence Agency manages a large network of sustainability personalities who will understand your brand.
Alternatively, you run a lean influencer campaign through Ethical Influencers. This online community connects you with 1,200+ influencers ready to get your product straight onto sustainable feeds.
Agency 7 – Creative Wilderness
Location: Worldwide; UK-based
Expertise: Authentic brand identity and design
Website: https://www.creativewilderness.co.uk/
Creative Wilderness is an ethical branding design agency based in the UK passionate about producing sustainable brand identity design.
The studio works with sustainable and ethically minded brands on their brand strategy, brand experience, website, copy and ‘brand roots’ using the innovative power of nature-based brand exploration.
Creative Wilderness can help you create a brand identity that makes you feel connected to it by “digging deep into the roots of your business”. The founder is motivated by a strong passion for sustainability and helps brands achieve what they want through full brand experience design, design days, branding workshops, and more. See the portfolio full of sustainable clients.
Agency 8 – Little Fox Design
Location: Worldwide; Canada-based
Expertise: Green graphic design and sustainable materials
Website: https://www.littlefoxdesign.com/
Little Fox Design work with compelling brands – like a fungi-based seafood startup and an edible cutlery company – to help with their visual identity, web design, and packaging. The best part about Little Fox Design is their painstaking attention to detail, which is something not everyone can manage.
From green web design to sustainable design methods and materials, they put strong emphasis on research to promise the best sustainability practices. They even share the resources they use to aid in their graphic design work.
Agency 9 – GrowRoom
Location: Shrewsbury, UK
Expertise: SEO, PPC & Web Design
Website: https://growroom.agency
If you’re a sustainable brand then one of the more important marketing channels should be search engine optimisation (SEO). That’s because lots of folk are searching for sustainable products or useful information about sustainability – and those searchers are rising every year. Nevertheless, you might need a bit of a hand with the (sometimes arcane) techniques to get to the top of the results.
That in mind, we might as well feature an agency with strong search marketing expertise and that brings us to GrowRoom. Based in an environmentally spectacular part of the UK, Shrewsbury, they focus on SEO and PPC for sustainable brands – as well low-carbon web design. Like Akepa, they think about sustainability from a connected standpoint, with an environmental focus, and haven’t just gone for being a B Corp and left it at that.
By the way, Akepa does quite a bit of SEO too, which is perhaps why you’re here. Here’s a little bit more from our blog on why SEO and sustainability can make so much sense together.
Agency 10 – On Purpose
Location: India
Expertise: Communications, marketing, and PR for social change
Website: https://www.onpurposeconsulting.in/
It’s worth remembering that sustainability has multiple faces – environmental and social. Founded in 2017, On Purpose (OP) aims to drive social change in the world’s most populous country through creative and effective communications. Until now, India continues to battle a whole list of issues like gender inequity, illiteracy, and child labour. When the final audience makes up almost 20% of the global population, it only makes sense that On Purpose’s focus is largely local.
They help brands, development agencies, and other organizations with digital marketing, PR communications, internal campaigns, and a few others. Knowledge areas of expertise range from clean energy to AIDS awareness and mental health.
Some past clients include the Sesame Workshop India, a non-profit dedicated to early childhood education, and the Agastya International Foundation, which nurtures creativity in economically disadvantaged children. If that weren’t enough, here’s a pretty extensive list of awards they’ve won in the past five years.
Agency 11 – The Big Sky
Location: London, UK
Expertise: Film & photography production
Website: https://www.thebigsky.co.uk/
Any marketing team has to urgently consider video as part of their mix. From social media algorithms, to search engines, films and video are being brought centre stage. With that in mind, we must include Big Sky on our list. They’re an award winning film and photography production company that’s B Corp certified – and stood out as one of top global B Corps for the environment in 2022.
They’ll get your film produced as sustainably as it can be: plastic-free sets, plant-based food, travelling by train instead of by flight, remote pre- and post-production, a diverse production team. The list goes on. And to quote Co-founder Ben “our clients become our friends”.
Big Sky specialises in cinematic film and documentaries – especially those that are about a better future. Here’s a film that was made for Purpose Disruptors, which premiered at COP26 in Glasgow. It discusses the need to shift the advertising industry to a more sustainable model and gives a good indication of their top-notch production values.
Agency 12 – The Ethical Agency
Location: South Africa
Expertise: Digital marketing, branding, graphic design, and web design
Website: https://theethicalagency.co.za/
This leading South African agency will help you amplify your brand communication through compelling visual design and effective, data-driven marketing for growth and success. The Ethical Agency (TEA) offers a rounded package of services: from bringing your brand to life, to graphic design for print and digital, and green website design – all the while backed by digital marketing strategies and tracked analytics. A good all-around agency, then.
Content wise, TEA also offers plenty of useful marketing advice on their blog, a list of primarily South African sustainable and ethical suppliers, an ethical checklist, and even a free marketing strategy for start-ups and brands on a low budget. P.S. we’d like to award extra sustainability stars for cultivating their own vegetable garden at their office in Cape Town.
Agency 13 – PAPER & PAGE
Location: Southeast Asia; Thailand-based
Expertise: Digital marketing, online PR, web development
Website: https://www.paperandpage.com/
In 2022, Paper & Page became Thailand’s first creative agency to receive a B Corp certification. Based in Bangkok, they offer PR and marketing solutions to clients catering to audiences all throughout Southeast Asia. From luxury businesses like the Pranda Group to nonprofits like ECPAT, they cater to impact-driven entities focused on positive environmental and social change. In fact, they even take some pro-bono cases on board.
Interestingly enough, PAPER & PAGE belongs to the bigger mc Group – an international communications agency and network – with its headquarters in Berlin. But does it matter? The work is what counts at the end of the day. And they’re ClimatePartner certified and Clean Creatives approved.
Agency 14 – Young Folks
Location: Australia
Expertise: Performance and content marketing, strategies, creative work
Website: https://youngfolks.com.au/
Based in Australia, Young Folks is a company passionate about serving conscious clients down under. A full-service agency, you can find compelling case studies on their site with good work they’ve done for heaps of good brands. Check out their blog for some interesting reads with topics at the intersection of sustainability and marketing. Or stay up-to-date on their socials for upcoming events, such as their panel discussion on LGBTIQA+ representation and inclusion in advertising. They’ve also released a guide on this, downloadable here.
Young Folks also has a satisfying bunch of certifications and pledges up their sleeve: B Corp, Welcome Here, 1% for the Planet, Comms Declare, Clean Creatives, and Climate Active Carbon Neutral.
Agency 15 – LACICLA
Location: Argentina; Colombia; USA
Expertise: Communications strategy, digital marketing, reporting
Website: https://lacicla.net/
We’re moving to the other side of the globe for this next one on our list. LACICLA is a marketing communications agency with three offices spread out between South and North America, serving companies operating in the region. They’re all about developing digital communication strategies and solutions that have a triple positive impact – on social, economic and environmental levels. Main services offered include communication plans, social media management, reporting, and email marketing.
Their client list covers a breadth of industries, from one of Colombia’s oldest book institutions, Librería Lerner, to Argentinian cinema chain, Cinemark Hoyts. Like Akepa and PAPER & PAGE, they’re Clean Creatives approved. So rest assured – no ties to fossil fuel producers here!
Agency 16 – Legacy
Location: Oxford, UK
Expertise: Event marketing & execution
Website: https://legacy-events.com/
Few agencies know how to plan sustainable events, market them and make them happen. Yet, it’s an area that plenty of major brands are looking to explore, to improve their overall sustainability.
Legacy is a pioneering full-service sustainable event management agency based in Oxford, UK, with specialist experience in planning, running and communicating successful low-carbon events for global clients – including Spotify, GE and Gold Standard. Their services include event strategy, concept design, supplier management, event marketing, virtual event management, venue sourcing, on-site event coordination, and post-event analysis. All of that with emissions, wellbeing, and ecology in mind.
Like a few of the other agencies on this list, Legacy is a certified B Corp. And, yep, that is Chris Martin from Coldplay below, who was a guest speaker at an event that Legacy organised.
Agency 17 – Agencia Verde
Location: Mexico
Expertise: Communication strategies, creative campaigns, experiential marketing
Website: https://agenciaverde.com/
Agencia Verde is a creative consulting agency that helps brands promote sustainability through innovation and disruptive communication. They offer workshops, conferences, and trainings; communication strategies; creative campaigns and projects; ‘clean experiences’ such as carbon-neutral film productions and events; and sustainability reporting. Think of a campaign that recovered +11,000 unused masks – using containers made of recycled Tetra Paks – to ensure their proper handling and prevent them from becoming a waste product. Or maybe a partnership with a construction company to manufacture and install 500 artificial reef balls to restore and protect Mexican coral reefs. This is some of Agencia Verde’s creative work.
Translation: “Your 8m (Women’s Day) post is great. Your internal policies too?” to highlight that everything starts from the inside out. If you want to work with Agencia Verde to achieve some great results for your brand, you’re going to have to walk your talk first.
Agency 18 – We2
Location: Turkey
Expertise: Graphic design, branding, content marketing
Website: https://we2.co
We aim to keep our list as globally expansive as possible. So now we’re off to Turkey, where we find We2, who’re a fully remote agency. The design agency makes important information engaging through thoughtfully visualized content to encourage behavioral change for a sustainable world. We’re talking about inspiring posters, reports, factsheets, brochures, and more. Their impressive clientele includes United Nations (UN), International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the World Food Programme (WFP).
We2’s work is often centered around a range of humanitarian issues – which can be unfairly overlooked in the sustainability conversation.
Agency 19 – GOOD
Location: London, UK
Expertise: Strategy & creative
Website: https://www.goodagency.co.uk/
Now back to the UK, because it’s a bit of a hotspot for sustainability marketing.
And another great agency from the UK is GOOD. We’ve written a little about B Corp certification and how it compares against being a sustainability focused agency. Yet, it is possible to be both things at the same time and that’s what GOOD is.
They’re one of the more established agencies on this list and they’re known for their impactful work with charities like Oxfam and Cancer Research. Their focus is on big-picture creative and strategy – and this is another agency that’s in the healthy habit of creating a podcast.
Agency 20 (Honourable Mention) – Yellow Dot Studios
Location: Los Angeles, USA
Expertise: Videos & Film (non-profit)
Website: https://yellowdotstudios.com/
We’ll finish with an honourable mention for Adam Mckay’s Yellow Dot Studios. In case you don’t know who Adam Mckay is, he’s only the chap who wrote and directed Don’t Look Up, the satirical 2021 film about the indifference to the climate emergency – featuring a threatening comet as a metaphor for climate change. Leonardo Di Caprio and Jennifer Lawrence took the lead roles and it’s Netflix’s second most watched film of all time.
Yellow Dot Studios twists this narrative for the non-fictional threatened world by creating videos to challenge the disinformation of Big Oil and the hypocrisy of climate inaction. As you’d expect from the writer behind Anchorman and a form head writer for SNL, there’s a hefty pinch of wit. Which is important because earnest messaging about the climate crisis isn’t quite getting through.
Here’s a recent video about the preposterous salaries of Big Oil CEOs.
We’ve marked this entry as an honourable mention, as while Yellow Dot is a media studio, it’s not one that aspiring clients can work with directly by making an enquiry (at least to the best of our knowledge). You can donate here though.
How do I tell if a marketing agency truly is sustainable?
79% of buyers are changing purchase preference based on their social and environmental impact. But 62% of buyers barely trust that brands will stick to their environmental claims.
The list we’ve created here isn’t exhaustive. So, how can you figure out if another agency you find means it – and will thus be good at communicating it? Here are some things to look for:
They’ll be passionate
This might seem far-fetched but trust us. When researching an agency, ask yourself if they are as excited by sustainability as you are. Do they have a lonely ‘/sustainability’ landing page and nothing else? Or do they dedicate blog posts, mission statements, and case studies to their sustainability? You can probably guess which you should be hiring.
Look at their past and current clients
Do they work with big corporations or notoriously unsustainable clients? This doesn’t mean that the agency should be ruled out as unsustainable. But it can help you decide whether the agency aligns with your values or not.
They act sustainably
Does the agency have a remote working policy to cut down on unneeded flights and other transportation? Have they opted for carbon offsetting and if so, have they used a recognised provider on a trackable project? Do they use green web hosting? Is sustainability woven into their services? They might produce little to zero waste in their projects, for example.
This might be a bit harder to figure out if you’re not already working with them but some agencies will be proud to share how sustainably they get work done. Talking to the folk behind the agency and asking questions might help and that can also help you detect some of that passion that we mentioned in the first point. On the agency website, there should also be a comprehensive sustainability page like Akepa’s.
How do you know if you need one?
Whatever your brand needs, we hope the sustainable agencies above can help. When starting conversations with any agency, don’t forget the three important rules:
- A business-wide focus on sustainability
- A glove-like fit with what your business really needs
- A smart remote setup that works from any location
Ready to start speaking with agencies? Tell us what you’re looking for at hello@thesustainableagency.com and we’ll see if we can help.
Fancy being featured?
While this list is titled as being about the ‘best’ sustainability marketing agencies, we’re well aware that there’s a shifting sustainability landscape out there. There are all sorts of great, purposeful companies springing up – so we revisit this post every three months to make sure that we really are doing our best to capture the finest agencies out there.
That doesn’t mean just in Europe and the US, but a diverse curation of agencies from all over the world. If you’d like to be featured, wherever you are, and feel like you’re from one of the best agencies in the area – then just send us an email and we’ll see what we can do. And if you’re a competitor – so what? We can still add you. The last thing that sustainability needs is for folk to not collaborate…
We’re a woman-owned, culturally diverse agency founded in 1990 and focused on sustainability. How do we become a part of your network?
Hi Renee, thanks for getting in touch and good to hear about your agency. We’ll take a look at your website and get back to you.
I’d like to tee up another (actually two including a competitor). GOOD COMPANY (https://good-company.eco) and Mightybytes (https://www.mightybytes.com)
Love this list! Please consider adding our boutique agency OYOO Design. We’re small but have been working in the industry since 2007 and have always put the planet / people first. We love to collab with like-minded agencies too – so please connect if you are up for working together.