Oliver Pelling on Building a Purpose-Driven Agency for Climate and Social Impact

By Daniel Simons

 

Oliver Pelling’s dream was to spend his working life sharing stories about people making a positive difference in the world. And for over a decade he’s done exactly that.

After studying journalism and creative writing at Kingston University in London, the punk-rock fan with a passion for skateboarding moved to Melbourne and wrote for the likes of The Guardian, Huck Magazine, RedBull.com, Intrepid Travel, and even enjoyed a brief stint as editor of Rolling Stone Australia.

He also spent time in creative copywriting roles at ad agencies such as CHE Proximity, Saatchi & Saatchi and more.

Then in 2020, with his partner, Janna, pregnant with their second daughter, smoke from the devastating Black Summer bushfires wafted through Pelling’s kitchen window and compelled the thirty-year-old to raise his impact ambitions.

Later that year, Pelling founded Good&Proper, a B Corp communications and marketing agency that offers content marketing, PR, social and creative campaign services for purpose-driven organisations and non-profits.

If you scroll through the Good&Proper website, you’ll find a mini manifesto outlining the vision for his ethical agency:

Good work only. Built to give. Change the narrative. 

“Our impact model, split across these three key areas, is designed to ensure we have a positive impact by virtue of simply existing. We reckon it’s the least we can do given the urgent and systemic challenges we’re facing,” it reads.

In six years of operations, Good&Proper has never swayed from its core mission. Pelling and his team have run national campaigns for WorkforClimate, helped Climate Integrity achieve nationwide PR coverage for its corporate climate accountability work, and earned the Great Forest National Park prime time TV coverage.

Their storytelling and publicity work for Regen Melbourne’s Swimmable Birrarung Earthshot – just a small part of a massive, multi-stakeholder effort – helped elevate the project to the point where it is now being embraced and championed by City of Melbourne Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece.

A good slice of Good&Proper’s time is spent managing all aspects of Adventure.com, Intrepid Travel’s multi-award winning sustainable travel publication.

Pelling doesn’t just edit Adventure.com, he lives it. He’s traversed Sri Lanka by tuk tuk, tested Victoria’s EV charging network on an 800 km trip around the Great Ocean Road, and this year he’s lining up for the Takayna Trail Run to raise funds for the Bob Brown Foundation.

Good&Proper’s long-standing relationship with Bank Australia has seen them release a ‘How to change the world in 60 seconds’ mini documentary series, shoot Arctic explorer Tim Jarvis and his Forktree Project, and spend days camping off-grid on the Bank’s 2,117 hectare conservation and biodiversity reserve.

More recently, after developing the campaign and writing the script with his team, Pelling found himself playing a surfer.

Specifically, a surfer in the background of the Who Dares, Winters “camping for conservation” campaign that Good&Proper produced for Barwon Coast Caravan Parks, a not-for-profit that channels its revenue into coastal landcare and restoration.

Despite the turbulence of the post-COVID era, Good&Proper has continued to grow year on year, which has enabled them to donate over $170,000 to a range of charities including Seed Mob, Sea Shepherd and the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.

We sat down with Pelling to have a chat about the hows and whys of running an ethical agency through a period of seismic disruption, where the stakes are urgent and existential.

Running an ethical agency can be a challenge at the best of times. How have you managed to hold on to your core values through the recent years of turbulence and complexity?

If anything, the challenges we’re currently facing have made it more important for us to hold on to our core values.

I set up Good&Proper for one reason: to be able to spend 100% of our time working with organisations that are trying to solve our biggest challenges. So I have to make decisions based on ensuring that can remain true over the long-term.

We will never, ever work with harmful industries. And historically we’ve been in a position that has meant we haven’t even had to work with ‘neutral’ organisations.

But running a business means I have real responsibilities to my team – and I am not so idealistic that I don’t recognise there may be times when we have to be more flexible to ensure our long-term stability.

If I’m ever in a position where it’s a choice between making payroll and working with a ‘neutral’ organisation, I will make the decision that means our team can continue to deliver impactful work over the long-term.

 

You founded Good&Proper because you believe the stakes are existential and the work is vital. Do you have any advice for purpose-led changemakers in the era of the polycrisis?

I think it’s very easy to burn out in this space. The type of people drawn to impact work are drawn to it precisely because they care so much – it comes from a very personal place. And when you take that care into your work, it can be hard to know when to switch off.

With that in mind, I think it’s important to just focus on doing the best you can in the time you have. You have to try and hold it lightly – it isn’t all on your shoulders. You can’t go in thinking you’re going to save the world.

I think, if we look at things from a generational point of view, we’re not going to solve everything in our lifetime. We just want to try and leave an example for whoever comes next to prove that this kind of work can be done – that you can have an impact, whether it’s big or small, and that the work can also be restorative and joyful. That we didn’t kill ourselves doing it.

Because if we’re all just stressing and burning out then what is the point of any of it? We need to show that we can do this work, do it well, and still live a good and fulfilling life.

It’s as much about the process as it is about the output – we have to build better systems while we’re dismantling the old ones. Empathy, compassion, community and even love need to be our driving forces.

 

How do you look after yourself?

At risk of contradicting myself, I still struggle with the personal wellbeing side of things at times.Thing is, I think that’s true for most people.

Most of us struggle with the same things, we’re all connected in that way. And the more you get out and talk to people, really talk to people, the more you realise you’re not alone.

So I look after myself by talking to the people around me, just trying to have proper conversations. Often it’s more about listening rather than sharing whatever is happening with me, just trying to be present with the people I care about.

Beyond that, exercise, getting out in nature, walking the dog, reading books, playing music with my kids, putting the f#*king phone down – forcing myself to stop, pay attention, and be grateful. All good habits that I’m forever trying to do a better job of sticking at.

Can you tell us more about the value and importance of community?

The business landscape is traditionally so competitive. It’s designed that way. But there’s so much to be gained from learning from and collaborating with like-minded people and organisations.

Doing whatever you can to surround yourself with people from similar spaces, with similar ambitions – even different spaces and different ambitions – and asking them what’s keeping them up at night, what’s their story, what are their biggest challenges, what have been their wins, that is massive.

Five years ago I completed the Mastery of Business and Empathy run by Small Giants Academy, and for me that was an incredible plug-in community.

I still speak to SGA fellows daily, and we’ve got that shared foundation of understanding each other, having been through this transformative experience together (mine was during COVID), so we can get straight into the big stuff.

My advisory board is also comprised of two incredible leaders I met through that community – Francie Doolan and David Johnston.

We’re also a B Corp and a member of the B Corp community, which has been really valuable, just knowing there are so many incredible people I can talk to who are coming from a similar place.

 

Can you tell us more about your board and the benefits of having advisors?

My theory was that a board was just an extra thing to do. More admin, more bureaucracy, something that would get in the way. Doing that SGA course challenged my assumptions and so I ended up pursuing Francie to join my board until she eventually agreed.

After speaking with Francie, we concluded that for a business of my size, keeping it small, simple and agile would be the best bet.

Francie’s background in big consulting firms and as a board director means she’s got great business and financial knowledge that I don’t have. Our other board member is David Johnston, the CEO of Beyond Tomorrow.

We catch up once a quarter. On the mental health side, just having a space to talk about the business with people who understand it intuitively but aren’t in it, there’s a massive value in that.