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The top things that have mattered to us in January

The top things that have mattered to us in January

We’re back with our monthly roundup of campaigns, content and activations that we feel are making a difference to our world…

  1. Hiyacar’s back to life

Hiyacar are in an exciting position as a high-growth spearheading a new sector of the car sharing market. And up until this point, they’ve been having to subsidise the majority of peer to peer insurance costs for drivers as that’s the sector norm. But when their insurance provider came back in late December with further increases to pricing for their drivers and no further changes to the claim policy -  they took the decision to cease trading for a couple of months. 

They’re happy to announce that they fully restored their service as of this week, but we wanted to reflect on how awesome their customer service was during this period of closure. They went out of their way to speak to each driver and owner in their community to personally explain the issue - and to people who couldn’t rent during this period, they gave them 50% of the funds it would have cost to rent a replacement with competitors service providers. 

It couldn’t have been easy, but they went above and beyond for their community, proving their mettle as a company which is not prepared to ‘grow at all costs’. Rob Larmour, their COO & Co-founder told Team Mattr that “the response we received from our members and from other companies who saw not only what we did by making a stand but how we handled the aftermath for our drivers and owners, has been fantastic. Being open and allowing everyone to see what goes on behind the scenes showed that we won't compromise our values for growth.”

2. Friends of the Earth’s newest campaign tackling eco-anxiety 


Eco-anxiety is a bit of a hot topic right now and this brilliant film for Friends of the Earth created by Don’t Panic is an awesome way to bring the conversation to life. We’ve been hugely inspired by this approach to raising awareness.

By sensationalising the heroine’s chase to win her plastic bottle back, Friends of the Earth have figured out how to communicate and tackle the topic of doing your bit for the planet without being preachy. With so many stats flying about on how many years we’ve got left and how much work is still left to be done, it’s easy to get caught up -  but take a leaf from this ad and start doing your own bit to help.

3. First Direct ‘money wellness’ TTL campaign & social content series

We believe money is a wellness issue. Let's challenge how money makes us feel. #moneywellness

22 Likes, 1 Comments - first direct (@firstdirect) on Instagram: "We believe money is a wellness issue. Let's challenge how money makes us feel. #moneywellness"

We’ve seen some great ads over the years that focus on the difficulty of talking about money openly and confidently, like ‘The M Word’ by Lloyds Bank. Now First Direct have come out with their latest campaign looking at the concept of ‘money wellness’ in our everyday realities. 

To accompany their OOH billboard ads, they’ve also produced a new social video content series interviewing their existing customers and how they are trying to be more ‘money healthy’. 

It’s great to see the huge highstreet finance players take part in an unscripted conversation around financial pressure, a trend that has definitely not been appreciated before. We’re huge advocates for brands leaning on their real people to tell real stories, so adding new perspective to the ways in which we’re improving our health in our lives is incredibly impactful.


4. Hubbub’s coffee cup installation exposes just how much waste coffee cups produce

We’re all guilty of using coffee cups without realistically considering if they’re going to have a second life. To combat this behavioural habit, environmental charity Hubbub have created an installation to showcase the 5,555 cups used per minute in the UK - compared to the 222 of those that are actually recycled in the existing processes. 

Natasha Gammell, the project lead at Hubbub, told us that “at 3 metres tall and illuminated at night, the structure is unmissable, swallowing visitors up in thousands of geometrical cups. The installation has evolved into a fully interactive public artwork as the thousands of people who pass the installation each day write down their visions for a greener world on the cups.”

Hubbub and Starbucks have contributed over £300K to creating new recycling centres across different boroughs that will uniquely process coffee cups, exploring new ways of regenerating the used plastic. We loved the idea for such an aesthetic visual to raise awareness for such a widespread issue - and there’s immense possibilities to create new and impactful content around the outcome. Watch this space!

Liked what you’re reading and want to create content that matters?

Get in touch at josh@mattr.media

Top 4 things that have mattered to us this November

Top 4 things that have mattered to us this November

At Mattr we believe that in today’s world the best brands do so much more than sell products. Below are four of our fave examples over the last month:

  1. In a world where men wear the tampons - Thinx

We’re all witness to the changing conversation around femcare - its inclusion in political manifestos, new product innovation, and now the latest advertising campaign by Thinx. 

Their new TV & social film depicts a hilarious world where men wear the tampons and deal with having their period. There are no corny sport skits or women wearing white - instead we’re privy to a son telling his dad he’s got his period for the first time, male colleagues handing out spare tampons, and a tampon string peeking out of a guy’s boxers. 

While we think this ad is awesome for its rebellious and hilarious nature, it actually matters because the heart of the narrative is helping normalise sensitive and everyday experiences. Creating impactful content in the femcare space (as we learned through our film with myFreda) is tough to nail but can be powerful when you do!


2. The Twitter community’s power for good - Football Beyond Borders

Campaign reported a story we loved this month about Barton Hill Academy, a primary school in Devon. Their girl’s football team had no kit of their own, with budget dedicated to the boy’s kit leaving the girls to wear the outgrown hand-me-downs. 

Their coach involved Football Beyond Borders, an education charity dedicated to helping disadvantaged kids get into sport, who took to Twitter’s biggest community to get support from athletes and sponsors  to raise funds for a new kit for the girls’ squad. Within 15 minutes new sponsorship and endorsement from Nike and West Ham Women’s Football squad had sorted free kit for all young ladies. 

When we talk about using your audience to help your brand live and celebrate its purpose, this is a great example to remember. It’s all about Listening to your community and acting on what mean the most to them.

3. Brewing for clean water - Brewgooder

We found this next piece really intriguing - Glasgow based brewery Brewgooder has created a global initiative collaborating with hundreds of breweries to raise £250K for World Water Day in 2020. 

It’s awesome to hear that breweries are able to harness their global and passionate craft beer community to support sustainable growth. It’s a clever initiative that works two-fold; limited edition products are bought by loyal customers to boost the brewer’s profile internationally. 

At Mattr we’re all about partnerships and working for the longer-term, so it’s great to see breweries break down the barriers of competition and get together to help solve a monster challenge as an industry. We’re excited to see the content that comes out the back of such an initiative, and maybe to even see it as an annual event?

4. Acknowledging your environmental footprint - Hovis

WhatsApp Image 2019-12-05 at 12.18.31.jpeg

With everyone jumping on the bandwagon, it’s becoming incredibly hard to see news online about a brand doing good for the environment and thinking it’s committing some form of greenwashing. And whilst admitting to your eco-vulnerability as a brand has never been more important, the key lesson to learn is how you communicate that properly. 

Just take EasyJet, who in spite of announcing their plans to offset their carbon emissions from its 329 aircraft by planting trees, still came into trouble by people claiming they could be doing more. There are many arguments to support both sides of the announcement - perhaps one could look at their execution and wording in their statement as a reason for the backlash, or even that because of the statement, it served no greater purpose than to cover up the real issue at hand.

A great example of a brand getting this kind of messaging right is Hovis and their new OOH eco advertising about their new electric delivery fleet. We laughed at the way Hovis made a jab at businesses claiming to be ‘100% green’ by claiming to be 100% yellow (how on brand for Mattr.. Luckily it’s not our pantone code). This matters because it’s authentic and effective - we love it when sarcasm hits the streets…


There is no definitive answer of what to do to be loved in today’s world, but the best you can do as a brand is to be honest and authentic when you don’t have everything in place. It will earn your brand more respect from your audience instead of creating tone-deaf content that doesn’t truly reflect what you stand for.

BBB tips: How to win stakeholder buy-in, the best ways to measure brand, how you can combat the challenges of global vs local marketing

BBB tips: How to win stakeholder buy-in, the best ways to measure brand, how you can combat the challenges of global vs local marketing

We had another brilliant BBB this week with some amazing attendees. The below are a few tips from the really great conversations that were discussed over smoked salmon, scrambled eggs and OJ.

How to get stakeholders to buy-in to brand

When they can’t track impact or results of brand, stakeholders typically find it harder to justify parting with budget. And this is often the biggest challenge brand marketers face in the debate of performance vs brand. 

A really great recommendation on how to win buy-in from one of our marketers was to interrogate the ‘unknown’ sources in Google Analytics. If your stakeholders agree that it’s not unreasonable to assume leads driven from this source are from brand activity, you can start to build up a picture of the quantity and quality of leads/conversions created from these campaigns vs your performance ads.  

She admitted that although this trial is a couple of months old, however, it should help to justify spend for future brand-focused campaigns.


Be smart with how you measure sentiment

If surveys are part of how you’re collecting that data, one of the tips shared was to really interrogate the questions you were asking people. Often surveys are unreliable because what people say isn’t necessarily how they feel.

For example - most surveys people are asked “how do you feel about our product?” whereas a better way to get the truth out could be asking “how would you feel if our product didn’t exist?”  This measures sentiment as a justification for the effectiveness of brand building on business growth.

Simple things like this can trigger much richer insights that help brand marketers justify campaigns or projects that would otherwise be ignored.

Know the platforms that you’re on

An interesting insight was that many marketers at our roundtable supported moving away from having accounts on every social media platforms. There is plenty of pressure put on brand and social media managers to be “everywhere”, but if your most engaged audiences aren’t on Facebook, it’s a drag on resource to focus energies on it. 

In that same vein, if you’re going to focus on the platforms where your audiences are on, make sure you know how to use them best to your advantage. One brand told of how they had great community success on their Instagram channel by hiring an ex-influencer to become their social media manager, growing their community from 2K to 10K in a quarter. 

Another brand marketer pointed out that while choosing the right channel is the first step, the second is to pay attention to what is being created on each platform. They explained that for them, Youtube shouldn’t just be a space for brands to create their own content, but to co-create with relevant Youtubers with relevant audiences.


Bigger brands shouldn’t lose touch with hyper-local stories 

One topic we discussed was the challenge of global brands creating effective localised campaigns. Often there’s tension between global teams (who have the broader vision for where the brand needs to be) and the local teams (who have an ear to the ground and ultimately know more about what their local markets tastes are). So how can you fix this and ultimately create more effective work?

There’s no easy fix here but the key is global teams can’t dictate the nuances of particular pieces of content, hence the importance of local sign-off. We recently lived the benefits of this sign-off for localised content within our global campaign with Grant’s Whisky and by pulling together as a team, we created an inclusive, socially diverse campaign that went against the status quo of advertising in the whiskey world.

As one of our attendees put it, why should you trust middle-aged white guys to dictate the content narrative for a place they’ve never been to?


Learnt something new? Want to share your own thoughts on building brands that matter? Then why don’t you book a seat to our next Brand, Bitch & Brekkie roundtable, at Riding House Cafe, Fitzrovia.

Email sunnii@mattr.media or give her a ring on 07772343952 for any q’s!