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top things that matter

We write our monthly roundups in order to inspire a conversation around creativity, brand purpose, and the positive impact we can have on society.  In the event of covid-19, the global pandemic that’s affected our lives so unpredict

We write our monthly roundups in order to inspire a conversation around creativity, brand purpose, and the positive impact we can have on society. 

In the event of covid-19, the global pandemic that’s affected our lives so unpredictably, it’s important to celebrate the incredible efforts by brands out there supporting our health services and communities, as well as helping us be entertained during our collective effort staying at home.

So behold our roundup of brands offering their purposes for good during covid-19: 

Help Hiyacar offer free rides NHS workers

With essential travel coming to a standstill across London and elsewhere in the country - the good eggs at Hiyacar are now offering free car hires to NHS workers* to help them get around to hospitals and home at the end of a shift. Let’s help them spread the word about this to offer to the NHS across socials!

*dependent on ID and insurance of course! 

Guinness’s content for St Patrick’s Day

This Covid-19 situation is an opportunity for brands to re-think about the way they’re talking to their audiences right now. A great example we found of this was this film by Guinness to celebrate St Patrick’s Day this year. 

They’re encouraging their audience to celebrate as normal, and foster their incredible spirit but from the comfort of their homes. It’s a fantastic use of their platform for good karma right now :)
(we actually did a deep dive into how to create great content like this combining UGC, previous assets and great stock here)


Brewdog and their hand sanitiser initiative

Brewdog have offered their distillery in Aberdeen to assist in the production and distribution of Punk Sanitiser. They’re still making beer, but diverted the majority of their stock to produce hand sanitiser, and as of this week have now distributed 50,000 units to NHS hospitals and local charities across the UK.

Deliveries and stock are being handled by extra team members from some of Brewdog’s closed bars - because “united we stand for better beer!”


The Royal Academy of Art and their #RAdailydoodle

Galleries across the world are closed (and yet a Van Gogh painting was stolen in Amsterdam?!) but the Royal Academy of Art wants to make sure art is still accessible to everyone at home. 

So they’ve set up a daily drawing competition on Twitter, giving a daily challenge of different household items to get people drawing and be more creative! It started with legs of ham, but they’ve gone on to wardrobes and even workspaces… it’s a great way to engage people far and wide to be artistic, plus there’s some fun and witty commentary from their social media team on the masterpieces submitted :)

Chip’s new saving techniques to help us during this pandemic

With so much uncertainty in the air it’s expected that many people will now be turning to  their savings, or looking at how much they can save while the brands and business around us is getting used to a new normal. 

Chip saw a massive increase in usage from the first week in March as people turned to their accounts to check on their affairs. And after such a spike, they’ve now introduced new saving techniques to help us during covid-19.  They’ve raised their saving limit to £10K, and even introduced a new personal algorithm that can help increase saving according to your income level… just doing the most to help people where they can at the moment using the tech available.

First Mile offering their services to deliver crucial goods to hospitals

I think we might have mentioned this before but we’re huge fans/users of First Mile in this office, they’re a brand doing great things for our environment and our wastage. 

And for the duration of covid-19, they’re offering their extra drivers and fleet available to deliver leftover food and wellbeing items from closing offices around London to the doctors and nurses at the UCLH. 

So if you know of any closing offices, like co-working spaces or even private offices who have perishables, or even cleaning items/sanitary items - let them know and they’ll be delivered to our frontline NHS medical staff!

Screenshot 2020-04-01 at 12.50.09.png

Glastonbury’s donation of festival supplies to hospitals in the South West

The iconic festival would have celebrated 50 years this year, but for good reasons and to protect everyone’s safety it’s putting off the entire celebration to next year - but we’re not here to have a moan about how hard it is to get tickets!

There’s plenty of tributes and the BBC is setting up an entire digital Glastonbury experience to make up for it, but we wanted to highlight how the Eavis family have donated their entire medical supplies including masks, gloves, sanitiser and more intended for use in June, plus dedicated food provisions already in place, to hospitals across the Somerset county and South West.  It’s awesome and will be a huge help to guaranteeing supplies across the South.

Huggg open up e-vouchers to schools to help feed families

And last but definitely not least, we wanted to highlight what e-voucher start-up Huggg is doing to help in this crisis. They’re usually used for gifting, or even as an HR perk rewarding employees, but mainly stayed in the B2B sector. 

Now they’re opening up their platform to be used by schools to send vouchers to parents and families who rely on free school meals - and these vouchers can be used in supermarkets to redeem the equivalent food necessary to keep kids fed. As of this week it’s also open to charities too - to enable people in isolation to send supermarket vouchers to volunteers to collect groceries.

Their CEO Paul Wickers told the team that "it's been such a privilege to be able to put our resources to work on this important problem. We have our first schools up and running and are happy to open it up to any other schools and trusts looking for a solution while a central one is fixed. We're waiving all platform fees, schools will simply pay for the vouchers that get used and claim it back from the DoE."

If you’ve seen any brands who are doing great things to help us all get through this difficult time, then let us know!

In the words of the NHS: Stay Home and Save Lives. Stay safe everyone x

The top things that mattered to us in February

The top things that mattered to us in February

We’re back with our take on what’s happened during Feb that we think matters, and there’s been a lot going on in the world of purpose-led brands.

1) Ecover’s Laundry Against Landfill campaign


We’ve seen a huge momentum towards the end of last year of brands producing more impactful rallying cries - like this one we covered by Friends of the Earth last month. 

This month the spotlight was shone firmly on the huge amounts of material waste in the fashion industry, by Ecover’s Laundry Against Landfill campaign. We loved how their awareness piece is simply non-preachy yet effective, and how they’ve scaled the campaign to be multi touch-point, providing supplementary ‘how to’ guides on how to properly take care of our clothes on their site. 

Sara Mendez, Marketing Director at Ecover explained that  “with this campaign, we wanted to raise awareness of the problem of fashion waste. But also show people ways they can lessen their impact by falling back in love with the clothes they already own, keeping them in use, and out of landfill”.

2) Cans for Equity by BrewDog


It’s always interesting to see brands explore the ways they can attract and engage their superfans.

Look no further than what Brewdog have launched during Feb, with their Cans for Equity campaign - with the result being you can recycle 50 cans to become an ‘equity punk’ in Brewdog. 

This is such a great way to not just encourage behaviour change in the short-term, but also to show they care about their product at all stages through partnerships with First Mile to give their cans a second life. 

This initiative has created a more intimate perk for their superfans by feeling truly part of the brand, and we applaud it.

3) Sanctus’s campaign for Children’s Mental Health Week

This particular campaign is proof of how a creative can really thrive in the long-term. Sanctus, a brand providing mental health coaching businesses and individuals, decided to flip the script and create a film a couple of years ago on their socials for Children’s Mental Health Week. 

It made a comeback during the past month, and we wanted to highlight how much making this tonal switch on such a sensitive topic matters… it’s so great to see this from a brand with a more corporate audience. 

We spoke to George Bell, the brand and marketing lead at Sanctus who agrees that the power of the film also lies in the script. It’s comedic but authoritative on a subject when “all too often mental health is associated with images of someone sitting in a dark room clutching their head - this is, of course, part of mental health but it's not the full spectrum.”

“Although it's a couple of years old now, we still re-use it and still have a great response every time, which shows that it still remains uncommon for people to see mental health presented in this way.”


4) NHS x Notes to Strangers 

#notestonhs with @imalilo

411 Likes, 1 Comments - Andy Leek (@notestostrangers) on Instagram: "#notestonhs with @imalilo"

We’ve all seen these notes pop up around London over the years and one of our team is a huge fan, so we had put this in our highlight. 

Notes for Strangers started as an Instagram account by ex-creative Andy Leek, writing random notes on telephone boxes and bollards, spreading positivity and kindness where he noticed it’s severely lacking. 

This month we saw the launch of a collab with Notes to Strangers and the NHS, creating posters and notes for hospitals UK-wide to show support for nurses under severe stress. 

Hospitals tend to be a pretty bleak place and these notes are intended to spread positive messages at a time where political conversations are taking up much of the discourse around their work - it’s just a lovely thing to see.


5) ‘Meet the New Joby’ by Joby 


And finally in our roundup we wanted to include this really simple but effective repositioning campaign by Joby. If you don’t know who Joby are - they’re a tech brand that sells tripods for all different devices. 

We love how instead of putting their product front and centre, they hero their creators interacting with their product, weaving in UGC to add a mixed media element. 

It’s great to see Joby are exploring a new creative angle, becoming more experience-focused - so we’re looking forward to seeing their creative progression down the line!


Like what you’re seeing and want to create content that matters?

Email josh@mattr.media and let’s see what we can do...









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.