Why Common Good?

People often ask why we’re called Common Good. So I thought it would be useful to put a quick post together on how the name came about and why it plays such a pivotal role in how we run our business.

Back in early January 2013 John and I were holed up in a small and slightly dilapidated office inside a disused wing of the old Sharp Electronics building here in Manchester. The City Council bought the building (now known as The Sharp Project) in 2006 and have since developed it into a state-of-the-art creative facility with dedicated space to host young startups. At the time none of the spaces were available but we were keen to find a way to get started. So with Sharp’s help, we grabbed a couple of chairs, borrowed a couple of tables and took them up on their offer of occupying some of the spare office space in this undeveloped part of the building.

It’s interesting to note that the early days of Common Good were spent in the home of what used to be an instantly recognisable symbol of a hi-tech future. The Sharp Electronics brand was synonymous with technology and Manchester — an identity we were keen to build towards for our company.

The relative isolation of our new home was perfect for what we needed to focus on — plenty of uninterrupted thinking and talking. For two cold winter months, we locked ourselves away and set about planning the experiment that was to become Common Good.

John and I both come from big agency backgrounds. In the five years previous we’d worked together delivering digital projects for some of the world’s biggest brands. But we were gradually becoming more and more frustrated. Technology was changing the world and we wanted to find better solutions to helping clients deliver against their customers needs. We felt in the current situation no one was getting any true value out of the experience — not the client, the agency, the project teams or the customers’ we were designing for.

We slowly realised we were going to have to stop complaining about it and put our money where our mouths were. Apparently there’s only so much talk about how things should be done that people are willing to put up with. There was only one option left … go it alone.

Starting up is a big decision by anyone’s standards, and I’ll leave the story of how we went about it for a different post. But we found a way, even if it did mean spending a couple of months inside a freezing office on an unhealthy diet of Mars Bars and Tea.

A significant amount of those first two months were spent understanding why and how we wanted to do things differently. The status quo wasn’t working. We knew we wanted to design an agency that focused on delivering value to all involved — client, customer and agency. Experience had shown us that the best route to achieve this was by creating and nurturing a strong internal culture and by using newer, relevant methods of working. We nicknamed our plan ‘Common Good’, later to become the name of the business.

As our discussions continued we realised there were other critical elements that would help shape the business. We both shared a desire to stop working with certain types of companies. As individuals we’re passionate about sustainability and the general well-being of people, the planet and society, enough, we agreed, to want to weave that ethos into the founding values of the business.

Debate continued and a prototype of the business emerged. Underpinning it were a set of strong values to focus on — and an approach of how we would create a business culture and go about identifying the companies we wanted to talk and partner with.

Our Values

Innovation & Design

Creativity & Ideas

Transparency & Openness

Sustainability & Responsibility

Simplicity & Collaboration

Our Approach

Common Good partner with companies which are inherently good. By this we mean the products and services they provide are born out of an ambition to make a positive contribution to the world. Benefiting end users by making their lives better, easier and more fulfilled.

Our focus as a team is on making the world better, smarter and simpler through the creation of exceptional digital products and services.

An example of this in action is our recent partnership with Specialized Bikes. We’ve been working with the Specialized team to find new ways to engage with a wider female audience (You can read more about the project here). The ultimate insight of the Specialized brand is that their core product — through which they’ve built their name thanks to years of innovation — makes a huge, positive contribution to the global community. This ethos — coupled with the responsible ambition of the business — allows their customers to benefit by becoming fitter, healthier and happier.

So to us the name Common Good represents a lot. It defines how we behave and who we approach to partner with and why. Many people comment that this approach must narrow our scope of opportunity when it comes to new business. What we’ve actually found is that it gives us focus and a valuable, unique positioning. It is also one that companies are interested to talk about and understand as they look to redefine the terms by which they do business and deliver value to their customers.