Avery & Brown - 2022 impact report review
Last week Avery & Brown published their first impact report. Here are three things I like and three questions it raises...
👍🏻 3 things I like...
1. THE AMOUNT THEY'VE ACHIEVED
Avery & Brown are a small business and they've only been around for a couple of years. The amount they've achieved in this time is immense!
They're talking the talk AND walking the walk ... and that's important. Because there's far too much talk out there that isn't accompanied by action!
2. TRANSPARENCY
They're transparent about their journey, both in this report and in their wider communications. Sharing the things they're doing, what they've learnt and the mistakes they've made will help others progress on their own regenerative business journey much quicker.
3. IT GETS SPECIFIC
Whether it's quotes from clients or charities they've donated to, carbon footprint data or details like Beth doing her Carbon Literacy training ... all these specific details make the report tangible and bring it to life. They take it from being a business document and ground it in the real world.
❓3 questions it raises
1. WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE THEY WANT TO MAKE?
I like a business to be clear about the difference they want to make at the very beginning of their report. What's the specific dent they want to make in the world? Then the rest of the report hangs off this.
Whilst Avery & Brown have done lots of brilliant stuff, I'd love them to get much more specific and tangible about the impact they want to have. This can be hard for service-based businesses but my sense is that they'll find it easier now that they've decided to niche and focus on serving the built environment.
2. HOW WILL THEY DELIVER THAT IMPACT?
Once you've got that clarity around the difference you want to make... how are you going to do that? How does all of your activity ladder up to deliver that impact?
3. WHAT'S THE INTENDED FORMAT?
(the team are probably going to hate me for saying this since they’re the designers and not me but I'll risk it...)
The small font size made the report quite hard to read on my laptop and I found myself thinking "did they intend me to read a printed version?"
And then that bugged me because of the environmental impact of printing. Or maybe my eyesight is just rubbish!
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You can read the report for yourself here and let me know what you think.
If you’re preparing to write your own impact report, you might find my FREE Impact Reporting Roadmap helpful: