Extract chapter From Britain’s Everyday Heroes by Gordon Brown
Meet Sam Conniff and Michelle Clothier, two dynamic social entrepreneurs based in Brixton, South London, and you can see how they’re going to change things. They have set out to see if the power of marketing can be harnessed for positive effect, and they’re doing something unique: applying the modern techniques of youth marketing to some of the most enduring of challenges, helping young people fulfill their potential. The result is their flourishing youth marketing agency, Livity, and their successful youth training initiative, LIVE Futures. And now they are planning their next endeavour: an enterprise hub housing thirty businesses, each of whom will commit to doing something for young people.
Sam explains the original thinking that led to Livity. ‘We’ve always had quite a set theory around community and business and
achieving client objectives, whilst at the same time creating an environment that wasn’t stressful for the human beings who worked in it: they could actually develop and it wasn’t just a job. Importantly, above your people and above the profit, could you also produce something with a positive benefit to society? Why shouldn’t you be able to, especially when you’re dealing with something as significant as marketing and communications helping to shape people’s lives and self-identities?’
As Michelle explains, their thinking had been informed by their own professional backgrounds in marketing and their experiences of living and working amongst Brixton’s youth. ‘We both were youth marketers. I was working at a youth marketing agency on fairly big brands, and Sam had already set up his own youth-focused enterprise. We were good at communicating messages and selling stuff to young people but had become slightly jaded and were asking, ”how do we use our skills and experience to more positive effect?” That was how the whole Livity story started.’
Sam picks up the story. ‘It got to the point where I couldn’t live with the fact that I was selling another mobile phone or presenting trainers as ”the thing you must have” and then walking out of my office in Brixton and home in Streatham – where I’ve always lived – and seeing groups of young men that the papers would have us believe we should all be terrified of who want the latest mobile phone or who identify themselves with head-to-toe branded sportswear because there’s something missing from their lives. Those kids occasionally do terrible things to get their hands on that stuff; it gives them a sense of actualisation, it’s an achievement of some description. They’re not finding that in other parts of their lives, so they will go to any lengths to get it. Once you’ve made that realisation, how can you disassociate
yourself from the cycle? ‘That to me was one of the turning points when I really realised the symbiotic nature of business in the community and that business will never succeed if the community is falling apart around it. What’s the point of me making loads of profit running a company only to be jacked in my nice car 200 metres up the road by the same kids I’m trying to convince need the car? Once you’ve got that point you can’t really turn back. But then you’ve got to do something. You only do what you can, where you are, with what you’ve got around you. We’re not going to change the whole of society overnight, but what if we could prove that a business could be a fun place to work, that it could make money and the work that you did had a measurable, lasting impact?’ And for Michelle, their work has taken on a very personal meaning too. ‘I had a baby about three years ago, and now, as a parent and a business owner and someone who works within the community, I have more of a personal reason to try and make our surroundings that much better. So that’s been quite a big turning point for me. I’ve got a real, real reason to do that now.’
Livity operates as a socially minded youth marketing agency, working on campaigns and communications that target and engage with a youth audience. The company’s remit is to work with both public-and private-sector clients, as Sam explained. ‘The idea is that with a youth audience, the public sector will often have a better understanding of the motivators and drivers, because they deal with the causes and fall out of social issues. Yet the private sector is often better at executing successful communication and influencing behaviour change, because they’re more ruthlessly brand focused and don’t have to worry so much about the other stuff. If you pull those two things together, we
think that’s a really interesting place to achieve necessary and important social objectives, but to use a lot of brand equity and credibility and commercial-minded approach to achieve them. Increasingly, we like to bring the public and private sectors together on a particular issue.’
Alongside Livity, Sam and Michelle now run a social enterprise called LIVE Futures, a youth training initiative that developed out of one of Livity’s project and that demonstrates their approach to marketing. ‘We were briefed by the local authority to communicate tough, slightly boring messages to 13 to 19 -year-olds about important things; local youth provision, healthy eating, sexual health and careers advice. Our strategy is to involve young people meaningfully in the process. The project itself was a piece of communications work and the magazine we produced, Live., was a success and became a training vehicle and an entity in its own right.
Whilst Livity was also a socially led idea, with LIVE forming within it, we couldn’t just let it come to a close when the project ended. So we took a fairly major decision to follow our ethics through to their natural conclusion, which led to us forming this youth training enterprise alongside, making a significant dent on our revenue.’ Live is now a highly successful youth magazine, produced
entirely by young people from South London (and now with editions in East and North London) under the mentorship of professional journalists, designers and photographers. It forms the basis of a youth training organisation, offering training offering training and work opportunities in media and communications to a wide range of local young people. ‘We’ve got young offenders, refugees, single parents, right through to really ambitious kids in their final year of a journalism degree who are doing extraordinarily well.’
Alongside formalised training, one-to-one mentoring relationships are key to Live’s success ‘We have mentors from Time Out, Vogue, the Evening Standard and thelondonpaper; kids can just drop in and informally be hooked up at their own at there own speed or pace to doing something that interested them. What we like to do is pair them up with one of the huge number of professionals who volunteer, and then it works really well. If they see the journalist in the paper, than you get those one-on-one relationships beginning to happen.’
The two organisations – the marketing agency Livity and the youth training project Live – sit alongside each other, sharing a buzzing office environment and feeding off each other’s ideas and talents. Opportunities to work on Livity’s projects provide valuable real-life training for the young people, while working so closely with these young people gives Livity’s marketing a business advantage. When Sam and Michelle described examples of their work, the benefits of this symbiotic relationship became clear. Livity created a campaign for the department of education and Skill’s teenage pregnancy unit as part of the Want Respect campaign, which aimed to reach out to disengaged young people who would not be attracted by traditional advertising and marketing methods that the government might usually use. Michelle explained
how Livity was able to meet the brief and deliver a successful campaign. ‘Because we surround ourselves with young people every day and every week and every month, we had witnessed the surge in importance of lyrics – writing, commenting on and discussing and debating them. We came up with a campaign Rrhyme4Respect; a nationwide lyric-writing competition which invited young people to write lyrics for one of their musical heroes to record about respect in sex and relationships. We hooked up with radio and TV stations and retailers, and we
brought brands in to give it credibility, relevance and reach. The theme of the campaign had come to us because we surround ourselves with young people, but then our experiences of working with brands was really the thing that allowed us to implement something that reached people in a credible and relevant way.’
Recent evaluations have shown that Rhyme4Respect achieved high levels of recognition amongst its target audience and is beginning to have impressive results.
Running the youth training programme alongside commercial marketing agency allows Sam and Michelle to engage young people in a genuine business approach, and they stressed how central this emphasis is to their success. ‘Whether you’re talking about Livity or
Live We’re running a business here. Anyone participating is coming to join a business and we truly believe that approach is why young people very quickly engage with what what’s on offer here.
For some young people, for whatever reason, the education system isn’t working, they might not be in any employment or any
training, and they don’t know what their options are. I think we create something here which is a safe place in a way, but it’s also very inspiring and it’s a place that is full of opportunity.’ What is most striking about Sam and Michelle is the ease with which they combine business acumen and drive with care and empathy for each of the young people whose lives of young people whose lives they have touch. They have created a dynamic business and safe and welcoming place that engages with young people on their own terms and gives them opportunities to develop their talents and ambitions. The stories they recount offer a moving insight into the impact they have
been able to make on they have been able to make on the lives of young people in the area.
Michelle told me ‘We have had kids who have come out of Feltham [the young offender institution and remand centre]. This is the first place they come at 7.15 in the morning when you turn up they’re sitting on the doorstep and the last time it happened, the kid said ”I just need something.” That’s so often the case; they need a sense of purpose to their day before they go and do what they used to do. As the
years go by, we get better at sensing it. They say I want get back involved with the magazine”, and we say ”Well OK come back any time”, and they just stand looking at you at 7; 15 in the morning so we say ”OK, do you want to be kept busy today?” We’ll put people to work quite readily, quite easily.’
Sam added his own memories of individuals whose stories have stayed with them and who continue to inspire their work. ‘We helped one boy apply for Jamie Oliver’s chef apprentice scheme, and he got through the 300 to be there in the last fifteen and then on to become one of their peer mentors. He’s come back to see us several times, and each time he’s just a changed person, not the slightly off-key worrying kid. He’s turned into more and more of a confident, successful young man who knows that he has changes his own fortunes-when he was ready. From where he started, he’s made a bigger leaps and bounds than we ever have in a shorter amount of time – yes with a bit of a boot from us, but himself, and I think ”If you can, I can do more.”’
Sam and Michelle have built an innovative and important example of how a successful business model can benefit young people. But far from being satisfied with what they have achieved so far, their boundless energy and creativity fills them with ideas of new projects and new possibilities to pursue. ‘The ultimate irony of the universe,’ said Sam, ‘is that individuals are sitting going ”Oh I can’t make any difference, what’s my little thing going to do?” and yet the weird thing is, that’s what everyone says. It doesn’t seem to me like it’s that much rocket science to address some of the major issues that we’re facing. You’ve got thousands of young people not in education or employment or training, and these are the ones most at risk of getting in to crime, one of the base points which further impact everything around it. What if
you got a thousand firms to take one lad on for a year, just drop him in there and watch the response. An alarm clock and a nine-to five job will change those boy’s lives and knock the naughtiness out of them, and they’re all right. I would argue that you would have a minimum 50 per cent success rate of changing those people’s lives. Doesn’t seem that illogical or difficult to me.’
And these aren’t just ideas but plans that the Livity team are trying to turn into reality in their local area. Their next plan is to develop a major office space in the area to serve as a hub of social enterprise. The hub would house up to thirty small businesses, along with a media centre and cooking facilities for use in training, with each business receiving subsidised rent in return for hosting a young person at risk as an apprentice. Live would sit at the hart of the project and help to support the young people and the employers, who would use the space to engage in training and work opportunities. Sam and Michelle have very big ambitions for how their model could spread and hearing them explain not only the values but the logic that underpins their work, one can’t help but feel that they may just have what it takes to realise their dreams.
‘There are things that everyone can do. We do all have responsiblity to one another and to our society. The rewards are there for you. People are quite used to the idea; ”If I work I will get something back”, but at the same time don’t see the counterbalance; ”If I don’t give something, than I will lose out”. And that’s a very odd ideology for society to have I think.’
