Creature’s City of London Corporation campaign encourages firms to pay London Living Wage

Creature has developed an advertising campaign for the City of London Corporation which place pressure on financial and professional services to pay the London Living Wage. The campaign apes the visual language of the stock market, with negative statements in red and positive in green as though rising and falling in value.

“Sometimes you have to speak someone’s language to make them understand,” Creature’s chief creative officer Stu Outhwaite-Noel tells It’s Nice That. “We decided to talk business to businesses, using visual cues from the stock market aesthetic and emotional messaging infused with business speak to get every business in the City to invest in what truly matters to their companies: their people.”  

Posters featuring the campaign, which has been backed by the Living Wage Foundation, have been installed at nine tube stations, including Liverpool Street, Euston and Victoria. The campaign has also been launched with social media assets and through newspaper advertising.

Creature has long been a champion of the London Living Wage (currently £10.55 an hour) and last March launched the Real Living Wage Pledge with Wieden + Kennedy. The pledge asked creative agencies to commit to paying staff a living wage, whether they were permanent, freelance, full-time, on work experience, including cleaners, creatives and runners. So far 44 agencies have signed up to the pledge. Its success prompted the City of London Corporation to get in touch with Creature to “help them do for the City what [Creature had] done for AdLand”, says Stu.

“The Living Wage is really just a fair rate for a hard day’s work – it affords people the opportunity to provide for their families and themselves, giving them a dignified life,” adds Stu. “People are at the heart of the City, they keep it running, day in and day out, so they should be fairly compensated for that.” Staff that earn the Living Wage have a greater chance of fulfilling their potential within a single job, of accessing further education and training in their spare time, and consequently have the ability to achieve upward mobility, he adds. “If that’s not enough of a reason, there are also commercial and societal benefits for paying the London Living Wage: accredited businesses report improved staff retention, productivity and reputation.”