The sustainability series: Alex Hankinson from Midnight

Hi Alex, can you tell us a bit about who you are and what you do?

Midnight is a PR agency that helps businesses to build and grow their reputation. We work with clients across four key groupings: professional services, the built environment, workplace services, and community. This last group includes supporting major regional organisations, such as London Gatwick and Newhaven Enterprise Zone.

Our services include strategic consultancy, digital PR and media relations, media training, copywriting and social media management. In essence we help our clients to either solve a business problem or to make the most of an opportunity, through a mix of different types of communication.

We prioritise ambitious clients who share our values, appreciate our talented team, and have a story that needs to be told.

Flo and I took over Midnight in a management buy-out in 2018. Over the last few years, we’ve stayed true to Midnight’s essence and gradually evolved the brand. Becoming a Certified B Corporation is a really important part of that process.

You have just received your B Corp certification – congratulations! – why was it important for Midnight to become a B Corp?

The heart of what we stand for at Midnight is about making a positive, meaningful impact. It’s part of our brand positioning for clients, in terms of helping them to achieve their goals through the services we deliver. Just as importantly, it’s about using our position of influence as PR consultants to inspire our clients in the way they run their operations.

We’ve always taken pride in our ability to unearth hidden gold within a business and turn those insights into compelling stories and conversation starters. Those stories need to be built on authenticity, so we are working hard to help drive real change by asking the challenging questions, by introducing purpose-led partners, and shining a light on the companies and people that are driving change for their stakeholders.

We’d been thinking about B Corp for some time; as a small business, we’d felt a little daunted by what it might entail. It was our discussions around our re-brand and really thinking through our purpose last year that moved things on.

It felt like the natural extension to go through the education process around joining the global B Corp community, because what B Corp stands for really reflects Flo’s values and my values, why we attract kindred spirits to the team, and the agency ethos we have built.

Running an agency is as exhilarating as it is challenging, often at the same time! As leaders it’s important to us to feel really proud of who we are and what we do. Becoming B Corp Certified gives us the validation that our gut instincts and our approach are right – and, importantly, encourages us to keep improving and gives us a globally recognised framework to do that.

How does achieving B Corp certification impact what you do and how you do it?

On an emotional level, becoming certified as a B Corp has put a little more spring in our step. It helps to know we have met that bar. As youngish, diverse female leaders that sense of validation is important, and our team feel pride too.

The B in B Corp stands for ‘benefit’ – in the sense of managing our operations for the benefit of all our stakeholders – our people, clients, the environment and our community.

Joining the B Corp community gives us a frame of reference for the improvements we want to make, and we can’t wait to get out and about to share experiences and ideas and learn from other B Corps.

For example, we’ve always helped our local charities, but B Corp has given greater focus to where we put our energies. So, we’ve just teamed up with Sussex Wildlife Trust, and one of our first actions has been to provide pro bono media training to support their spokesperson spread the word about the Sussex Kelp Recovery project. A local charity preserving our marine environment, using our PR skills – it seems a perfect fit.

We’ve always prioritised working with people we like, and funnily enough many of those people seem to be either already part of the community, on their B Corp journey or really interested in hearing about our experience. 

How did you find the application process, and was there anything that surprised you about it? 

Flo and I are really hands on with clients, and well as running the agency, so were keen to find someone who could help us through the application process.

We were introduced to Andy Hawkins who runs Business on Purpose, which helps small businesses to get prepared to apply for B Corp Certification, through a three-month programme of webinars. It’s a cohort model, so you have a group of like-minded business leaders to share your journey with and it was invaluable.

It’s a lot of work to get prepared for the verification, interview process and finally certification. There are hundreds of questions that require evidence, split into five sections, so organisation is really key. You need to have the information and evidence right at your fingertips when the time comes. You may have been fulfilling the requirement for a specific question for many years, but might never have thought to evidence it – that’s usually a simple fix. In other instances, it prompts you to finalise initiatives that you might have been mulling over – it provides that impetus to make those changes now.

And finally, what’s next for you and the team at Midnight?

It feels good to join the B Corp community and we can’t wait to make new connections to help drive continual improvement for Midnight and for our stakeholders.

One of the things Flo and I love the most about running Midnight and being part of the Brighton community is helping people through the connections and partnerships we have.

Over the next year, we want to consolidate the partnerships we’ve put in place and find new specialists that can help us to drive positive change. For example, we’ve collaborated with Mo from Watch This Sp_ce, including running diversity, equity and inclusion training for us and our team, and introduced her to other PR agencies in Sussex and to our clients. 

Alex Hankinson is Joint Managing Director of Midnight – find out more on their website.

Is your business a B Corp? If you’d like to be featured as part of our sustainability series, get in touch with the Chamber team here.

If you’re working in sustainability or towards Net Zero in your business, find out about our Net Zero Champions group – the people working in business in Brighton who come together to share ideas, support and inspiration, on our website. 

If you want to contribute to the Chamber blog, contact us on hannah@brightonchamber.co.uk