‘People and Planet Before Profit’ Is Either False or Fatal

You’ve seen the post. A founder relaunching his agency, or celebrating ten years of it. New earth tones, obviously. A warm quote card, a headshot, and somewhere in the copy the line that half the industry now recites like a catechism: “People and planet before profit, always.” A handful of likes. A few “Love this” comments from people who will never buy anything from him. Everyone scrolls on.

I’m not going to name the agency, because the agency doesn’t matter. I’ve seen a hundred versions of this post and so have you. What matters is the reflex. This sentence has become the default positioning of a large chunk of the marketing sector, the thing you say when you haven’t worked out what you’re actually for. And it deserves a closer look than it ever gets, because taken seriously it collapses in about four seconds.

So let’s take it seriously. Nobody ever does.

If people and planet genuinely came before profit, always, the business making the claim would be a charity. It isn’t one. It’s a limited company with a payroll, a rent bill and, presumably, an accountant who has never once heard the phrase “people and planet” in a board meeting. Profit pays the people. It also funds the tree-planting scheme in the footer of the email, and keeps the lights on long enough for anyone to hear about your values in the first place. The founder knows this; his accountant certainly knows it; every client who has ever signed one of his invoices knows it. Which means the statement is a pose, and everyone in the room is politely agreeing not to notice.

Here’s the stress test, and it only takes one question. Picture a prospective client, first meeting, leaning across the table: “So, to be clear, you’ll put the planet before my campaign results?”

Neither answer works. Say no, my client’s results come first, and the slogan was false; you’ve just admitted your defining value evaporates the moment money enters the room. Say yes, hold the line, and the client walks. Good luck to them. False or fatal. Pick one. The only reason no agency has ever been caught out by this question is that no client has ever bothered to ask it, because everyone understands the sentence was never meant to be true. It’s wallpaper.

So who is the line actually for? Not clients. Clients buy outcomes; they want leads, sales, market share, and they will hire whoever is most likely to deliver them. The line is for other marketers. The awards jury. The industry dinner where everyone nods along over the fish course. Virtue has become a category entry ticket, the thing you display to prove you belong. And here’s the commercial problem with entry tickets: everyone holds one. When every agency in the sector says “people and planet before profit”, every agency in the sector sounds identical. The pose was supposed to make you stand out. Now everyone sounds the same. You could swap it between a thousand agency websites and nobody, including the agencies, would notice.

You may say: “Fine, it’s a bit hollow, but it’s harmless. Clients like to see it.” Do they? The evidence keeps pointing the other way. The B Corp badge, once the gold standard of values-led positioning, has spent the last couple of years shedding credibility, with founding-era certified brands like Dr. Bronner’s publicly walking away from the scheme. Fashion spent half a decade telling us body positivity was the future, right up until the numbers were counted; Vogue Business’s own size inclusivity reporting has tracked straight-size models dominating the runways season after season. (I have written previously about what happens to brands when the virtue-signalling bill comes due, and it is never the marketing department that pays it.) Does anyone actually buy because of it? Ask Bud Light, which wiped $1.4bn off Anheuser-Busch’s value in two months. Ask Gillette.

Here’s what nobody will put on a quote card:

“Profit. Yours. That is the whole point of hiring us.”

Imagine an agency that said that out loud. No planet, no purpose deck, no earth tones. Just: we exist to make you money, we’re good at it, and you can measure us against that claim every single quarter. While every other agency recites the same script, that one is differentiated in a single sentence. And it’s the only claim a client can actually hold you to. “People and planet before profit” can’t be tested. The moment anyone tries, it falls apart. “We’ll grow your revenue” gets tested every month, in a spreadsheet, in front of witnesses. That’s the difference between a value and decoration.

Say what you’re actually for. Your clients already know. Your accountant already knows. There’s more honour in it, and considerably more margin.