Black Pound Day Supports Black Owned Businesses with 'The People Behind the Label'

Saturday 3rd October marks the launch of ‘The People Behind the Label’ campaign, a social campaign led by Ogilvy Roots UK.

In line with WPP’s commitment to help combat racial injustice facing Black and minority ethnic talent of colour, Ogilvy Roots has partnered with other WPP Roots networks including GTB, and GroupM to launch ‘The People Behind the Label’, a campaign designed for Black Pound Day to mark Black History Month.

The campaign, which was created pro bono by the agencies, aims to raise visibility of blackpoundday.uk directory where people can discover Black businesses to shop and to also amplify the Black-owned businesses featured in the campaign. For the pro bono effort, the campaign will feature the following five businesses: Afro Pop Socks, 222 Vegan Cuisine, Kay Davis Art , Vitae London and Afrocenchix.

Black Pound Day, founded by Dj Swiss, was established as a solution-based approach to support the growth of the UK Black economy. The idea came as a direct and peaceful response to the systematic racism that creates an inequality for the Black community in the United Kingdom. Black Pound Day, which is an ongoing initiative taking place every first Saturday of the month, encourages consumers to switch their usual shopping destinations to local and online Black-owned businesses. 

Promoting unity and financial growth for the Black community is especially instrumental in establishing a society that thrives across all industries and ethnicities. The campaign aims to encourage people of all backgrounds to promote and support Black-owned businesses and spread knowledge on how this can help the growth of the British economy.

Supporters that buy from Black-owned businesses can upload this receipt directly to the Black Pound Day website so the organisation can calculate a monthly total. In August alone, the Black Pound Day initiative raised £24,031 for Black-owned businesses.   

Founder of Black Pound Day, DJ Swiss commented: “The Black Pound Day team were delighted to be in partnership with Ogilvy Roots. They are a group of dedicated individuals, who were tone conscious and attentive to what we needed. Combining our creative and strategic ideas allowed us to accomplish a campaign we were happy with.” 

Jai Kotecha, head of social and content at Ogilvy UK and Ogilvy Roots executive sponsor, also commented: “Roots partnership with Black Pound Day and working with Black-owned businesses directly to amplify what they have to offer is so important to help support and empower these communities.”  

Ogilvy Roots, a D&I network within Ogilvy UK which champions greater cultural and ethnic diversity in the industry are supporting Black Pound Day with the preliminaries of their Brand Strategy, as well as the Creative assets for their Black History Month Campaign.  

Ashleigh Johnson-Palmer, chair of Ogilvy Roots shared: "Black Pound Day is such an important initiative that we are so proud to have been a part of with our sister WPP Roots networks. Supporting Black-owned businesses and investing in the Black community can help shift the necessary narratives, attitudes and structures to ensure their independence and prosperity. Those are especially important in facilitating the fruitful lives Black people deserve”.   

Rachel Corson, co-founder of Afrocenchix who is featured in the campaign, shared: “The way to correct economic oppression is with economic empowerment, and Black Pound Day does exactly that.”  

The campaign will run online throughout Black History Month with ad spend donated by GroupM.