As a design studio that thrives on our culture and our commitment to people and the planet, it’s important that all of our staff believe in why we exist and what we represent. Over the last 18 months, we've worked hard to refine and outline our collective principles, policies, and goals.

To summarise our commitment, we created the ORCA manifesto. To ensure each individual team member's beliefs and values were reflected in this manifesto, we had countless team discussions and debates to refine it down to 6 core commitments.

The following six points are what we as a team embody each and every day, and what we strive to uphold as an organisation. However, we also understand that our manifesto needs to be fluid; it will change and evolve as time moves on, as new team members arrive and as our values become more defined – or in fact, we feel we need to focus on bettering different aspects of our commitment.

Our overarching business objective and commitment. Empowering brands to be better has always been at the forefront of what we want to achieve. This involves giving our clients the tools and resources they need to improve and grow. We want to empower brands to be better commercially, environmentally and socially – using our knowledge and skill sets to improve every aspect of a brand’s image and to enable it to be better in every way. Your brand needs to evolve, it needs to stay current, and above all, it needs to uphold its promise and its values. To do this, it needs to be open to positive change. Whether that’s improving your customer experience or refining your environmental commitment, you have a responsibility to be the best version of yourself for your customers.

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We’re not going to push boundaries if we’re not willing to step out of our comfort zone and to try new things. This relates to every aspect of our business, from strategy and design, to animation and web development, even marketing and client management. Our ability to push boundaries is what sets us apart from most brand agencies and what will ensure that you stay ahead of the competition. This mentality starts at the very beginning of a project  - within the initial research and discovery phase - and carries right through to the brand production and launch phase. By building a detailed understanding of a brand’s challenges, audience and market, we can establish very early on what makes it distinctive. We’ll discover new trends and techniques to utilise, and find new ways to aid progression. We want to challenge every aspect of our business and our process and be the best we can be for everyone involved! We want to confront convention and challenge the status quo. Remember, this doesn’t mean taking unnecessary risks. This means taking calculated risks.

Creating what you want to exist means having the ability to bring your ideas and visions into reality. This involves using your imaginations to come up with new concepts and designs, and then using various tools and techniques to bring these ideas to life, often for or in support of a very worthy cause. We’re creative souls and this is what gets us up in the morning. If something we love doesn’t yet exist, we think it should.This isn’t just limited to design either, it can also be applied to development, animation, photography, you name it.

This goes for any workplace. How can you produce your best ideas if you don’t feel valued at work or have access to the support you need? Agencies are only as good as their people, and we want to champion our people! They’re bloody great. Together we want to continue to challenge perceptions and create brands that really stand out and make a difference. To do this, we need happy, fulfilled people. That’s one reason why we have invested so much time, money and energy into our benefits package, to ensure employee wellbeing is the best it can possibly be and that we continue to attract the best talent.

Everything we do is done with a purpose. We are focused and deliberate in our approach to achieve a specific outcome. This ensures that the things we create are meaningful and effective, and that they serve a useful purpose. We create positive change through creativity; to elevate brands to the next level and to help them grow and flourish. By creating with purpose, we are committing to empowering brands to be better. This in turn influences employee wellbeing and happiness… It’s all coming together nicely! ORCA’s commitment to be a purpose-driven challenger brand agency enables us to positively influence our clients, their stakeholders and their partners, as well as our followers and our community. We believe we hold a huge responsibility in being able to harness creativity to influence opinions and behaviours. In the wrong hands, creativity can be misleading and dangerous – think green washing and fake news. This is why we will always create with purpose and live by our values.

This is at the heart of what we do and overlaps nicely with many of our other commitments. To continuously challenge is first and foremost a mindset. It’s a way of thinking, of behaving and of doing. It ensures we avoid complacency and stagnation, and that we never settle for just ok. To be challenger, to be progressive, to stay ahead of the curve, one has to continuously challenge. This means always asking questions; interrogating the brief; always getting to the route of the WHY?! We want brands to be known for what they are doing differently. We want brands to benefit from their bravery. To do this, we will continuously challenge.

To read more about what we do here at ORCA. Look at our About us page.