GetUp! co-founder Jeremy Heimans set to launch Sydney office for social change agency ‘Purpose’

Jeremy Heimans (left) – co-founder of Australian movement, GetUp!, and author of New Power – will open a Sydney office of his global social change agency, Purpose.

To be headed up by current European managing director, Simon Goff, Purpose will bring to Australia its expertise in developing and deploying creative campaigns to build and support movements in the fight for an open, just and habitable world.

With six international offices, including in New York, London, New Delhi and Sao Paulo, Purpose uses public mobilisation and storytelling to help leading organisations, activists, businesses and philanthropies to put purpose and participation at their core.

Purpose’s experience includes:

● Campaign strategy, research and polling

● Branding, narrative and visual identity

● Content development and creation

● UX, design and web development

● Partner strategy and engagement

● Campaign execution and capacity building

Past and current collaborations include working with Airbnb, Ikea Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Nike, Oxfam, Google and Unilever.

Since 2015, Purpose has been partnering with The Fred Hollows Foundation to incubate See Now, a creative campaigning initiative designed to mobilise new audiences across the world in the fight to end avoidable blindness. As a key global partner, The Fred Hollows Foundation is one of the reasons Purpose is establishing a Sydney office.

Heimans – who left the board of GetUp! in 2015 and was recently suggested to be the world’s most influential and connected Australian – says Purpose can speak the language of a not-for-profit campaigner, a Facebook product manager, a UN technocrat or a forward-thinking corporate.

Says Heimans: “The power to do good lies in the hands of health workers, climate scientists, educators, social justice activists, responsible businesses and all those working to build an open, equitable and more participatory world, To achieve change, everyone needs to work together.”

Goff (left), who will relocate from London to Sydney, says from concept to execution, Purpose’s methodologies for campaigns and branding are underscored by the new power of being open, participatory, peer-driven, and technology-enabled.

Says Goff: “The challenge for most socially minded campaigns is that they engage the top one percent – the evangelists. By harnessing new channels and a strategic mix of advocacy, public mobilisation, awareness and behaviour change, we engage the powerful 99 percent to bring true change.”

Goff says Purpose will open in Australia with a small core team, collaborating with acclaimed ECD Dejan Rasic and campaigner Chris Cooper.

Says Goff: “Purpose has a highly distributed international team of leading experts on some of the world’s critical issues. We draw on that global experience to deliver all our work and our model is built to provide that networked capability for our partners.”