What a responsible marketing agency should be able to show you.
Not a values statement. A list of things we refuse to do, things we refuse to say, and documents you can open — each one traceable to a rule that already runs, or to a claim we have deliberately declined to make.
Two names on every executed change · New builds start paused · Escrow and a written data exit on platform work
Every agency has a page
like this one.
Most of them are worth nothing, and it is worth being specific about why before asking you to read ours.
It is a list of adjectives
Integrity. Transparency. Partnership. Nobody has ever failed one of those, because none of them describe an action anybody could be caught not taking.
The claim and the control are different things
Saying you are careful is a claim. A rule that stops a careless change reaching a live account is a control. Only one of them survives a bad week.
It was written by the people it would constrain
A standard nobody outside the business can check is a standard the business can quietly revise. If breaking it costs nothing, it is decoration.
The certification does the arguing
A badge on a footer is meant to end the conversation. It can be a real signal, but it is not a behaviour, and an agency should still be able to say what it actually does.
It never mentions anything the agency turned down
Every one of these pages is a list of things the business is in favour of. None of them list what it refused, which is the only part that costs money.
So the test for every line below is the same: is there a file, a state in a queue, a contract term or a document behind it? If there is not, it does not belong on this page.
There is a written list of things we will not do.
Six lines, standing, applying to every account we hold including the ones where letting it through would have been easier and nobody would have known. It is published in full on the method page rather than summarised here.
The kind of thing on it
A campaign switched on before the build has been read end to end
A change pushed with one name on it
An ad pointed at a page that does not deliver what the ad promised
A report held back because the period went badly
A refusal is only meaningful when it has cost something. Each of these was written after a specific piece of work was sent back or stopped, and the account that caused it is redacted out of the rule — because the lesson travels between clients and the record of what happened does not.
Read the Refusal ListStanding refusals
6
Things none of us may do
On every account, in every market, including the ones nobody is watching
The countersign
2
Names on every executed change
A second specialist has to be argued into it before anything moves
Platform engagements
30
Day data exit, agreed before the build
Source-code escrow lodged from sprint one rather than at go-live
Each of these describes a control that runs today, not a target. The thirty-day exit and the escrow term are the ones carried on the Victorian council finance platform engagement.
Six things happen before a change is allowed to touch your account.
This is the part that makes the rest of the page checkable. Every step produces an artefact you can ask for, which is the difference between a standard and a sentiment.
A change is a file, not a conversation
Whoever proposes it writes it down: what would change, on which account, and why. That is the artefact the rest of this depends on, because you cannot review a suggestion somebody made on a call.
It waits in a queue with a state
Pending, then approved, then pushed. A change sitting in that queue has not happened, and a change that has happened cannot be described later as something else. The queue for your account is yours to ask for, pending items included.
A second specialist has to be convinced
Not a rubber stamp — an argument with the person who wrote it. Sometimes that takes a minute and sometimes it sends the whole idea back. The point is that nothing reaches a live account with one name on it.
New builds start switched off
We build new campaigns paused so your account lead can read the whole thing end to end before a dollar moves. Launching live and fixing afterwards is faster right up until the day it is not.
An automated guard catches what people miss
Some rules are worth more as code than as good intentions. Our publishing system refuses to push an ad when the page behind it does not match what the ad says, because that mistake was made once and none of us wanted to rely on remembering.
The executed change becomes a record
What was sent, when, by whom and why. It is why the honest answer to “what changed three months ago” is a dated list rather than a story, and why we can hand that list to you rather than reconstruct it.
The claims we have decided not to make.
A certification mark says an outside body inspected a business and licensed it to say so. Wearing one that has not been granted — or wearing a real one at a tier that has not been granted — is a false representation about approval or affiliation, and the exposure is regulatory rather than aesthetic. So the list below is a gate, not modesty.
We are not a certified B Corporation
We have not been through that assessment, so we do not use the term, do not display the mark, and do not gesture at it with lookalike wording. If it is ever earned, the evidence goes on file before the badge goes on the site.
Partner, never Premier
The one third-party programme we hold is Google Partner, agency ID 2794147994, which anybody can check in Google's own directory. A profile on a third-party agency listing still shows a higher tier. That is a field we filled in ourselves, it is not a tier that has been granted, and it does not change what this site says.
A badge is a real file or it is nothing
Certification marks are never hand-drawn, traced, recoloured or approximated to fit our palette. If the artwork is not the licensed artwork, the badge does not ship — a missing badge is honest and an approximated one is not.
No star rating we wrote ourselves
There is no self-authored review score in our structured data and no aggregate rating anywhere on this site. A rating has to have a live, visible source a reader can go and read, and ours would not.
No number we cannot show you the source of
Every figure in a case study is a figure from that account. We do not round it up, blend two accounts into one, restate it in a friendlier unit, or publish a result with no engagement behind it.
No promised result, ever
Not a lead volume, not a position, not a cost per enquiry, not a date by which any of those arrive. Published results describe what happened on one account over a stated length of time. They are not a forecast for yours, and we will say that out loud in the meeting as well as in the footnote.
The same rule works in the other direction. The moment evidence arrives, one field changes and the badge ships — the instant it is true, and not one day before.
Your data, and how you
take it with you.
An agency that is hard to leave has a commercial reason to stop improving. These are the terms that make leaving possible, written down before the work starts rather than negotiated from a weak position afterwards.
What we learn carries. What is yours does not.
A rule, a guard, a phrasing a platform rejects — those travel between accounts, which is why a new client starts with what earlier ones already paid for. Your spend, your enquiries, your bids, your creative and your name stop at your account.
We do not run both sides of a market
No two directly-competing accounts in the same service area. This is the one boundary that cannot be audited after the fact, so it is a decision made before signing rather than a control run afterwards.
Leaving is a project with a date on it
On platform work the exit is written in before the build starts: source-code escrow lodged from sprint one rather than at go-live, and a data exit with a defined notice period and a defined export format. Thirty days on the Victorian council finance platform.
Where it lives is specified, not assumed
Sovereign Australian hosting, sole-tenant so your identity store and database are not shared, customer-controlled key management, encryption in transit and at rest, and immutable audit logging. Written into scope rather than described in a sales meeting.
The measurement window is a length, not a date
Published results state how long a period ran rather than which one it was. A competitor should not be able to read a client's trading calendar off our website, and the length is the part that makes the number meaningful anyway.
The rest of it is already published.
Nothing on this page is only on this page. Each of these is a live document on this site, and each one predates anybody asking us about it.
- PrivacyWhat we collect, why, how long it is kept, and how to ask for it back. Written to be read rather than to be survived.
- Modern slavery statementOur position on labour in the supply chain behind a marketing engagement, published rather than assumed.
- How we run an accountThe six stages every change passes through, the refusal list in full, and the data boundary in both directions.
- Accessibility, specified in the contractWCAG 2.2 AA is the floor we build web work to, and on platform engagements it is a contract term rather than an aspiration.
The questions this raises
Including the one about the badge.
The standard, answered.
Certifications, sign-off, who owns the account, whether we would take your competitor, and what happens when a period goes badly.
The first call is free and there is no deck.
Book a free strategy callWhere this standard actually gets tested.
A standard is easy to publish and harder to hold. These are the pages where the same terms are stated against real work rather than in the abstract.
- SoudCoh CompoundThe full method this page summarises — six stages, the refusal list, the team, and what carries between accounts.
- Enterprise and governmentWhere these terms get tested hardest: requirement schedules, procurement, sovereign delivery and independent review.
- Working across five marketsThe same standard in Australia, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and New Zealand.
- Custom platforms and web appsOwnership, escrow, hosting and exit in detail, because a platform is the engagement with the most to lose.
- The published resultsEvery write-up carries the account it came from and the length of the period it covers.
- What working with us looks likeScope, cadence, who you deal with, and what we ask for in return. The commercial half of this page.
Hold us to it
Ask for the queue on your account, ask which rules are running on it, or ask us to put the exit terms in front of you before anything is signed. All three are reasonable and none of them need a reason.
No pitch deck. No badge we have not earned. A real conversation.