Our Story
Enso began in 2012, with a belief that business needed to return to a more complete vision of success, one where value is created for everyone, not just shareholders.
The beginning
In 2012, what became the worlds of ‘stakeholder capitalism’, ‘purpose’, ‘social innovation’ were far from mainstream business thinking or practice. But the early ENSO team believed it was the future of business, and we had some experience. Several of us had helped Pepsi create the Pepsi Refresh Project, which took $60M out of Superbowl advertising, and put it into a grassroots community funding initiative. More people voted for projects than either Presidential candidate received in 2008, and this became a Harvard Business School case study. In addition to Pepsi Refresh, our team had worked on Obama’s 2008 election, the Gates Foundation’s fight against polio, Nike basketball campaigns and the world’s largest campaign for the climate. While ‘good business’ was not typical, we believed it was inevitable.
Thank you, Google
Google in 2012 was the most exciting company in the world, innovating rapidly towards a mission of democratizing the world’s information. Based on our team’s background, the brand team at Google said they would be our first client. Thank you, thank you, Google. We had a faster start than we could have dreamed of — working on the future of the internet, telling stories of entrepreneurs around the world, explaining how Google worked, and championing free speech. Soon, we were working for eight different divisions of Google, and almost a one-client firm for years.
Thank you, Sal
When we started ENSO, we had a few dream clients; Khan Academy, the young nonprofit transforming education was high on the list. One day in 2013, a friend told us that Sal Khan was interested in doing Khan Academy’s first brand and marketing work. Winning a competitive process against big agencies throwing everything at it, we dug into the animating force behind Khan Academy. We realized the the most striking thing wasn’t just the incredible innovations, but the spirit of the growth mindset that is the fundamental aspect of Khan Academy and determinant of any learner’s success.
We built #YouCanLearnAnything, not as a brand campaign, but as a growth mindset intervention for the world. Bill Gates, the Department of Education, LeBron James, Google, teachers and parents everywhere got involved, and millions of new learners joined.
Let’s make impact investing a thing
Pierre Omidyar, founder of ebay, wanted to champion a different form of philanthropy, by making grants and investments in impact-oriented businesses. We helped build the Omidyar Network brand, and more than that, the idea of ‘impact investing’. Some estimates say that today, the impact investing market is over $1 trillion.
Could a food business thrive in food deserts?
A systemic inequality: healthy food options are available in wealthier areas, leaving poorer areas with fast food and heavily processed packaged food. The founders of Everytable wanted to change this, with an innovative business model that charged different prices for the same healthy food, depending on the neighborhood income level. We named it Everytable, as a simple expression of the mission, and created a brand and first store experience. What started as one store is now over 30 stores and 5 million meals per year.
Uber moves the world, but what moves Uber?
In 2018, Uber was both a revolutionary product, and a scandal-plagued company. Users were being turned off, and talented engineers wanted to work somewhere else. We got talking to Uber’s product team about how to create a more positive future. This couldn’t be a new coat of paint, but would need to be and inside-out re-orientation. With the Uber team, we developed a set of design principles that would guide all future innovation, baked them into the development process, then told the world they could hold us to them. “If these principles conflict with a product or design choice, we’ll change course.” — Manik Gupta, Chief Product Officer, Uber.
Could Barbie be loved again rather than reviled?
In 2017, Barbie was not in a good place; seen as representing an antiquated archetype, and Mattel’s sales were falling. But the Barbie team believed she could make a comeback, and did amazing work introducing new skin tones and body types. We helped them find a long-term social impact agenda, and building from some NYU research that identified a critical age in a girls’ confidence, we created The Dream Gap Project. Five years later, this project continues to thrive, the Barbie business is growing again, and Barbie has never been more relevant.
Could the world work better?
Indeed serves 350 million people a month, helping them make critical decisions. But rather than just choosing a job based on job description, pay and location — could we help people find good work? Working with both Indeed’s marketing and product teams, and bringing in Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, we redesigned how employees review their current employer, to measure what’s often overlooked, like whether people feel purpose, satisfaction, belonging or inclusion. This is now the world’s largest dataset on wellbeing at work, and we introduced the Work Wellbeing Score, rating over a 100,000 companies. It’s helped millions of job seekers make better decisions, Oxford’s analysis has shown how it’s predictive of stock market success, and MIT has shown that job seekers choose better jobs because of it.
Action builds hope
People around the world are anxious about the drumbeat of bad news on the climate, and that’s leading to despair and disengagement. What people haven’t seen enough is the plethora of real progress being made, through innovators, community leaders and conservation organizations. For the world’s largest climate event, we built a global campaign, bringing ‘actionists’ from 35 countries into the conversation, surrounding the world’s leaders with the hope and insistence on action that led to a breakthrough deal.
Expand boundaries, everywhere
Over a third of the world’s population still lacks access to the internet, and many more suffer with very low speeds. A prominent space exploration company wanted to launch a wildly ambitious internet service that could bring high speed, low latency connections to almost everyone.
With a scalable, local, authentic story system, we’ve uncovered stories around the world of people expanding boundaries for their learning, careers and communities. A 21st century brand, without any of the baggage of 20th century marketing.