News

It seems like only yesterday that we made the decision to start our own agency, and back then we wouldn’t have believed where Salt is as we turn 5 – transitioning from a start up to an established agency. This year has certainly thrown some curve balls to challenge us, but we have stayed true to what we believe in and have come out of the other side stronger than ever. We couldn’t be prouder of what we have achieved.

The whole world has changed, and with it we need to continue thinking about Salt’s needs and how we operate. Creating balance is key – a place to work (or not if you prefer), a core and expert team, real life client meetings, and some exciting projects and clients to take us into our sixth year. We can’t wait to see what year six has in store for us!

And in a blink of an eye, Salt is four! The last 12 months really have flown by, which is a strange feeling given the pandemic simultaneously feels like it’s lasted forever. We almost feel grown up now, fully established and excited about where we are, as well as what’s still to come. It’s clearly not been the easiest of years for anyone, but our team and our clients have continued to inspire us and we are incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved in the last 12 months.

This time last year we thought we were heading back towards ‘normal’ life. This year, hopefully, we actually are. While it’s been one of our best years so far in terms of the team, the work and what we have achieved, we are really hoping we can top it next year with a bit more interaction and freedom to spend time with people. We’ve missed that a lot, and we can’t wait to get back to it. Bring it on!

Would you Adam and Eve it Salt is three today! Well I think it’s fair to say that year three was certainly not what we expected… well not what anyone expected really. January feels like a lifetime ago, back in the days when you could work together in real life, have meetings, see people, travel. We miss all those things, especially people. Despite the pandemic we have been able to continue working hard and build the agency whilst remaining true to what we set out to do. We have, like everyone, had to pivot our direction, embrace new challenges and find new ways of working. Coupled with lockdown and home schooling it certainly hasn’t always been easy, but we have certainly achieved a great deal that we are proud of.

We are lucky to be able to say that we still love every minute of what we do, are incredibly proud of our team and what we have achieved together, and thankful for the clients who have put their trust in us. Let’s hope year four doesn’t throw quite as much at us as year three, but whatever it has in store, we’re ready for it!

The last 12 months have been amazing.

When we turned one we reflected on why we started Salt, saying ‘We wanted to feel free to enjoy what we do, put our experience to good use, make a difference, and to simplify and streamline the way we work so we can offer people more.’ We had certainly done some of that in year one, but looking back now on year two, we have done a whole lot more. Our second year has seen us doing even more exciting things, expand our client base, work with a growing team of wonderful associates and partners, travel more than we ever expected, deliver a global campaign and embark on a new EU launch. Aside from that we’ve built escape rooms, life-sized board games, VR experiences, art installations in Lyon’s Museum of Contemporary Art, created a hair salon on a congress booth, turned scientific data into art…and made sure we’ve always had time to enjoy it along the way.

We have continued to meet and be inspired by amazing people, grasp amazing opportunities and get far too carried away with our ideas on many an occasion. We have an excellent team of people we rely on to make Salt a reality, and we thank each and every one of them for helping us to complete our second year as a thriving business, doing work that really matters. Our clients have given us feedback that has made us blush and even cry (in a good way!), and we have seen the impact of some of our work out in the real world. That’s really what we want to achieve – creating positive change in people’s lives.

Please can we have more years like this one? We have honestly loved every minute.

Last summer, over beer, wine and chips, we discussed our passion and drive for change and to do things differently. A few months later Salt was born, and now we are turning one.

Why did we do it? We wanted to feel free to enjoy what we do, put our experience to good use, make a difference, and to simplify and streamline the way we work so we can offer people more. We had a vision of what we wanted it to be, developed that thinking into our name and brand, and started getting more and more excited about what it could become. Then we took the plunge – with no money, no funding, no loans and no clients. We started with nothing. The last 12 months have certainly been a journey and a half, but an amazing one, and we’ve loved every minute of it.

It was hard to get started – everyone told us it would be, and they weren’t wrong. Days and days of relentless hard work and getting very little back. We had no idea if and when things would take off, but we persevered with complete faith in what we were offering. It’s funny to think back to the first time the phone rang and how excited we were! Of course, it was a recruiter keen to jump on the opportunity of a fresh new client to work with…but our second phone call became our first real-life, fee-paying client. And from then on, we haven’t looked back.

Sure, there have been times when we wanted to tear our hair out, but only a couple and always short lived. Much more significant and memorable are all the amazing times; the fun we have every day, the excitement of a new opportunity, the process of coming up with new ideas, being bold and not afraid of taking a brief to weird and wonderful places, and the difference we can make to the challenge at hand. Over the last 12 months we have been constantly amazed by people’s generosity with their time, expertise and skills, and also with how much it is possible to achieve when you work with constraints, stay true to yourselves and love what you do. We had no idea where it was going to take us, and we still don’t. But if the last 12 months are anything to go by, it’s going to be pretty damn exciting.

Nesta’s six months of planning and development culminated last week into their slick ‘The Future of people powered health’ event, which didn’t disappoint. And it wasn’t just down to the inspirational and thought-provoking speakers, although they left the audience with a lot to think about. The day was enriched by multi-sensory feasts provided by innovators in health, with applications in stroke rehabilitation, custom fitted orthoses, and combating isolation, as well as a hauntingly beautiful orchestral composition by the New Note Orchestra as a form of focused addiction rehabilitation. If that wasn’t enough, it was punctuated by intelligent, passionate delegates with many different but relevant points of view; some of whom we were lucky enough to engage and debate with during the afternoon break-out sessions.

If only a solution to achieving a collaborative and supportive people-powered and data-driven health system, in a time of serious financial pressure, were as seamless and well constructed. Or indeed was decided and implemented by the like-minded experts from this event.

Unfortunately, there seems to be so many hurdles to overcome to achieve even a piece of this ideal, that for an individual it can feel overwhelming and paralysing. As a result, people feel powerless to effect any change at all, so do nothing. Hence nothing changes. Some people in the system even feel threatened by change – worried about it rather than embracing it and pushing the boundaries of possibility to create something new, relevant and stronger.

During the course of the day we heard from people who refused to think like that. People who are thick skinned enough to take the knock backs and get back up again to challenge and fight for what they truly believe in, even when hope has disappeared completely from view.

More than that, these driven and passionate innovators, pioneers if you will, understand their area of expertise through experience and listening from within their local community. Only from this well-informed position can we truly hope to understand a person’s needs rather than making assumptions and dictating solutions. We can then work together to find ways to solve the issues at hand.

They are also confident enough to make themselves vulnerable by not trying to make these changes alone in a silo, but by leaning on experts and experiences around them. Sharing their knowledge and collaborating in order to truly change behaviour and outcomes.

But how can we emulate these pockets of truly life changing projects? Should we even try Maybe a one size fits all approach is antiquated and wasteful in today’s society. Is it about understanding the essence of what these amazing teams are trying to achieve and being flexible and open enough to allow other projects to manifest themselves in different ways that best suit the communities that need them? Can we learn from, support and nurture similar innovations and harness the power of many, and make people feel invested in the future of health?

There are many interesting perspectives and proposals put forward surrounding this subject that we took away from the day, but we’d like to share two with you here. The first directly relates to the title of the event. In order to stop people feeling powerless to change, there needs to be a shift. The more balance of power we can have between people and healthcare professionals, the more invested people will be in their future health. Rather than dictating solutions, if these can be reached on a more equal footing there will be a greater understanding of why, strengthening both adherence of treatment for a diagnosis as well as reaching a diagnosis in the first place.

The second is around social prescribing. This is certainly very pertinent given the recent acquittal of the Belgian doctor who wrote his patient a sick note to get them out of a gym contract they couldn’t afford or use.

The restorative powers of social prescribing on well-being and future health can have exponential gains. Having an understanding of people’s lives and acting accordingly can unlock and rehabilitate in ways that drugs and surgery cannot, having a dual effect of relieving financial burden on our health service and time of HCPs, as well as benefiting the people in need of support and our most vulnerable. We should acknowledge the power social interaction can have on a person. Creating opportunities centred around a task or focus to give people’s lives, in many cases, more meaning and something to talk about. This can be taken a step further, in the right cases, by rehabilitating through the power of helping others to instill a sense of purpose and value.

Although everyone wants to ultimately solve the big problem of ‘people powered health’ and making our future health system workable, everyone can and needs to play their part, however small. The more people having meaningful conversations, listening, collaborating and challenging, the better. It’s amazing the ripple effect all this activity can have.

#peoplepoweredhealth #iseeu