• by Larissa Faw , March 9, 2017

International Women's Day may be over, but TBWA\Chiat\Day is extending the movement with the “Her Business is Our Business” initiative to celebrate and promote small, local female-run businesses and entrepreneurs.

The agency's LA and New York offices are each partnering with four small businesses to create assets pro-bono and then will promote the brands for a week using a small media budgets provided by the agency. Each brand will be supported by an all-female team across all departments including account, creative, strategy, planning and production.

"Whilst our social feeds will be promoting these small businesses for the month of March (Women’s History Month), we are aiming to give each client a range of assets that they are free to use beyond this month in any way they see fit," says Kirsten Rutherford, creative director, TBWA Chiat\Day LA, and the driving force behind the initiative.

Each of the selected business owners were recommended by agency staffers, she says. "We also made a decision to stay hyper local and support businesses in our immediate vicinity. Here in Los Angeles, they are within walking distance from the agency."

The Los Angeles location is working with Good Dirt LA (a community pottery studio), Heidi’s Salsa (a brand that has grown from a farmers market stand to being in 1000 stores), G-Loves & Gelometrics (a company specializing in gloves and wrist supports for exercise) and Hotcakes Bakes, a bakery and specialist cake shop.

Meanwhile, the New York office is teaming with Gigi’s Doughnuts (specializing in dairy-free doughnuts), social enterprise start-up SUPERSMITH (a business run in a converted Red Hook warehouse, fully equipped for people to rent for woodworking and general furniture fabrication), athletic apparel company JUJA Active, and LOLA (a company delivering organic feminine care to your door).

"We soon realized it would be more impactful for our reach to happen on both sides of the country, so we were thrilled that the team at TBWA\CHIAT\DAY New York took on the idea with gusto and are doing similar good for female-led businesses in their local New York community," says Rutherford.

As the project has evolved, the agency realized the need for an information source on who these businesses are and the stories behind the women who own them, says Rutherford. "One of the ways to participate in the #DayWithoutAWoman was to only shop at women-owned businesses where we discovered that sites do exist for Small Business Saturday, but it was much tougher to find information specifically around female owners and entrepreneurs. I’d personally love to be able to help with that in the future."

This initiative falls under TBWA's broader "Take The Lead" effort that seeks to increase women in leadership roles across the TBWA network by 20% by the year 2020. Launched in 2015, the initiative asks each TBWA office to activate initiatives locally to bring awareness, spark conversations and make concrete strides to support women in their agencies and communities.