About Us
You want to build a brand with integrity.
You want more than just another ethical marketing agency. Because you don’t view sustainable development as separate from your financial success.
Instead, you take an integrated perspective. Economic success is your driving force behind fostering sustainable sensibility, human solidarity and a high quality of life for everyone.
We’re with you on that.
Our work is steeped in your business strategy. We’re your companions as you create much-needed cultural change. And our creative copywriting & design produces measurable results.
Copy Lead German, On
Holistic, accessible, inclusive
The know-how for excellent marketing translations. An eye for keeping the entire user journey consistent. Accessibility and inclusion at the heart of all work. Plus, you’ll learn absolutely loads while working together.
If that’s the kind of agency you’re looking for, I recommend From Scratch Communications. Period.
Katinka Oppeck
Copy Lead German, On
Like an ethical marketing agency. Unlike any ethical marketing agency.
We don’t treat privacy as an afterthought, and the GDPR isn’t just a nuisance to us.
People have a right to their personal data, so we must allow them to make informed choices about sharing it with others.
We always recommend practices that help you achieve the same (or better) outcomes while minimising data collection.
For example, we’ll help you move to our privacy-friendly website analytics tool Plausible and suggest better web design practices.
While we’re not lawyers, we are sensitive to the risks of data collection. You can count on us to never knowingly recommend or support practices that damage people’s right to privacy.
Sabine and Holger are Board members at The Ethical Move – the association for ethical sales and marketing.
The ethical marketing pledge lays the foundation for our work, and we encourage clients to adopt it too.
We put the person before the sale.
We respect you and your privacy. We will help you make the best choice for your needs.
We communicate inclusively, truthfully, and clearly.
We will not confuse you or hide information from you. We will help all audiences feel welcome.
We take responsibility for our part in changing the marketplace.
We recognise the need to break the cycle of consumerism. We will continuously review our sales and marketing to ensure they benefit the common good.
We count on you to hold us accountable. Please connect with us if you see us not honouring our pledge.
A few years ago, we wrote a LinkedIn article about why we de-Googled our business almost completely.
We don’t want to spend money with big tech companies that produce censored search products for the Chinese market, or support climate change denying lobby groups – and Google unfortunately do.
In choosing software, we prefer companies with a great privacy track record and whose servers run on green energy, ideally in the European Union.
Here are a few alternatives that work great for us:
- Our website hosting is provided by the British company Krystal (we’ve got a discount code for you if you like). Servers are powered by the sun, the wind and the sea and ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certified. Krystal is a B-Corp and a member of 1% For The Planet.
- Our emails are hosted by Fastmail, who take a privacy-first approach (affiliate link).
Write down to the details.
You won’t catch us with our hands in the cookie jar.
We only use first-party cookies that are strictly necessary for the site to function. See our cookie notice for more details.
According to Digital Beacon, our previous home page emitted 462.87g of CO2e per month.
This is equivalent to driving 531 metres in a Tesla Model S or watching 1 hour of Netflix (in HD).
As of November 2023, we’ve got a new website designed to emit less. But we haven’t collected the data yet. So check back soon.
In 2023, we donated 2.28% of all our revenue to projects that contribute to the SDGs – and contributed pro bono services to the value of €6,510 to initiatives and individuals driving culture change.
Direction over perfection
From Scratch vision and values
Since the late 19th century, marketing has been the source of stories, beliefs and behaviours that cause overconsumption, health problems and the destruction of the environment.
We believe that it’s time for marketing to be a force for good – creating stories, beliefs and habits that promote sustainable sensibility, human solidarity and a high quality of life for everyone.
We’re here to accelerate this culture change towards a regenerative economy. Where profit is seen as a source of social and environmental impact — not an end in itself.
This culture change takes time, and it takes all of us. Travelling in the right direction together is more important than chasing elusive perfection.
Learning is winning
We enjoy research and writing because they‘re serious play. This doesn‘t mean we reinvent the wheel with every job or project.
Thinking over doing
In a world of blueprints and 5-step plans to success, we produce new ideas and aha moments.
Signal vs noise
Unless it’s art, we don’t create for creation’s sake. We live in a world of instant access to information. For many people, choosing what content to engage with has become a major source of overwhelm.
Content we produce needs to stand out in the noise.
To achieve a good signal-to-noise ratio, we always create based on solid strategy. We value original perspectives and thoughts over pure information sharing. If in doubt, we’d rather curate and comment than duplicate content.
Making money and making change: A new balance
From Scratch was founded in 2017 with a mission to build the most sustainable copywriting agency on Earth.
On our journey, we discovered that our true potential reaches far beyond such an egocentric goal.
Colleagues, competitors and clients tell us that this part of our website has inspired them to transform their own practices. We hope you’ve found some new ideas here as well.
