The rebel alliance: The rise of 'change brands'

With governments around the world struggling to solve some of humanity’s biggest issues, the private sector has responded from the ground up. Jack Cousins explores the rise of ‘change brands’.

Forced labour, deforestation, homelessness, plastic pollution, food waste, fast fashion. The world isn’t short of problems, but the market has responded: over the past few years, a new category of brand has come to the fore, designed with the explicit intention of addressing the biggest issues facing humanity head-on.

Known as ‘change brands,’ these companies can vastly differ in terms of the niche problems they look to solve, but what unites them is their challenger brand mindset, driven by a desire to disrupt the landscape created by legacy brands. However, these tenacious underdogs go a step further: not only do they want to take control of market share, they also want to make the world a better place. When you consider the stature of established competitors these brands butt up against – from The Coca-Cola Company to Kimberly-Clark – and the enormity of the issues they tackle, their ambition is undeniable.

Chris Baker, a British advertising and social change strategist, is their biggest proponent. With his new book, Obsolete: How Change Brands are Changing the World, he is aiming to raise awareness of what change brands are and how they can be created.

“The simplest way to describe a change brand is as an improvement on the status quo in a category,” Baker says. “If the norm is that everything is packaged in plastic and this new brand is not, then it's a change brand because it’s a clear improvement.” He suggests change brands generally fall into three categories: sustainability, health and social impact.

While Baker has helped popularise the term ‘change brands,’ he is quick to point out that businesses keeping an eye on the welfare of society is not actually a new phenomenon. Cadbury’s development of Bournville as a model village in 19th-century England ensured employees could live in dignity, while Milton Hershey’s decision to donate most of his fortune as company stock to The Milton Hershey School has helped provide education for thousands of orphaned children over the past 115 years in the US. Baker blames a general movement towards shareholder primacy as the reason for the demise of these public-spirited initiatives.

But unlike Cadbury and The Hershey Company, what makes these contemporary, socially aware brands seemingly unique is that their cause is baked into the company’s very foundations, rather than added on once the success arrives. In other words, they believe putting the issues front and centre can actually provide a competitive advantage that the big players will struggle to respond to. Another interesting development is their willingness to cosy up to – and partner with – large corporations, so long as they adhere to the change brand’s founding principles.

How to make a difference

Baker has experienced this first-hand by helping create two change brands from scratch. The first of which, Change Please, was founded ten years ago after watching interactions between the homeless and people buying coffee in Covent Garden, London. “They would pretend they've got no money, cross the street and buy a coffee and muffin,” Baker recalls. “I thought, ‘Hang on, there's something not quite right about this. What if we could use that money to make a difference?’”

After discovering it’s not too difficult to train people to become baristas, he helped Change Please CEO and founder Cemal Ezel set up a single coffee cart in Covent Garden. The Change Please training academy was subsequently opened with the aim of helping the homeless turn their lives around. The company has since formed corporate partnerships with huge brands including WeWork, David Lloyd Gyms and Virgin Atlantic, which all now sell Change Please coffee. Its annual report for 2024-25 claims Change Please has supported over 3,000 people through its various programmes.

Not content with just helping the homeless, Baker co-founded Serious Tissues in 2020 to help combat deforestation. With Change Please selling coffee to corporations that were buying un-eco-friendly toilet paper in massive volume, creating a new initiative that could sell them plastic free and 100% recycled toilet paper – while also using profits to plant trees and restore forests – made sense.

The brand, whose packaging dons an eye-catching green and white palette and bold typography that complements its ‘Serious’ name, has since ventured into selling facial tissues, kitchen roll and laundry detergent sheets. Corporate partnerships with the likes of CBRE, Jones Lang LaSalle, SAP and Zurich Insurance Group have resulted in well over a million trees being planted globally since its inception.

You might wonder where brand purpose comes into the mix, given most legacy brands have vocally adopted an ESG framework of some description over the past 15 years. To Baker, it’s not always smoke and mirrors when large corporations have a go at making a positive social difference, and he points to Dove’s Self-Esteem Project and Unilever’s Lifebuoy campaign as examples of behemoths using their vast wealth to make a real, tangible impact.

Indeed, it is precisely that – the impact – which differentiates the likes of Dove and Unilever from corporations that have a purported purpose but fail to follow through. McDonald’s, for instance, found itself embarrassed in 2019 after it was discovered its "eco-friendly" paper straws couldn’t be recycled, which then led to accusations of greenwashing. Simply put, “Impact is when it's tangible, purpose is when it's just words,” says Baker.

With many legacy brands having a questionable streak when it comes to tackling social issues, and given most change brands are still in their infancy, it might be reasonable to ask why the responsibility doesn’t fall on governments to solve all these problems. Baker argues the slow and divisive nature of politics makes meaningful change – in the here and now – very tricky.

“While you vote once every four or five years, you spend money every single day, multiple times,” he says. “I find the language around post-capitalism and the de-growth agenda very logical, but it’s hard to see that coming into force in any meaningful sense in the next few years. Conversely, the market is such a powerful tool as it can make instant change.”

The tale of Tony’s

One instance of the market beating nation states to bring about real change comes in the form of Tony’s Chocolonely, a Dutch chocolate manufacturer founded by journalist Teun van de Keuken. Following a media outcry in 2001 surrounding abusive child labour practices in the production of cocoa in West Africa, the Harkin–Engel Protocol was generated as a voluntary agreement between stakeholders that aimed to eliminate the worst forms of child labour in the production process.

However, its impact was limited as of 2005, with ‘Big Chocolate’ struggling – and possibly unincentivised – to bring about real change. Van de Keuken, frustrated with the lack of progress, created his own milk chocolate bars in protest. Standing out from the sea of blue competitors, its bright red wrapper signalled the fact that Tony’s offered consumers something completely different. The first batch of 5,000 Fairtrade-certified chocolate bars sold out almost instantaneously, leading to the creation of perhaps the most archetypal change brand that exists.

A year later, Tony’s altered its bars so that the chocolate itself was unequally divided, symbolising the plight of African farmers. Alongside the unusual brand name, bold colours and quirky typography, this addition led to Tony’s bars becoming a highly distinctive brand asset.

Its UK and Ireland managing director, Ben Greensmith, believes that the packaging’s evocative nature helps bridge the marketing budget gap between the company and its far wealthier competitors. However, he also says the overall message has to be slightly tempered to draw people in.

“We go lighter on-shelf because [child labour] can be a bit of a turn off for people, but once you open the wrapper it tells our story,” he explains. “It probably is our biggest marketing tool; it tastes delicious, is sourced fairly and describes the unequal nature of the cocoa industry. There's even a little map of West Africa in the bottom left of the bar, which is a nod to the farmers.”

While the marketing budget might not be enormous, Tony’s has demonstrated a knack for cutting through the noise with its various campaigns. In 2021, the company produced lookalike bars that mimicked the packaging of famous chocolate brands that Tony’s believes to benefit from the illegal use of child labour. The Sweet Solution campaign may have led to a positive response from the public, but it also resulted in Tony’s being sued by Mondelez for using purple packaging that too closely resembled its Milka brand. In classic Tony’s fashion, it then changed the packaging to grey, while marketing assets depicting the bar informed consumers it was “not purple.”

Smart ploys like this further differentiate Tony’s from its highly corporate competitors and perfectly illustrate the power of rooting a social cause at the heart of a brand. Its strong communication has led to more sales (Tony’s recorded a 33% net revenue increase in its latest ‘annual FAIR report’). Those extra sales have resulted in a larger market share, therefore aiding the brand’s mission of eradicating child and other illegal labour from the chocolate industry. Greensmith adds, “When I started at Tony's seven years ago, we accounted for about 0.1% of all the cocoa that's coming out of West Africa. We now account for about 1.5%.”

Transparency is key

While it’s abundantly clear change brands’ socially conscious business model provides a competitive advantage, it can also lead to intense criticism when they get things wrong. In 2021, an article in The Times revealed Tony’s had been dropped from a list of ethical chocolate makers because of its links with Barry Callebaut, whose supply chain wasn’t free of child labour and slavery. Tony’s responded with an article on its website, arguing its collaboration with the chocolate producer enables its mission on a global scale.

Other change brands have been tripped up by the sky-high standards they set for themselves. In 2015, Migrant Justice activists protested outside Ben & Jerry’s stores and Vermont headquarters. Despite being a company that advocates for immigrant rights, the protestors cited poor working conditions for immigrant farm workers in its supply chain.

In October 2025, anti-plastic water company Liquid Death found itself in a tense spat on X with American political commentator Tim Pool. After Pool questioned the veracity of its marketing claims – specifically whether the company truly advocates for ‘Death to Plastic’ – Liquid Death bit back. Its founder and CEO, Mike Cessario, offered to debate him publicly. What followed was an extremely robust and technically precise 70-minute debate where Pool argued that the fact its aluminium cans are coated in a small amount of plastic means its overall eco-friendly message is deceptive.  

“Liquid Death is still a small brand; we’re not Coke, we’re not Pepsi, but we’re on the start to at least having people think about alternatives to plastic bottles,” Cessario rebutted. Concessions were made on either side and, despite the video being published on Pool’s YouTube page, viewers praised Cessario for engaging with the criticism.

For Greensmith, the only real solution in moments like these is complete transparency. He says, “When you put yourself out there as an ethical company, I think people hold you to higher standards – and rightly so. At Tony’s, we publish everything in our ‘annual FAIR report’ – the good and the bad – not because we have to, but because we think it's the right thing to do.”

While addressing criticism is serious business, it can also be done in a fun manner. Take Oatly and its fckoatly.com website, which is described as “A time machine of all things bad about an oat drink company.” The website humorously tracks instances of being sued, censored and boycotted over the years. Each major incident comes with a lengthy article explaining Oatly’s side of the story.

It is oftentimes in their most disastrous moments that change brands show their resilience and creativity.

The future of change brands

A final crucial distinction between change brands and their legacy counterparts is a willingness to help competitors, so long as it aids the cause. For the past six years, Tony’s has helped fellow chocolate makers by collaborating with them to end exploitation in their cocoa supply chains. Tony’s Open Chain offers a practical framework for fair cocoa sourcing practices based on its ‘5 Sourcing Principles.’

But if virtue is the company’s biggest competitive advantage, does this mean Tony’s is allowing itself to be outflanked by legacy competitors? Again, this shows the unique nature of change brands and their commitment to the cause over everything else. In Baker’s book Obsolete, Tony’s CEO Douglas Lamont explained that his primary role is to “grow the impact,” as opposed to the brand itself.

It therefore seems likely many change brands will end up being bought out by the big players in the long run. Unilever’s acquisitions of Ben & Jerry’s in 2000 and natural deodorant brand Wild in 2025 indicate some corporations understand the value of impact to consumers and are prepared to pay big to bring them within their portfolio. Baker muses that this will probably be the fate of Tony’s, too, at some stage. However, he’s optimistic about the outcome of these acquisitions.

He says, “If you take a change brand and add it into a big company, the net positives will generally far outweigh the negatives. After Unilever acquired Wild, they now have the potential to operate in over 100 markets very quickly with a good business model. Their products can be sold closer to the mass market price, which means more people can make those ethical switches.”

Baker says that over 120 companies have now signed up to Change Brands – a website that acts as an informal network for impact-led brands to share knowledge and enter partnerships. This “rebel alliance,” as he describes it, undoubtedly underlines that change brands are on the rise and becoming impossible to ignore.

“Impact is a good strategy to try and tackle all these problems because it gives you a point of differentiation,” Baker concludes. “It taps into something people genuinely care about and creates brand value. I think it's good business to launch companies like this.”

 

This article was taken from Transform magazine Q4, 2025. You can subscribe to the print edition here.