The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) is the only global organisation representing marketers' common interests.
It champions more effective and sustainable marketing communications, creating a global network of major brands and advertiser associations in 60+ markets and offering unparalleled leadership and expertise to its members. Founded 70 years ago, the WFA has experienced rapid growth in recent years, evolving from a small, impactful team to over 30 employees with global offices in Brussels, London, Canada, and Singapore.
Recognising the need to capture and preserve the success of their unique culture while accommodating their expanding team, the WFA partnered with Bracket to codify their existing culture and articulate their core company values. The aim was to establish a clear cultural framework for future growth and recruitment, and set intentionality around how this is maintained and developed for their future so that they could incorporate these values into all aspects of onboarding, training, and team development.
How the WFA and Bracket worked together
Bracket designed a bespoke programme of workshops and consultancy that complemented the WFA’s global team and their regular team gatherings. The engagement consisted of three workshops, held in Brussels and London, as well as virtually. These sessions aimed to reconnect the global team, foster a culture of idea-sharing around the purpose and values of the WFA mission, and strategise how best to embed this work in the everyday. Between sessions, Bracket ensured the engagement was as iterative and responsive as possible, adapting the work to the needs and current context of the business. Following on from the programme, Bracket was further engaged in formalising the vision, values, and wider mission for internal and external use.
During the workshops Bracket worked to:
- Facilitate discussions across the global team, and generate ideas around the core values that define WFA’s uniqueness.
- Strategically align the management team, refining the company values in line with long-term business direction, goals, and vision.
- Support the team with the tools, structures, and framework to integrate these values within the day-to-day operations of the WFA.
“Working with Bracket was a great experience. The process was inclusive, seamlessly integrating our global team into the programme. As a visioning exercise for the WFA, Bracket created space and structure to explore what our existing values were, our responsibility in upholding best practice across the ad industry, and how to bed down these values.”
CAMILLA HAYES, GLOBAL HEAD OF HUMAN RESOURCES, WFA
Outcomes of the programme:
Refreshed alignment around the WFA’s purpose and mission.
Defined core company values with an understanding of how they translate into daily action.
Supported leadership and the wider team to embed values within regular conversations, meetings, and projects, to ensure visibility.
Collaborative ideas generation for a WFA-wide “Culture Code” product to embed values into practice, and guide onboarding, training, and development for team members.
The programme was designed as a sustainable team building activity that would carry over into their everyday work, and provided an opportunity for the WFA team to further connect and build cohesion during their wider team week.