Anna Öhrling is the co-founder and CEO of Onward, an impact agency guided by sustainability. social impact and storytelling. With a background in advertising, Anna led sustainability strategy at Revolt, working with big brands including Mars, L’Oréal and Danone, before co-founding Onward in 2025.
With a passion for balancing commercial creativity with genuine impact, Anna strives to create work with emotional connection and cultural relevance. As part of our 5 Questions series, I caught up with Anna to discuss building brands with purpose, the value of junior talent, and the strength to be found in embracing change.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever ignored?
A mentor once told me the smartest move was to find a great company and grow within it. Post-2008, the advertising industry was never going to be the same. The risk of going out on your own just wasn’t worth it.
And honestly? He had a point. Add post-Covid, post-AI, post-cost-of-living-crisis, post-all-the-wars to the argument and the case for stability only gets stronger. A great company with great people, growing a stable salary and pension – that’s sound, considered, all-round sensible advice.
I just couldn’t make myself follow it.
What’s the hill you’ll die on when it comes to advertising?
That we have to bring young people into this industry, or it won’t survive.
It’s so tempting right now to just let AI do the things juniors used to do. I get it, it’s cheaper and faster and easier. But the thing is, we’re losing something we can’t get back: the curiosity, the person who hasn’t yet learned what’s ‘not done’. The one who asks the obvious question that everyone else stopped asking years ago because they’d been taught not to. That’s exactly where the industry renews itself, where freshness comes from.
If we stop hiring juniors, we’re letting down a generation, whilst also quietly switching our own lights off too.
What’s the most useful skill nobody teaches creatives?
The business of running a business.
Anyone who wants to grow within an agency, do freelance work, or set up their own thing deserves to learn the basics: client relationships, cash flow, contracts, hiring, new business and margins. Creatives are usually incredibly curious, intelligent people who – in my experience – feel genuinely empowered when they understand how a business actually works. I think it’s high time to bring them into the fold.
How do you make people care about a brand?
Give them something useful that extends beyond your product. Something that makes their day a little bit better. And do it with enough creative spark that they actually notice.
It could be access to something they genuinely need, like Galaxy’s The Unhumble Project, which gives women real training in self-promotion. It could be fighting for policy change on their behalf. Practical advice to make their money stretch further. Even something as simple as helping them navigate a difficult conversation at the dinner table.
In other words, show people you care about them if you want them to care about you.
What would be the name of your autobiography?
Subject to Change.
Every plan, every certainty of “this is where I’m going”, has been subject to change. My life has genuinely been a series of moments where I’ve looked at something I’d built, or chosen, or believed, and thought: actually, no. This isn’t right anymore. And it’s always (eventually) led somewhere better.
I left traditional advertising after years in it to go back and get my MSc in Sustainability and Social Innovation. I ran a consultancy on my own, then co-founded Onward when I realised I wanted partners to do it with. I left the UK, having never got over Brexit, and moved to Amsterdam.
I used to think changing your mind was something to hide. Now I think it’s a sign of strength.
