Pie Society, for Oxfam

We unveiled a £67million pie ‘The Upper Crust Special’ at unique pop-up pie shop – to show how easy a wealth tax could be.

Creative campaigningPurposeSocial impactStrategic communicationThought-leadership

Context ​

Billionaire wealth jumped by over 16 per cent in 2025, three times faster than the past five-year average, to $18.3 trillion – its highest level in history. That was the headline from Oxfam’s latest report launched on the even of the World Economic Forum in Davos. It’s a serious piece of campaigning thought leadership which Oxfam asked us to support creatively back at home.

Pie Society was our pie shop takeover in East London for Oxfam, demonstrating that implementing a wealth tax is as ‘easy as pie’.

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The work​

While the super-rich gathered in Davos, we unveiled a £67million pie at a unique pop-up pie shop – to show that a 2% wealth tax is as easy as pie.

Taking over traditional pie shop F. Cooke in Hoxton, Pie Society served classic pie and mash dishes, and jellied eels, rebranded and repriced to demonstrate how wealth taxes could work in the UK to ensure the super-rich pay their fair share.  

For the richest of the rich, the price of Oxfam Pie Society’s most expensive pie, ‘The Upper Crust Special’, scaled up to £67million – which is what an average UK billionaire would pay if the country implemented a 2% tax on net assets over £10million. This would be a significant part of the £24billion that could be raised annually in the UK from the implementation of a 2% wealth tax. 

Meanwhile, for the average punter and even garden variety millionaires with net assets below £10million, the ‘People’s Pie & Mash’ was a standard £6. A wealth tax, after all, would only apply to very, very few.  

As well as helping publicise Oxfam’s report, the integrated mini-campaign included social media content and outreach, an influencer roundtable, and moderated debate with Jake Atkinson, Campaigns & Movement Manager at Tax Justice UK and Dalia Gebrial, Political and Social Commentator and Lecturer at Kings College London.

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Wealth inequality in the UK

  • £24 billion

    the amount of money a 2% annual tax on net assets above £10million could raise every year

  • 75%

    of Brits support a 2% wealth tax

  • Every 10 minutes

    a UK billionaire gains enough to cover a year’s worth of weekly shops.

  • £20,000

    the amount the average UK billionaire accumulates in the time it takes to bake a pie

“We live in a world where the tax system disproportionately favours the super-rich, and inequality is truly baked in. There is broad public support for taxing extreme wealth, and now is the time to institute a simple 2% tax on wealth over £10 million. That’s why we’ve created Pie Society – a micro-example to show that, when the political will exists, a wealth tax isn’t complex at all. It’s as easy as pie.”

Rhaea Russell–Cartwright, Director of Racial Justice and Equalities, Oxfam