Inclusive Marketing is Just Better Marketing - So I Asked Two Dozen of the World’s Best Marketers How To Achieve It

If you work in marketing then diversity & inclusion isn’t some interesting side hustle for a certain team in your company, it’s quite literally your job. Our role as marketers is to better understand the needs of millions of consumers who live lives vastly different to our own, and to shape products, services and advertising which makes those people part with their hard-earned cash.

Increasingly businesses acknowledge the importance of inclusive marketing, and many even develop specific D&I focussed campaigns and partnerships… but what if we could bring that rigour and empathy into everything we do? All too often what’s getting in the way are our established processes, unconscious biases, and the very human challenge that it’s hard to truly place yourselves in someone else’s shoes.

Working with dozens of fantastic marketers in the WFA (World Federation of Advertisers) Diversity Task Force we created a 12-stage guide to the total marketing and advertising process that broke the process down from the first briefs and insights, through ideation and production, right to the media & launch plans. At each stage we flagged some of the key questions to ask to ensure an inclusive mindset - one which opens you up for better capitalising on a wide range of business opportunities.

Important as it is to ask tough questions, it occurred to me that it might be helpful to find a few answers too. Certain that I wouldn’t have them all, I embarked on more than two dozen interviews with marketers from brands, agencies, media owners, consultants and even an occasional marketing professor. Without getting carried away with wonderful ideas about purpose, and staying true to proven marketing science, what is the opportunity that exists to make our marketing more inclusive?

They didn’t disappoint, and so I wrote a book full of their answers. It’s out this October and you can pre-order it on Amazon UK, Amazon US or through the publishers Kogan Page.

Inclusive Marketing: Why Representation Matters to Your Customers and Your Business unpacks the personal, societal, and business case for inclusive marketing and then guides you step by step on how you can deliver it. Whether you’re a small cog in that whole process or a one-person band tasked with running the whole thing I hope there are some practical take outs, and perhaps some eye-opening stories of humanity.

The book's foreword is written by Nicola Mendelsohn who wonderfully sets the tone for a book about seeing people for who they truly are and the wonderful uniqueness we all bring to the table. I chatted to my fellow WFA Ambassador and now leading global diversity consultant Belinda Smith (The Second Arrow) about the importance of thinking holistically about the whole marketing process, of her own experiences working in the industry, and on the things, we still need to do to make our companies themselves more inclusive.

Camellia Cristache-Podgorean researched and wrote a wonderful guest chapter that captures a huge amount of the research and evidence for the power of inclusive marketing, and which I already know is going to be a well-worn set of pages in my own copy as I refer to it for stats and figures.

I was certainly surprised in my interview with Mark Ritson - not that he believed in inclusive thinking and thought that this sort of consumer rigour was at the heart of good marketing, but to learn that he himself had spent months getting stuck in with the San Francisco gay scene as part of his ethnographic research into the ways they were subverting brands.

My own CMO Jessica Spence chatted powerfully about empathy which is absolutely at the heart of inclusive marketing. Crucially we chatted about empathy not as something you either have or don’t have, but as an active skill that you can train and improve if you put the effort in.

I spent a lot of time looking into insights and data because it feels so much can go wrong in our plans and out thinking if we don’t start with the right unbiased data and analysis. Karen Fraser from IPSOS talked me through how they as a hugely established research partner we’re putting huge efforts into creating inclusive and representative samples. We also chatted about the role for real specialists in this area, like Christopher Kenna’s Brand Advance Group who flip their network of diverse media partners to in turn get insight into the attitudes of differing communities.

Not much gets done in marketing without a brief and so I sat down with the wonderful Sarah Jenkins from Saatchi & Saatchi to understand what, from an agency receiving them’s perspective, makes a great brief. We talked across the whole marketing process and the collaboration needed between clients and their partners to deliver on this opportunity, which does need clients to sit up and start asking the right questions.

Kate Williams, who’s been thrown into the deep end of the marketing world by joining as Publicis Groupe’s D&I lead, talked about some of the actions we can all take to make our workplaces more inclusive and open to people from different backgrounds or mindsets. Speaking exactly of which the brilliant Ally Owen not only shared some of her personal experiences coming from a different background into our industry, but also explained how initiatives like her Brixton Finishing School is opening the doors to people who might never have considered it otherwise. Is class one of the last taboos that we still aren’t ready to face into as an industry?

Although it’s easy to put the focus on advertising, there’s often a far bigger opportunity to explore inclusion around our products themselves. Microsoft’s Director of Inclusive Design Christina Mallon shared some of her personal experience of learning to live with a disability and using it as inspiration to push for more inclusive design and product development across a wide range of industries, for the benefit of everyone. To unpack advertising development, we investigated the Unstereotype Alliance’s 3Ps framework and chatted to Andrew Geoghegan about the work he and Grainne Wafer developed, initially around positive gender representation, during their time together at Diageo.?

When it comes to getting different perspectives and consumer testing Asad Dhunna spoke to me about the work of his agency the Unmistakables, and how they worked both to transform internal teams and leverage a network of external cultural experts to help truly steer brands.?

The entire production part of the process, whether advertising creation or product development, is clearly a critical moment when your ideas become a reality and one with many layers, partners, and opportunities both for negative bias and positive opportunity. Reckitt’s Efrain Ayala talked me through some of the work they’ve been doing to measure and improve the production environment, whilst sharing some helpful tips we can all benefit from. I also chatted to Michael Baggs about inclusive post-production, and how we can make our advertising as accessible as possible, including unpacking some of the specific needs that neuro divergent individuals may have.

GSK/Haleon’s CMO Tamara Rogers spoke about the challenge of driving inclusion globally in a business that operates in more than 100 markets, and specifically some of the challenges or opportunities that can come up as you look to localise global content - knowing when it makes sense to push to use it or when it’s worth rethinking.?

The opportunities for inclusion and exclusion certainly aren’t finished when it comes to launching your work - as a media professional this is a personal passion point of my own. This section was co-developed with Isabel Massey who leads global media at Diageo and talks through some of the watch outs that exist in ‘brand safety’ and the hugely positive opportunities to invest in more diverse content and creators.?

Catherine Becker chatted about her own experience having worked at positive female-focussed publication Freeda Media and why it’s so critical for advertisers to support distinctive and inclusive voices with their media dollars. From a different perspective I sat down with Sion Walton-Guest, who together with his husband are the influencer pairing ‘The Globetrotter Guys’ and highlighted the power of working directly with authentic community voices.

Inclusive work often sparks strong reactions, most of them good but sometimes a small majority can rally actively against it. Mondelez’s Benazir Barlet-Batada shared her experience having experienced both sides with a Cadbury Creme Egg advert, as well as what it has felt like as a British Asian navigating the marketing industry. With YouTube the place that so much great creativity lands I spoke to their Head of EMEA Pedro Pina, one of my personal role models, on the power of their platform to tell inclusive stories, and how brands can amplify them further.

Everything in marketing comes down to results and so Zaid Al-Qassab spoke to me about Channel 4’s efforts to drive inclusivity both in their own work and across the whole marketing industry. Crucially TV and entertainment came up throughout conversations as one of the best areas for truly rounded representation, and where advertiser finding can help steer the next generation of inclusive programming - building on the heritage of shows like Queer as Folk which was formative in my own life.

Finally, I tried to capture some wider perspectives of where we are and where we go next with inclusive marketing. Ella Hall positively challenged the industry on how much better and more authentic we can make our inclusion and touched on some of the very real challenges the trans community has faced in recent years. Ali Hanan talked me through some of the work of her consultancy Creative Equals and a perspective on how diversity is converging with other areas of environmental responsibility.?

Countless others also informed the book from their input into the WFA Diversity Council or their specific thoughts that I included along the way: Journalist and deaf campaigner Liam O’Dell, digital entrepreneur Ibrahim Kamara, creative and production expert Anna Brent, healthcare specialist Jane Brearly, and global Mars D&I lead Dale Green who was one of those instrumental in shaping the original WFA framework.

You get the point, right? I spoke to a lot of people because there are a lot of perspectives on this subject - a lot of opportunities for us to accidentally squeeze out diversity & inclusion or for us to positively use it to inform our work and drive to better marketing. Thank you to each and every one of them and the countless others who have supported and encouraged this project amongst my friends, colleagues, and industry connections.

The framework, the interviews and all the insights I learnt along the way are packed into the Inclusive Marketing book which launches this October. I hope you enjoy reading many of these frank and personal conversations as much as I enjoyed having them, and I hope we all get to continue the conversation and exploring this topic together, because #RepresentationMatters?

Pre-order a copy today:

Direct from the Publisher and get 20% off with code KOGANPAGE20:?https://www.koganpage.com/product/inclusive-marketing-9781398607316

From Amazon UK:?https://www.amazon.co.uk/Inclusive-Marketing-Representation-Matters-Customers-ebook/dp/B0B75BGJXW/

From Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Inclusive-Marketing-Representation-Matters-Customers/dp/1398607312/