What if...we could move from cancel culture to an accountability culture?

Bella Hadid and Cara Delevigne are familiar faces on catwalks. The rapper Megan Thee Stallion, singer Lizzo, plus size male model Steven G, 34 year old breast cancer survivor Cayatanita Leiva less so. However they all featured in the second edition of Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty lingerie show, which was streamed after Superbowl-levels of hype on Amazon Prime video in late 2020. The Bajan singer’s extravaganza was nominated for an Emmy award for outstanding choreography, but its most striking feature is its radical inclusivity. Rihanna’s first show, held during New York Fashion Week, even saw one of the pregnant models go into labour minutes after appearing in the show! The contrast between Savage X Fenty and Victoria’s Secret couldn’t be starker. 

The multi-hyphenate entrepreneur has said “inclusivity has always been a part of our brand. That’s not a ‘right now’ thing. It’s sad that it’s right now for most brands. But that’s always been who I am.” And Rihanna delivers. Her Fenty businesses are not just superficially inclusive: Savage X Fenty sells bras from 32A to 46DDD, and underwear and sleepwear in sizes XS to 3X. Fenty Beauty line famously launched with 40 shades of foundation tones. Fenty Skin offers gender neutral beauty products. This radical (well, for the mainstream beauty industry) inclusivity works, Fenty is now backed by global luxury giant LVMH, and the brands have made Rihanna the wealthiest female musician in the world. 

No Normal

That’s a positive story. Sadly, there are far more negative ones. Pick an industry. Pick a brand. Pick a market. No matter where you are reading this, you have likely read countless shocking stories about workplace discrimination, exclusion, or worse. Long before the Black Lives Matter protests erupted, there were a depressingly steady stream of lawsuits, tone-deaf campaigns and insider leaks exposing the toxic culture at so many organizations. And race is just one issue. Treatment of Women. Older employees. People with disabilities. Exclusion and discrimation are so pervasive that they are seemingly invisible (at least to those who aren’t subject to their damaging effects) until a scandal emerges and they explode like a lanced boil.   

But this makes no sense if you consider the trajectory of the global population. As trend firm Stylus coined, the new normal is No Normal. At TrendWatching, we called this Post-Demographic Consumerism. We are in an era of post-diversity, where traditional demographic markers around race, age, gender and sexuality have lost their prescriptive power. In the US, less than half of children under 15 are white. The economic costs of exclusion are staggering. Citigroup estimated that racial gaps have cost the US economy a mind-blowing $16,000,000,000,000 (that’s $16 trillion) over the last 20 years. McKinsey estimates that closing the gender gap would add $12,000,000,000,000 (that’s trillion, again) to global GDP. Its research has shown how companies with greater gender and ethnic diversity are more likely to financially outperform their peers. 

This doesn’t even touch on the moral case. The epic mega-trend towards purpose-driven business is driven by both employees wanting to work for and customers wanting to buy from organisations that align with their values. And call it late-stage capitalist indulgence or an aversion to cognitive dissonance, but we live in a transparent world where it is harder and harder for people to ignore these issues. 

Can an Equality Index Score create a culture of accountability? 

Lindsay Peoples Wagner, editor in chief of Teen Vogue, and publicist Sandrine Charles are working to change this with their Black in Fashion Council. The pair launched the initiative in the summer of 2020 with a mission to secure representation of Black individuals in the fashion and beauty industries, creating “diverse spaces that directly reflect what the world actually looks like at large.” 

The initiative unsurprisingly quickly attracted a list of over 70 companies such as Condé Nast, Farfetch, TheRealReal, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Universal Standard, L’Oréal, and Glossier. So far, so standard: scandal erupts, brands rush to ‘do something’. Social media posts are made. Manifestos are signed. Lip service is paid. What makes this initiative especially compelling is that the BIFC requires organizations to sign up to a three year commitment that involves sharing data on employee representation. The resulting Equality Index Score is designed to act as a public progress indicator for participating organisations. 

The real challenge for the BIFC will be keeping its members engaged for three years and beyond. Peoples Wagner and Charles are right to be call out the industry’s weak commitment to change. After the widespread protests in response to the killing of George Floyd and focus on wider racial inequalities, beauty brands’ Instagram posts saw a 122% spike in models with dark skin tones, according to Eyecue Insights, an AI-powered social media analytics firm. Within three months however, the number had fallen back to a similar percentage as a year prior. Some brands continued to feature higher percentages of diverse models, but many quickly reverted to their previous, less racially diverse, imagery. 

The call to leverage data as a tool to advance lasting change isn’t unique to the world of fashion and beauty. The tech industry has struggled with a lack of diversity and inclusion for many years, an issue which has become especially acute as now that the largest platforms are serving billions of people, globally. Back in 2015, Intel committed $300 million to workplace diversity efforts. Now, it is looking beyond its own walls, with Barbara Whyte, the company’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer announcing a ‘Global Inclusion Index’ that would enable a coalition of large organizations to publish and track their progress across a number of areas. Similarly in the UK, Czech-born entrepreneur Kate Pljaskovova is building Fair HQ, a data-driven platform that helps companies understand and then improve specific metrics around diversity and inclusion. The concept behind the platform is not dissimilar to the idea behind B Corps: when companies measure metrics, they manage them. 

But let’s not imagine that councils, indexes and business cases will solve these issues overnight. Inequity and injustice, sadly, are deeply systemic in every society. But whichever data you look at, it is increasingly clear that to win at scale in the Future Normal organizations will have to be reflective of the societies in which they operate. Diversity improves resilience. It attracts talent. It unlocks opportunities. Transparency is not going away, indeed your internal culture will only become more visible and therefore more important. Are you ready? 

What if…

?? Your internal data showed systemic biases or exclusions? Knowing the gaps that exist within your organization is the first step to being able to correct them. 

?? You were brave enough to publish this data? We live in the Age of Transparency. People can –– and want to –– know everything. And if you don’t publish it, it will likely leak, anyway. 

?? You collaborated with your competitors to drive change? Sadly, most organizations’ data is too damning to comfortably publish. If being a solo pioneer is too painful, then publishing together at least means you can share the shame.  

?? You made a multi-year commitment? Progress is what matters here. Are you improving? Are you improving faster than your competitors? Are you driving change, or resisting it? 

Now, over to you! 

This newsletter is our attempt to explore how we might be able to rebuild a better world. 

We'd love your feedback, tips and insights. Are we finally on the cusp of seeing real, meaningful, lasting change when it comes to diversity and inclusion? Or is this just another example of purpose-washing where companies offer superficial responses, trot out a few short-term initiatives, update their website to feature their handful of ‘diverse’ employees before slipping back into business as usual? How can we make sure this doesn’t happen? 

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, or literally join the conversation with us on Clubhouse! 

We’ll be kicking off our first live Future Normal discussion this Thursday, 11 February at 1530 EST, 2030 UK & 2130 CET.

?? Add it to your calendar here

Non-Obvious Diversity Summit

In other news, Rohit recently took on the epic role of hosting ‘the world’s most ambitious conversation about diversity’, curating over 200 speakers having over 50 amazing discussions, taking in everything from culture to media to technology and a whole lot more! 

You can catch up on all the conversations here, including Henry’s session on diversity within the Futures Industry. 

Thanks so much for reading, see you next week. 

Henry & Rohit.