Why Diversity and Inclusion Matters Now For Modern Marketing. And for us all....

Why Diversity and Inclusion Matters Now For Modern Marketing. And for us all….

Posted June 17, 2021

Did you know that in one global study by IPSOS. 72% of people stated they felt most advertising does not reflect the world around them. Or that globally only 2% of people working in marketing are black?

Astounding isn’t it?

This is why diversity and inclusiveness is vital for a modern marketing agency.

Not just on the moral front. But as companies with more diverse teams make more than 21% more than their competitors.

Which shouldn’t be surprising considering that the same IPSOS survey found that:

– 63% of people in the world said they don’t see themselves represented in marketing and advertising.

– 60% said they didn’t see their community of friends, family and acquaintances represented accurately.

This is a problem and a BIG one for marketing.

Especially as we move to the new world. Where we are all connected by the internet. Giving us instant global marketing opportunities – much of the time.

Diversity and Inclusion in marketing can be an extremely important. And a life-changing aspect of how a brand is perceived. When a brand’s messaging is skewed towards a homogenous demographic. No one will engage with and ultimately purchase from that brand.

In the end marketing is here to create an environment. This environment must attract successful and passionate buyers. And sellers of the products and services that you sell. So… for marketing…

“Diversity and Inclusion is a Business Necessity!”

But we are a long way off. As with the work I have been doing with the MPA – the Manchester Publicity Association. I know there is a long way to go. For the creative, digital, marketing and tech industries to be truly diverse. And representative. Even in multicultural and diverse place like Manchester.

Which is why we launched The Big IDEA to help showcase people from underrepresented groups.

To shift the dial.

And hopefully get the Manchester marketing industry to be able to post better statistics.

Especially those that found in the 2020 Marketing Week Career and Salary Survey that…

88% of the marketing industry was White
4% identifying as mixed race
5% as Asian
And 2% as Black.

However, for the research done by Creative Resource, three years ago in Manchester, 90% of the MPA identified as White.

So our stats at the time were even worse. But why should marketing look to get more diverse. What are the benefits of building a diverse and inclusive organization? They include that :

When you are more diverse and inclusive your business can:

Attract, engage and recruit the people you need to make your business grow.
Boosts your team’s creativity, boosts leadership opportunities & customer focus.
Create a safe working environment for people to be their best.
Make 21% more money – as the more diverse the team is, the more money you make due to increased engagement.
The more engaged your employees are – the happy they are and more productive.

Which is kinda why we built Your FLOCK in the first place. To increase team / employee engagement and productivity.

Which is all very well but…

As a marketing agency?

How do you do as a marketing agency to become more diverse?

This is what the event will discuss. But from experience. One of the main things is to get “buy in” from your bosses (or even yourself).

You have to give the resources and time to change the company. To discover and analysis the company culture map. And see how you can change things.

See how you can even change yourself. So you can become more diverse and inclusive.

This is why this event is so important.

In collaboration with Prolific North. This webinar event will serve as a conclusion to the conversations which have taken place in the series.

Conversations that I was happy to be part of with Rosie MacPhail…

Who started the whole initiative off her own accord fully supported by her team at Better Placed.

Your FLOCK were just a small part of it.

As she had many guests over the year… including me as part of a podcast series ‘Diversity Matters’.

And these guest will be the panel.

As Rosie explains…

“The show’s guests will form a panel, who will share their experiences, what diversity and inclusion means to them, and what it means in their business.The panellists will also discuss the initiatives they have implemented, and challenges they face.”

Rosie MacPhail, who will chair the webinar, says:

“It’s been interesting to gain insight into the perspectives of this often difficult matter, and I wanted to conclude the series with this webinar in order to pool knowledge and share reflections on some actionable moving forward.”

At Your FLOCK , our CIO Dan Sodergren will be speaking. Not only our own marketing at our remote working tech startup. But also how our recruitment practices have built up the diversity of our team.

With more than 50% of our board members being women.

And 30% of our team being people of colour – we buck the trend of the primarily non inclusive technology sector.

We are also hiring.

So if you would like to join our team. Then do drop Dan a line at [email protected] as we are looking for a senior developer to join our team.

Hopefully from an underrepresented group. As #diversityandinclusion is not just a hashtag for us. It is key to Your FLOCK’s mission to make the world of work a better place.

So it would be great to have you onboard. And great to have as many people at this event as possible.

“So come to the event – learn something new.” Dan Sodergren – CIO of Your FLOCK.

Learn something new. And get inspired from a great array of speakers. These are people often from non diverse backgrounds. That are helping shape the future of industry for underrepresented groups. Including…

Ian Lenehan – Recruitment Manager, McCann Worldgroup Manchester

Sarah Latham – Operations Director, Six & Flow

Richard George – Managing Partner, Wavemaker

Rob Shaw – CEO, CreativeRace

Catherine Garrod – Founder, Compelling Culture

And me…

Dan (He / Him) Sodergren– Co-Founder of www.YourFLOCK.co.uk. Hopefully with some rather special news for YourFLOCK.co.uk too.

Sign up it’s totally FREE – thanks to the sponsors and the speakers

If you can’t make it – then… 10 things to think about.

Here are some things we encourage you to start considering – thanks to Tech Nation for these:

If we did an audit of all of your marketing materials, would they practically represent the people you are selling to?
How has your target audience been defined? Is the thinking based on data or assumptions and stereotypes?
Are your marketing materials inclusive, considering elements like accessibility, language and representation? For example, do you add captions to your social media videos along with alternative text (also known as alt descriptions)?
Based on your understanding of your audience. Have any particular groups of people been deliberately excluded?
Do your marketing materials stereotype a particular characteristic or community? Either visually or through the language used?
Are the images used tokenistic? Is there an opportunity to consider new photo libraries, such as Storyblock’s Re:brand?
Is your campaign authentic to your product?
Is your campaign insensitive within the context and timeframe in which you are viewing it?
Could your campaign or content be taken out of context and misconstrued?
Are you communicating openly and transparently about the diversity within your organisation?

And this point is key – this last one …are you communicating about diversity.

Are you hiring with diversity and inclusion in mind?

Are you using tools like Your FLOCK to recruit people based on their values.

Rather than on their ability to know you and your network. Or their name. Or their age. Or god forbid – their sex. You might be surprised how many hiring managers (notice the word) are still old fashioned in their views.

And actually how much bias comes into the process of recruitment in so many different ways. When we are not conscious of it.

Again another reason why we built our people analytics technology. As people that use Your FLOCK to recruit people find they are less likely to not use data in their decisions. They are more likely to built teams that are more diverse and inclusive. Which is what we at Your FLOCK are all about.

And from what we gather so are Better Placed Recruitment too. Sadly, we cannot say the same about the modern world of the marketing agency. Nor recruiters. Not just yet anyway…

Maybe if more companies used Your FLOCK and more people came to these kinds of events. Then things would change more quickly.

Who knows. We can only try. Find our more Your FLOCK and our mission at www.YourFLOCK.co.uk