The case for more colour in content creation

So, the question we need to ask is why brands’ efforts at diversity are not landing.

“We embrace diversity across the board because a more diverse workforce is must for the culture of our agency and is proven to deliver against the bottom line. We have several initiatives in place, a dedicated EDI team and forward-thinking recruitment processes which shape our business…”

These statements are echoed across our industry landscape, but how far have we really come? Diversity in our industry is a topic too vast and layered to do justice in 700 words but we can start by asking a simple question:

Is there enough colour in content creation?

The diversity of colour and cultures represented in marketing output has vastly increased over the past 10 years, particularly post George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, but the effectiveness of this representation is questionable. While 71% of the UK believe that Black people are well represented in advertising, the number drops to 56% when surveying those who identify as Black. The trend is even more stark in the South Asian community, with only 29% feeling well represented vs the 53% of UK respondents. So, the question we need to ask is why brands’ efforts at diversity are not landing.

The reality is that nowhere near enough people of colour are being employed to tell stories about…people of colour. Only 11% of roles in the UK creative industry are held by non-white staff, and those 11% are heavily weighted away from the actual creative roles or senior positions and more towards commercial roles and less senior positions. So, in essence, they have less influence on real creative decision making.

Why aren’t the stories being conceived by people who have actually lived these scenarios?

Leaning into lived experiences

When a Brand Director wants to market the latest ‘home-counties living’ product to their well-defined ‘white home-counties’ audience they don’t lean into the lived experiences of the Chinese community to inform their content marketing strategy. Why would they, it would have little relevance. So, when a retail client portrays a Caribbean family Christmas day, or a mobile phone network crafts a series of humorous blogs about the travails of a wide-eyed Indian girl embarking on freshers’ week, why aren’t the stories being conceived by people who have actually lived these scenarios?

We’ve all seen countless examples of the disastrous marketing campaign that launches without anyone having ‘read the room’. We tut, shake our heads, and wonder how it wasn’t picked up when the answer is obvious. You can’t know what you don’t know, you can’t be who you’ve never been, and you can’t authentically tell a story about something you’ve never witnessed. Well, that’s not entirely true, you could if you spent a huge amount of time immersing yourself in that world. But wouldn’t be easier to ask someone who’s actually from that world to tell the story?

The Premier League today is a beautiful and authentic melting pot of culturally diverse protagonists entertaining audiences across the globe.

Learning from other industries

There are lessons to be learned from other industries, for whom the impact of different colours and cultures has been profound. English football in the 70s and 80s was a majority white, insular game, unrecognisable with today’s global entertainment industry. When the Premier League launched in 1992 to a brand-new wave of fans with an increasing appetite for more continental styles to contrast with the traditional English game, homegrown players and managers didn’t suddenly develop skills outside their sphere of knowledge. It was an influx of foreign ‘storytellers’ which drove dramatic change.

The Premier League today is a beautiful and authentic melting pot of culturally diverse protagonists entertaining audiences across the globe, which would have been impossible without a change in the make-up of the people producing the ‘product’.

We must make our industry accessible, relevant, and attractive to a new generation of outstandingly creative young people of colour.

Making our industry accessible, and attractive

So how do we deliver real change in our industry? Well, if we refer to our tongue in cheek opening paragraph, at least there is an understanding that things must change. A virtue signaller is still one step ahead of a ‘traditionalist’, but we must strive for more. Changes to agency traditions which alienate culturally diverse staff is a start. Creating an environment for people of colour to thrive, move up the ranks and become role models is another. But most importantly we must make our industry accessible, relevant, and attractive to a new generation of outstandingly creative young people of colour.

The images and voices projected into our daily lives are inarguably starting to look and sound more like the world we live in. But until the creative brains behind that content creation are as diverse as the stories being told, we won’t move from tokenism to authenticity.

If you need help bringing a brand campaign to life in an authentic and engaging way, get in touch with the Sticky team.