This last week (28th September to 4th October 2020) has been National Inclusion Week. October is also Black History Month. However, I'm not really a huge fan of national/international days/weeks/months for any topic, particularly ones that are about topics we should be talking about all the time. Though this is the case, and slightly defeating my objection, I’ve decided to write this blog post. I’ve also watched some great webinars and listened to podcast episodes in the past about the topic of inclusion and marketing/the creative industries and wanted to write my thoughts on it all.
So, what is Inclusive Marketing? To make this even more basic, what is inclusion? Why is it always put together with diversity? And how can workplaces, within any industry but specifically in my view the creative sector, become more inclusive?
Inclusion
First and foremost, it’s not the same as diversity. The terms are usually interspersed, put with one another like ying and yang, nature and nurture, black and white. Whilst diversity is the people, inclusion is the action. One is an adjective or noun, the other a verb. Emphasis on universality and the mainstreaming of all demographics, psychographics and behaviours both alone and woven with one another to form intersectionality and assemblages. It is not the who or what but the why and how – the doing rather than just talking or listening or writing.
However, there are caveats. During my undergraduate degree and my teenage years, I discovered feminism which then brought me to all the various other isms – sexism, racism, ageism, ableism. This also led me to do my masters’ degree. Yet, this leads to ignorance and misunderstanding and does not come from a good place. If you want to be diverse and bring in diversity, you have to be transparent, open and honest with yourself and others. If you do bring in diversity or are diverse, you need to remember that you’re not the spokesperson for all people within that category.
There is also the argument that inclusion relates to and impacts everyone, not just those of a certain audience. Feeling included is an aspect of being human. As Mary Portas notes, “humans are tribal. Even if we’re not a complete fit for the group we’re part of, we like to create social groups whose rules we understand and can work to.” We all want to belong and we all want to be liked. Inclusion is for and about everybody. No one is an alien, we’re all people at the end of the day.
Making Work Inclusive
There is a difference between affecting change and saying that a company or business is or wants to be more inclusive. The environment must be one where everyone feels that they belong without having to conform, that what they contribute matters and that they are able to work to their fullest potential, no matter the background, circumstance or identity. It has got to span the entire employee life cycle, from recruitment to retirement. You must change internally before you can push out external messaging – saying you’re diverse and inclusive when you’re not or it’s being done for marketing’s sake is not good enough.
I know that this is an uncomfortable subject but, with all that has gone on in the last few months, we must all get comfortable with the uncomfortable. It is not enough to create a piece of social media content with a certain hashtag. It is not enough to only discuss certain demographics or circumstances during a specific day or week or month. It is not enough for stuff to happen by or for a certain type of person at one point of time. We are who we are and we go through what we go through on a hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis. Circumstances may change and the present and future are obviously much different from the past, but we must not let history repeat itself or go one step forward two steps back. It’s time for change – not just in what we say, but what we do and how we do it.
At the Bristol 24/7 webinar on how the creative industry can become more inclusive, it was noted that there are lots of different barriers which intersect and are perilous. There was also the argument that the societal concept of excellence has to change. The issues are both structural and practical and relate to networking and economics. The labellng of jobs as ‘entry level’ has been made harder than it needs to be and more on-the-job training and paid internships are needed. How to support and bridge the gap between the local grassroot organisations and the more mainstream local and national companies is also a situation that needs to be rethought. There is great stuff happening across the UK, particularly in Bristol, but more still needs to be done.
Inclusive Marketing
For me, inclusive marketing is presenting difference whilst highlighting similarity. Whilst it does target specific audiences, it does so without having to rely on stereotypes or even the case of having to say anything about the people being shown. One of my favourite forms of this is not an advertisement but a television show – The Great British Bake Off. Since its move to Channel 4, it has had a more diverse talent of contestants yet they and the show have never prominently said anything about skin colour or disabilities. They’ve just taken part in the show like the rest of their competitors.
Inclusive marketing for me will be obviously different to others. I’ve discussed my point of view in various past blog posts – my neurodiversity one you can read here and my benefits of autism one you can read here. Yet, as I noted in the latter of those two posts, I no longer want to talk about myself. In relation to including all, like with all marketing and strategy, it must be thought about and planned meticulously from beginning to end.
There are points to think about which others on the internet have already spoken about but that I agree with. Firstly, if you want to do inclusive marketing, it must link to what is being marketed, who that is being marketed to and how you market (the mediums and messages). It’s not an addition or a sidestep but a part of the whole campaign process. There is also a huge difference in what is made for us and what is made by us – if marketing was made by and had been decided upon by more diverse talent, more inclusion would happen.
Another point is that there are six steps that came out of reporting from the company Salesforce that can be done if businesses want to do more inclusive marketing. These are – starting with tone, being intentional with language, ensuring representation, considering context, avoiding appropriation and countering stereotypes. Language and context are two I think are really important.
The first one, language, speaks to me a lot and is something I’ve been really interested in over the last few years. I wrote a post on the language that we’ve been using during the height of the current pandemic which you can read here. It’s not just the words we use but how we use them and who for. Terminology is always changing and it’s a case of talking to people to understand what particular language they like to use. Having conversations is always the first step in making sure that your intentions come from a good place and if you use a word that is usually abbreviated its always best to type it out in its long format when first mentioned.
Context, the latter, I’ve only started to think about properly since I went to the Digital Gaggle conference last year and heard a talk on inclusive marketing (I wrote a post on my time at said event which you can read here). Not everyone is going to tell a story the way it should be told but there are also multiple target audiences even when you try to put your messaging out to just one segment.
Final Thoughts
To conclude, inclusive marketing needs to be a given and not just a necessity or something that should be done just for the sake of it. It should be a normal action and is the right thing to do. We all want to buy and consume products and services and if we can’t see ourselves within the advertising, then how can we fully trust the brand?
Hope you’ve enjoyed reading this post and if you’ve got any thoughts on this topic that you’d like to chat about, let me know – I’d like this to be a conversation and not just me sprouting stuff!
Beth x