The state of diversity and inclusion in marketing
The content of this briefing is taken from Econsultancy’s Career and Salary Survey Report 2020, produced in association with Marketing Week. First launched in 2015, this annual report is the industry’s most in-depth census of marketing careers and salaries in the UK, presenting a robust look at workplace trends and the experiences of marketers.
This briefing will look at the trends within the marketing industry as they relate to diversity, including:
- People with disabilities
- Ethnic minorities
- Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people
- Single parents
- People from diverse socio-economic backgrounds
- London-centricity
- Professional bodies and resources that exist to support diversity and inclusion
Explore the full report for a wealth of other data on marketing as a career, marketing qualifications, gender trends in marketing, the perception of marketing and much more.
The state of diversity and inclusion in marketing
The marketing industry continues to have an issue with diversity. Despite the weight of evidence and an increased recognition of the benefits of a diverse workforce has on an organisation’s resilience and bottom line, marketers still report their teams do not represent the diversity present in the population.
As an industry that values originality and creativity in problem solving, it should be setting the example for diversity. Although there appears to be a sea change in the way diversity and representation is taken to account within advertising and marketing messages, change has been slower to come in the makeup of marketing teams themselves.
How well do you feel the following groups are represented within your marketing team?
Diversity is good for everyone
“Hiring and commissioning people from a diverse range of backgrounds can only benefit the work we do as a marketing team.”
Kate Huang, CMO, Callaly
A selection of the groups under-represented within the industry are explored in more detail below, but across the board this should be seen as a clarion call. As Russell Parsons, Editor of Marketing Week, says: “The data should make for uncomfortable reading for everyone in marketing. As with any intervention, reflection and action needs to follow. The findings, and suggested solutions, should also provide inspiration for everyone to sit up and resolve to do better.”
People with disabilities
Across the characteristics asked about, people with mental or physical disabilities were the most poorly represented, with 82% of respondents reporting people with disabilities are ‘under-represented’ or ‘not represented’ at all within their marketing team.
This is a clear indication that the industry needs to do more in terms of accessibility. Outside of the moral requirement to ensure people with disabilities have a voice within the industry, it is also good business. The collective spending power of disabled people (known as the Purple Pound) is estimated to be worth £249bn to the UK economy, and so brands and retailers who do not acknowledge and incorporate the needs of disabled consumers will miss out.
The benefits to representation expand beyond one consumer group. People of differing abilities can be particularly sensitive to poor digital and retail experiences. With customer experience mattering to everyone, a team that is sensitive to these potential issues may make the difference between market-leading experience for all customers across the ability spectrum.
From an employer perspective, accessibility is a legal requirement (Equality Act 2010). Despite this, there are still often hurdles within the recruitment process for those with disabilities. Resolving this lack of representation will take active effort from organisations, beyond the legal minimum standards and an equal opportunity employer (or EEO) statement on the careers page.
An example of an organisation prioritising inclusivity in its recruitment process is Auto Trader. The brand’s participation in the UK government’s Disability Confident Employer scheme has had a positive impact on the candidate pool by clearly advertising that, as an organisation, it welcomes talent from across the ability spectrum.
Becoming a disability leader
“One initiative that has really helped us create an inclusive working environment is becoming a Disability Confident Employer; a government scheme that guarantees an interview to any applicant with a disability, which is something we advertise.
“Reaching the Disability Leader level of the scheme has also boosted understanding and awareness across our teams. A lot of the changes we made originally to accommodate these needs have improved the overall recruitment process, especially when it comes to how we communicate with candidates and the adjustments we make.”
Christos Tsaprounis, Head of People & Culture, Auto Trader UK
For more on how to tap into this underutilised and valuable talent pool, see the government’s guidance on how to attract, recruit and retain disabled people. Econsultancy’s Neurodiversity and Digital Inclusion Best Practice Guide covers how to promote inclusivity among neurodiverse people.
Ethnic minorities
In 2019, 45% of respondents to this survey said that ethnic minorities were ‘under-represented’ or ‘not represented’ at all within their company. In 2020, over half (62%) of respondents say that ethnic minorities are ‘under-represented’ or ‘not represented’ at all within their team. Although these two figures are not directly comparable (the whole organisation vs. the marketing team specifically) they do indicate a clear lack of ethnic diversity, specifically within marketing teams.
A lack of diversity can lead to markets being ignored. For example, the beauty’s long underserving of women of colour[59] has left a gap in the market that is now being filled by new disruptors, such as Fenty Beauty, leaving major brands scrambling to catch up.
It can also lead to unhelpful or damaging representations being furthered by the advertising and marketing industry. As founder and CEO Ade Hassan, founder and CEO of Nubian Skin and winner of the TfL’s Diversity in Advertising prize explained to Marketing Week: “A lot of time in advertising, and in media, it can be quite stereotypical in what’s portrayed, especially with black men and women.”
She continues, making the case for diverse hiring: “As a black woman I can pull from my experience and put that into a campaign. If you have a team that doesn’t have any black people or ethnic minorities on it, it is going to be hard to portray them in a way that is natural because you’re not pulling from experience. Having people who are from ethnic minority backgrounds in decision-making positions is incredibly important. Especially when it comes to portrayal.”
A diverse marketing team starts with an inclusive hiring process for more on how to build inclusivity into the start of the process, refer to Econsultancy’s Modern Marketing Job Descriptions Best Practice Guide.
A robust inclusion and diversity strategy should not end at the point of hire. Retaining that talent should be given equal, if not greater, emphasis. Respondents to this year’s survey who identified as black, Asian or of other non-white minority ethnic backgrounds (BAME) were less likely to feel confident about their future in marketing, with only 65% of the group saying they would ‘definitely’ or ‘very likely’ still be a part of the industry in five years, compared with 72% of white respondents.
This gap suggests that the industry is not doing all it can to make itself an inclusive and positive space for all groups. This is backed up by evidence from campaigning organisations Creative Equals, which found that 30% of ethnic minority women have witnessed or experienced inappropriate behavior in the last 12 months, much higher than that experienced by their white colleagues.
A workplace that works for everyone
“You need colleagues from across the business to work hard to create an inclusive culture – one where with zero tolerance for bigotry; a place where everyone can bring their best self. I know that sounds trite but feeling like I can be me and not a white, male version of me makes a massive difference to how I feel about work and to my performance.”
Tanya Joseph, director of campaigns, WACL, writing in Marketing Week
This is should be seen as a call to action to the industry. If marketing is to improve its ethnic diversity, it will have to fix the factors behind the so-called ‘leaky bucket’ of BAME talent. After all, even if an organisation is able to recruit a diverse set of talent, if that talent is not brought into an environment in which they feel welcome and able to thrive, the organisation is going to cut itself off from benefits of that diversity of perspective, either through loss of that hard-won talent or due to employees not feeling empowered to share their views.
Though there have been some signs of positive change within the industry, representation within advertising has seen clear improvement, with the inclusion of BAME groups in advertising having doubled between 2015 and 2018. This is a clear indication of how, with enough industry impetus, change for the better can happen. Richard Warren, director of marketing communications at Lloyds Banking Group, observed: “The rise in representation of the BAME community within advertising demonstrates that advertisers are making significant strides in better reflecting modern Britain. However, there is still work to do in the industry.”
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people
With 45% of respondents reporting that those identifying as LGBT are averagely represented (Figure 19), it could be easy to read LGBT representation in marketing teams as a problem solved. However, that would ignore the almost half (49%) of respondents who report under-representation or no representation at all of LGBT people.
This under-representation may be having wider impacts on the marketing messages and advertising creative. Research by Channel 4 shows that the LGBTQ+ community only features in 3% of all TV ads, despite making up 6% of the population, with even less representation given to bisexuals, gender fluid and transgender people.
Where LGBT+ people did feature, all too often their portrayal fell short. The majority of those surveyed felt that the LGBT+ community were “often in supporting, tokenistic roles”, with same-sex relationships rarely seen as part of a family unit. The cost in poor or missing portrayals could be considerable to an organisation. Google’s Inclusive Marketing Study showed that 71% of LGBTQ consumers said they are more likely to interact with an online ad that authentically represents their sexual orientation.
Where those experiences are missing from marketing teams, it is going to be difficult for the industry to tell authentic stories. As Jan Gooding, Chair at Stonewall and Co-Founder of PrideAM, told the Guardian: “If people in marketing are going to be equipped to help change the attitudes and behaviour of society with regard to LGBT consumers then they need to get own house in order.”
Outvertising, the advertising and marketing industry’s LGBTQ+ lobbying group, offers a guide to LGBT job hunters that offers a checklist for employers looking to create a comfortable and positive workplace, so that LGBTQ+ candidates can feel welcome and confident about being their authentic self at work.
Single parents
The majority of this year’s survey respondents (63%) say that single parents are under-represented or not at all represented within their marketing team. This is a significant representation gap that suggests a lack of support within the industry for those with childcare responsibilities.
The common marketing practice of working long additional hours (Figure 19) can make balancing home and work life a challenge. For single parents, those pressures are likely to be heightened. This is not exclusively an issue for marketers. Across all industries, high childcare costs and lack of flexible work contribute to the UK having one of the lowest lone parent employment rates in the EU.
Approximately 22.3% of families in the UK are single parent households, according to figures from the ONS. Many single parents are locked out skilled work due to the lack of flexible working options. With the industry suffering with a skills shortage, this is a talent pool marketing can ill afford to overlook, and with the majority of single parent households being headed by women, it is also a matter of gender equality.
Beyond access to single parent talent, building a workplace culture that allows employees to balance work and family life will benefit everyone, not just single parents. With flexible working the most valued benefit for all marketers (Figure 13) and increased recognition of the dangers of staff burnout, robust and visible support for flexible work and work/life balance will help with talent attraction and retention.
Though not aimed specifically at lone parents, Creative Equals’ ‘Returners’ scheme #CreativeComeback is a great example of how organisations can support women returning to work after a career break.
People from diverse socio-economic backgrounds
In a new question for this year, respondents were asked to report on the socio-economic backgrounds of individuals in their marketing teams. Over half (51%) of respondents suggested their team lacks socio-economic diversity. This, when taken in conjunction with the fact that over 79% of respondents define themselves as middle class (upper middle class, middle class and lower middle class), is evidence that the middle class stereotype of marketers is well founded.
What is your social background?
This is an issue for the long-term health of the industry. Alongside the benefits that people with a diverse set of experiences can have on creativity, it is vital that marketing widens the pool of talent it draws on if it is to meet the needs of the modern marketing function.[72]
The homogeneity problem
“The issue is that the industry is relentlessly middle class and if you don’t have class diversity, you’ve got a homogeneous population.”
Daryl Fielding, CEO, The Marketing Academy Foundation, speaking to Marketing Week
Marketing has to do a better job of marketing itself a conceivable career to a broader range of people. As Econsultancy’s sister publication Marketing Week has reported on in depth, there is a lack of awareness and poor perception marketing in schools and colleges. Communicating marketing as a possible and aspirational career at this early stage is vital to ensuring a pipeline of diverse talent entering the industry.
While that is a larger challenge for the industry as a whole, there are steps individual organisations can take immediately, such as creating more inclusive hiring practices or offering apprenticeships. There are charities and organisations available to help open up marketing teams to a more diverse set of candidate such as The Marketing Academy Foundation, a charity that offers career opportunities win marketing to young people from challenging backgrounds. There is also the social enterprise the School of Marketing, which is working on the early career stage intervention by raising awareness of marketing in schools.
London-centricity
The majority (57%) of marketers who responded to this survey are based in London and the South East (Figure 21). This regional imbalance is an issue for the industry, not only because of what it does to competition for talent but also diversity of perspectives.
Which region are you based in?
Prompted by these accusations of the creative sector having a narrow urban focus, action to tackle the London bias has been undertaken by the media industries, with both the BBC and Channel 4 opening headquarters outside of the capital.
There are certainly advantages to be had by those following the media brands’ suit, moving their headquarters and marketing teams beyond the confines of the TfL map. Alongside lower property and business rates and access to local, more diverse talent, it can help brands burst their London bubble mentality.
Birmingham-based Russell Booth, head of marketing and communications at Change Grow Live, told Marketing Week: “I actually like where I am now, I prefer it, being on the frontline, connected with people. You can be in a bit of a bubble in London, maybe disconnected from what your company’s actually there to do. That really doesn’t work to your advantage.”
Not all diversity is visible
Though these results focus on how well respondents feel each group is represented, it is important to remember that not all diversity is visible. A colleague’s sexual orientation, family situation, disability, faith, age, ethnic or socio-economic background may all be things they choose not to share at work.
Professional bodies and resources
Below is a selection of organisations, schemes and lobby groups that offer resources and help to support improve diversity and inclusion.
Creative Access – www.creativeaccess.org.uk
A social enterprise supporting people from under-represented backgrounds into creative careers.
Creative Equals – www.creativeequals.org
An organisation supporting equal representation across age, gender, sexuality and ethnicity within the creative industries.
Disability Confident employer scheme – www.gov.uk/government/collections/disability-confident-campaign
A government scheme designed to help employers take action to improve how they recruit, retain and develop disabled people.
Outvertising – www.outvertising.org
A not-for-profit group for the advertising and marketing industries lobbying for increased LGBTQ+ content in mainstream advertising and prejudice-free creative working environments.
WACL (Women in Advertising and Communications) – www.wacl.info
A communications and marketing industry networking organisation that brings together the most senior female leaders in the business.
Learn more
Read the full Career and Salary Survey Report 2020
The post The state of diversity and inclusion in marketing appeared first on Econsultancy.
Source: Customer Experience