Last week, I discussed diversity in marketing from a behind the scenes perspective. How to educate yourself, how to hire a more diverse team and how to make your workplace more accessible. In today’s article, we are going to discuss diversity in marketing campaigns. These ideas can help all businesses that are producing adverts and marketing collateral to make their products and services more accessible to a wider audience. While most businesses will no doubt enjoy a boost in revenue, it’s also about providing diversity because it’s the right thing to do. We should all be improving our ways of marketing and make ethical marketing choices when possible.
Marketing with Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
According to a study by Adobe in 2019 about diversity, equity and inclusions (DEI), 61% of Americans stated that diversity in marketing is crucial. Moreover, 38% of consumers are more inclined to trust brands that effectively embrace diversity in their advertising. With ethical consumerism on the rise, it makes sense for businesses to invest in improving their diversity in marketing.
Diversity in Marketing Campaigns
There are thousands of resources out there to help improve your marketing in an ethical and diversity led way. This article cannot cover all the different aspects but below are some overarching ways to think about diverse marketing.
Inclusive language & Imagery.
Using inclusive language in your marketing collateral is just one way to improve your campaigns. Inclusive language could be about avoiding making references based on physical attributes, including age, ability, race, gender unless it is directly relevant to the discussion. It could also be about using language that provides a neutral alternative to traditional phrases. Images should be approached in the same way as how photos and graphics are designed with diversity in mind. This doesn’t just mean photography of white people with a peppering of ethnically vague models. It’s about thinking about how imagery can represent your brand effectively while also reflecting the diversity in our population and audience today.
Accessibility
We discussed accessibility in relation to the workplace in part 1. Accessibility should also extend to your customers and engaged users online. Marketing campaigns, your website and any apps you produce should be as accessible as possible. The design of the online world is vital to create a more inclusive industry. A well-designed website can make it easier for those with disabilities to navigate the site, find the right information and be able to comprehend the site information. The same is true in marketing campaigns. Social media visuals can be designed and uploaded with accessibility in mind, emails can be created so anyone can read or hear the information and videos can be captioned and have transcriptions added. Small administrative tasks such as alt tags on images or high contrasting visuals can get your products noticed by a wider audience.
Avoid Stereotyping
While diverse marketing can often be focused on inclusion, it’s also about avoiding grouping people negatively. Using images, cliques in writing and storytelling that is outdated or perpetuates stereotypes needs to stop. Making assumptions about people based on perceived traits, stereotyping involves using social groupings such as race, colour, ethnic origin, creed, etc. to acquire process or recall information about others. You should consider what your images or videos are saying by the models or actors you have chosen and the story you are displaying. Also, consider how it will be perceived by your audience and whether you are contributing to stereotyping.
Avoiding Woke Washing
Woke washing is when you use social justice movements and charitable causes to promote your business without doing anything else to really make an impact on the community you are pretending to support. Here are some basic examples of how companies have been accused of woke washing.
- Bringing out rainbow-themed merch for pride month but donating money to organisations that actively work against the LGBTQIA+ community.
- Using the black lives matter protest movement to sell a fizzy drink.
- Promoting female empowerment on social media but stealing other female creators’ content to use as your own and not credit them.
- Supporting a mental health charity online but not providing adequate support for your own workers’ mental health.
If your company is not committed to social justice 365 days a year, then you can’t expect to authentically use awareness days and months to promote your business without the work behind it. Only use social and charitable issues when they make sense to your business and are not just the flavour of the month. Even better would be to use those times to educate yourself to be a better ally and check your own biases.
Next Steps
As I said in the introduction and the previous article, no one article can do this topic justice. If you’ve not read Diversity in Marketing Part 1: Behind the scenes, check it out. Educating yourself and always being prepared to learn will make your marketing practices better for you, your business and the world at large. Below are some resources I found helpful in writing this article and improving my own business and marketing.