It's Time To Take Pride In Diversity

Having worked in marketing and advertising for many years, changes in representation and attitudes towards gender, diversity and LGBT issues have been particularly of interest to me.

There has been a departure from the Mad Men era of sexist, heteronormative ads with wives in the kitchen and men out at work, but there is still so much to be done to reflect more diversity, with many TV ads still reflecting the old-fashioned white middle-class wife and husband roles. 

It’s a worry that when at least 6% of the population identifies as lesbian, gay or bisexual according to the Office of National Statistics (2010), we struggle to identify any mainstream ads that represent it. Of course it is in most brands’ interest to represent their majority target market but when other, more recent surveys such as a YouGov poll show half of 16-24 year olds don’t identify as 100% heterosexual, you have to think it also makes business sense to appeal to LGBT audiences too, with a market estimated at £6 billion. 

So here we are in 2016 with gay marriage slowly being approved around the globe and in the UK, many young people appearing to have more liberal and open-minded attitudes to sexuality and gender, yet not enough LGBT representation in mainstream media.

The reason it was so important to me to start Pride in Advertising & Marketing (PrideAM) is that the media has such an influence on people’s behaviour and perceptions, yet shockingly there are no other organisations in the world that hold up a mirror to the media and its representation of LGBT audiences.  However, on the equality front, I must mention that the Advertising Standards Agency is launching an investigation into negative gender stereotyping of women, which is very much welcomed.

I decided to start Pride in Advertising & Marketing (PrideAM) after experiencing the Global Festival of Media in Rome in May 2015.  The wonderful team at Omnicom Media Group asked me to take part in a diversity panel at the event, representing LGBT+, alongside speakers on gender, ethnicity and disability.  My first thought was how wonderful; a panel that has the broadest representation I had seen for our industry, this should be good. 

We were the penultimate session of the day yet around a quarter of the audience left, only to return for the last session. This seemed to be a representation of how seriously the industry was taking diversity and greatly angered me. When asked what I would take away from the day, I said I was starting an organisation to focus on LGBT+ representation specifically in the marketing and advertising industry. Such an influential, exciting and creative industry needed to do more for diversity representation.

I got together a fantastic team to help volunteer their time and since September 2015 we have gained global interest so lookout for more global PrideAMs. We have been building our organisation with the aims to remove any LGBT+ prejudice from the industry workplace, promoting inclusive creative environments, to promote positive LGBT+ role models in the sector, to provide support and information to LGBT+ people working or seeking work in the sector and to promote the fair and accurate representation of LGBT+ people in advertising and marketing communications.

One of the most exciting projects we've worked on is our competition with Europe’s mainstream lesbian magazine, DIVA. We asked agencies to recreate ads from iconic brands using lesbian couples. We recently announced the winners from agencies Drum and Iris recreating adverts for Starbucks [above], Coca Cola and Nescafe Gold Blend [below] using lesbian couples. The ads were so striking and heartwarming that they gained global media coverage. We aim to work on more exciting, creative projects like this to create debate and challenge norms, shifting behavior of the industry globally.

Back to that Global Festival of Media: it has just finished for this year, I am happy to report that the organisers invited Stonewall’s Ruth Hunt and PrideAM co-founder Jan Gooding to take part in another diversity panel.  The room stayed full.  So the industry’s appetite for understanding diversity is growing fast. Here, here!