Addressing the ad industry’s diversity problem

The UK adver­tis­ing indus­try was hit par­tic­u­lar­ly hard by the pan­dem­ic in 2020. As sur­vival in the short term became the pri­or­i­ty for most play­ers, there were restruc­tur­ings and redun­dan­cies, as well as bud­get reduc­tions and cuts to long-estab­lished agency ties.

All this came against a back­drop of an indus­try strug­gling to change per­cep­tions that it is too Lon­don-cen­tric and not as open as it could be to a diverse work­force. How, then, is it to attract the next gen­er­a­tion of tal­ent and ensure that it’s cre­at­ing work that reflects the full range of British expe­ri­ences?

The talent crisis

The lat­est agency sur­vey by the Insti­tute of Prac­ti­tion­ers in Adver­tis­ing (IPA) shows the seri­ous impact of Covid-19. Staff num­bers at its mem­ber agen­cies fell by 10.8% year on year in 2020. Just over a quar­ter of those depar­tures were a direct result of the pan­dem­ic.

Dig­ging deep­er into the data, it’s clear that the impact has not been felt equal­ly. Female employ­ees were hit hard­er, with their num­ber falling by 12.8% com­pared with 8.1% for their male coun­ter­parts. The pro­por­tion of C‑suite posts occu­pied by women also declined, from 34% in 2019 to 32.4% in 2020.

The youngest and old­est employ­ees have also tak­en the brunt of the job loss­es. The num­ber of under-25s employed by IPA mem­ber agen­cies declined by 29.4% in 2020, while the num­ber of over-60s fell by 22.1%.

But there has been some more pos­i­tive news. The pro­por­tion of non-white employ­ees in the indus­try in 2020 was 15.3%, up from 13.7% in 2019. At the C lev­el, 6.4% of roles were occu­pied by peo­ple with a non-white back­ground, up 1.7 per­cent­age points year on year. Yet there is clear­ly still a huge amount of work to do to improve diver­si­ty at the high­est lev­els of the indus­try.

The IPA’s recent­ly appoint­ed pres­i­dent, Julian Dou­glas, acknowl­edges the industry’s endur­ing inabil­i­ty to make sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments in this area. One task that’s high on his pres­i­den­tial agen­da is “accel­er­at­ing efforts” to make adland a more inclu­sive place.

Dou­glas, who hails from Man­ches­ter, is also aim­ing to make it less of a Lon­don-cen­tric busi­ness. Sig­nalling his desire to attract tal­ent from out­side the M25, he delib­er­ate­ly gave his pres­i­den­tial address to the IPA at Manchester’s Sci­ence and Indus­try Muse­um, rather than some­where in the cap­i­tal.

“Bril­liant things hap­pen on many lev­els beyond Lon­don. There are loads of great agen­cies out here,” enthus­es Dou­glas, who is also inter­na­tion­al CEO and vice-chair­man at the VCCP agency. “The biggest pos­i­tive soci­etal impacts will be by attract­ing and har­ness­ing tal­ent from around the UK. I’m talk­ing not only about agen­cies, but also about brands. Most of the brands that I work with are out­side Lon­don.”

The Cre­ative Equals con­sul­tan­cy, which works to improve diver­si­ty in the adver­tis­ing indus­try, sup­ports Douglas’s aims. As a sign of the work that’s still required, its direc­tor of client ser­vices, Dinah Williams, quotes data from recruiter Major Play­ers show­ing that a white man earns £10,000 more a year on aver­age than a white woman and £20,000 more than a Black woman in the same role.

Covid, she says, has nul­li­fied “any pre­vi­ous wins or progress we’ve seen in terms of Black rep­re­sen­ta­tion. We know that the result­ing down­turn has affect­ed more women than men – even more so for women in under­rep­re­sent­ed groups.”

Williams con­tin­ues: “Pay equi­ty is a huge issue in the indus­try, while rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Black employ­ees at C‑suite or senior lead­er­ship lev­el remains low. The mean aver­age is 2.9% and the medi­an is 0%, which means that more than half of all teams at these lev­els have no Black mem­bers. And we’re still find­ing that 71% of organ­i­sa­tions aren’t col­lect­ing data on the eth­nic­i­ty pay gap.”

Improving diversity

Some agen­cies have been mak­ing con­cert­ed efforts to address the prob­lem. Leo Bur­nett, for instance, anonymis­es appli­cants’ CVs to pre­vent any uncon­scious bias among recruit­ing man­agers from affect­ing short­list­ing deci­sions. It has also signed up to the open appren­tice­ship scheme oper­at­ed by its par­ent com­pa­ny, Pub­li­cis Groupe UK. This aims to reach 10,000 peo­ple with dis­ad­van­taged back­grounds and offer them train­ing, men­tor­ing and employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties.

“It’s hard to hire peo­ple from diverse back­grounds into more senior posi­tions because the indus­try sim­ply hasn’t worked hard enough and ear­ly enough on attrac­tion and reten­tion,” says Leo Burnett’s MD, Car­ly Aven­er. “Our strat­e­gy has focused on entry-lev­el tal­ent, which is where we can make the most impact right now.”

As Dou­glas has high­light­ed, the industry’s clients must also play their part. With this in mind, the Adver­tis­ing Asso­ci­a­tion has just cre­at­ed an alliance called Black Rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Mar­ket­ing in its bid to “cre­ate mean­ing­ful change”. Spon­sors include Face­book, Unilever, VCCP and trav­el com­pa­ny Tui. Its advi­so­ry group includes rep­re­sen­ta­tives from organ­i­sa­tions such as Accen­ture, the BBC and Cre­ative Equals.

The World Fed­er­a­tion of Adver­tis­ers (WFA), mean­while, has pub­lished numer­ous guides for brands, includ­ing 2020’s A Marketer’s Approach to Diver­si­ty and Inclu­sion. Its aim is to encour­age users to con­sid­er not only the diver­si­ty of their teams but also the work that these pro­duce.

Phar­ma giant Glax­o­SmithK­line – a WFA mem­ber – is seen as a leader in this area, hav­ing cre­at­ed a ded­i­cat­ed diver­si­ty hub con­tain­ing best-prac­tice guid­ance and train­ing for its mar­ket­ing teams. The com­pa­ny also encour­ages users to run work­shops to share their knowl­edge more wide­ly.

Such ini­tia­tives are slow­ly help­ing the indus­try to address its diver­si­ty prob­lems and so bet­ter rep­re­sent the cus­tomers it serves. This in turn should make it a more attrac­tive propo­si­tion for the next gen­er­a­tion of tal­ent.

Tara McRae, chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer at shoe com­pa­ny Clarks, is excit­ed about the oppor­tu­ni­ties. The pan­dem­ic, she says, has forced her firm to accel­er­ate the work it had been doing to adopt more pro­gres­sive and inno­v­a­tive mar­ket­ing meth­ods. 

“At Clarks, we have some new men­tor­ship pro­grammes that we’re about to start with part­ners with­in [poor­ly rep­re­sent­ed] com­mu­ni­ties in the com­ing months. I’m per­son­al­ly engaged and super excit­ed about these,” McRae says. “We aren’t per­fect and we’re not there yet, but we are com­mit­ted to mak­ing pos­i­tive changes.”