Adland goes on a lot about diversity and inclusion.
They write about it.
They talk about it.
They even have people who have job titles about it.
But is anything changing? Really, properly, truly changing?
Is the ad industry a more open place for people who come from different backgrounds?
Is the ad industry giving more positions of authority and power to people of colour?
Or women?
Is the ad industry paying the same base salaries to people from different backgrounds?
Don’t know … but I doubt it.
Now this is not an anti-adland rant, I love this industry and still believe it can do a lot. However it is an anti-superficial claim rant that, sadly, adland still seems to love doing.
I am sure there are people who can inundate me with facts about how things are improving.
Well there’s 2 answers to that.
1. It’s not hard when it’s from a low-base.
2. It’s not happening quick enough.
And one thing really highlighted this fact to me and it’s this …
Cocoa Girl is THE FIRST magazine in the UK specifically for little girls of colour.
The first!!!
Think about that for a second??
Prior to this, little girls of colour had NOTHING to represent them, reflect them or inspire them in a way where they could feel they are already good enough.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, Cocoa Girl wasn’t created by a publisher or a research company or an ad agency that talks up their D&I policies in the media every second of the day … but a Mum, Serlina, and her 6 year old daughter, Faith.
It’s absolutely brilliant – they also do one for little boys of colour as well – but that is not the only reasons we should all support it and champion it.
You see apart from the fact Serlina and Faith have just shamed our whole industry in terms of spotting D&I issues and doing something about them … they’ve also reminded us WHY D&I is one of the only things that might be able to save our industry from disaster.
Too many people in adland still think their reality reflects everyone’s else’s reality.
Of course it’s bollocks … and yet we keep on doing the same thing over and over again.
Hiring the same people.
Putting the same types of people in power.
Acting like everything is fine when everything isn’t.
What Serlina and Faith have done with Cocoa Girl is show our blinkered blindness.
Our inability to see what is not in our bubbles.
The act of being deliberately blind and ignorant.
We – as an industry – should have done this.
We – as an industry – should have supported this.
We – as an industry – didn’t.
If you have any desire to make any difference, you then can start by signing up for a subscription to Cocoa Girl.
Then you can help get clients to sponsor the amazing Boys Smile project.
Then you can show this post to your colleagues and discuss how this is what really adding to culture means.
Thank you Serlina. Thank you Faith.