What Hollywood can teach the creative industries about diversity
Kathryn Jacob OBE, CEO of Pearl & Dean, on how Hollywood's diversity agenda is having a positive impact on the film industry and how advertising should take note if it wants to broaden its own horizons.
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The diversity agenda in Hollywood has been making a few inroads of late. A recent study found that female characters had their best ever representation in films last year.
Audiences today jump at the chance to see a different, more representative reality presented on-screen.
Moreover, Hollywood released a crop of hugely successful films including The Favourite, Green Book, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Colette that were more representative and challenged different perceptions.
Audiences today jump at the chance to see a different, more representative reality presented on-screen. Last year, a survey by media agency UM found that 59% of UK adults who watched Crazy Rich Asians liked seeing the ethnically diverse cast, whilst 47% of 16-24 year olds within the same survey were keen to see more BAME people on screen.
Above: Crazy Rich Asians, one of the recent Hollywood releases which featured a more diverse representation of the world.
Evidently, people pay to see diversity – and the advertising and creative industries should take note of this shift in Hollywood. Diversity shouldn’t just be happening on the big screen, but behind the scenes too, in all aspects of the creative industries.
Advertisers are starting to respond to this shift in demand, placing more focus on brand purpose in their own creative.
In the advertising sector, diversity remains a huge talking point, with 65% of UK consumers saying that it is important to them. Advertisers are starting to respond to this shift in demand, placing more focus on brand purpose in their own creative. An example of this is Malteser’s, whose 2016 campaign featuring diverse actors saw the brand grow sales by 8.1% and its brand affinity rise by 20%.
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Mars – New Boyfriend
Mars – Dance Floor
Above: The 2016 Malteser's campaign, featuring a more diverse cast.
However, when it comes to hiring talent, this is still far from the case – the IPA’s Diversity Survey last year showed that only 32.7% of C-suite roles at UK ad agencies are held by women. For BAME employees at UK ad agencies overall, this is even lower at 13.8%, short of the 15% goal the IPA set by 2020.
There is now no excuse about not knowing where to access such [diverse] talent.
Several charities and associations are stepping up to the plate to help businesses in the creative industries to improve their gender and BAME balance. Some, such as Creative Access, proactively seek out internship opportunities for people from minority ethnic groups, others are creating BAME-specific resources for the creative sector - so there is now no excuse about not knowing where to access such talent.
These include Selma Nicholls, who founded Looks Like Me to raise the profile of underrepresented groups in the fashion and advertising world. In the US, founder of Brown & Browner ad agency, Derek Walker, used Black History Month to highlight up-and-coming black creative talent every day of February via Twitter.
Above: Ford India's highly controversial print ads.
However, it’s important that we continue to remind businesses that representation and diversity is not just a philanthropic act, it is also good business sense. From an economics standpoint, the Business Disability Forum has found that disabled people’s spending power in the UK is around £250bn, while BAME communities together pull in around £300bn.
However, it’s important that we continue to remind businesses that representation and diversity is not just a philanthropic act, it is also good business sense.
From a reputational standpoint, diversity is an essential brand tool that helps others avoid blunders such as Tesco promoting Smokey Bacon Pringles in a special point of sale stand saying ‘Ramadan Mubarak’ or a Ford India ad that showed cartoons of female celebrities bound and gagged in the trunk, to demonstrate its ample kidnapping space [above].
From a reputational standpoint, diversity is an essential brand tool.
A year ago, it seemed as though we were at last on the right track in what has been a slow journey to inclusivity. But the last 12 months have shown that we cannot allow complacency to seep in. If the work up to today has been to put diversity on the agenda, now it’s time to consolidate those efforts, to make diverse creative workplaces and diverse outputs the new normal.
