Advertising Age
published a lengthy report examining the impact of DEIBA+ cutbacks on brand
marketing and agency strategies, presenting perspectives from multicultural marketing
executives.
There are two fundamental issues with the conversation.
First, the cutbacks aren’t generating global concern—at
least not from brands and White advertising agencies—mostly because the
reductions involve crumbs. Neither
brands nor White ad agencies are dramatically impacted. It’s impossible to
motivate progress when change-resisters bear no consequences for their inaction
and indifference.
Second, DEIBA+ discussions that lack a diversity of
voices—ie, brands and White advertising agencies are not active
participants—essentially constitute silent and segregated protests. Indeed, it
would be interesting to learn if brands or White ad agencies even read such Ad
Age content. Probably not.
Perhaps it’s time to stop using the term cutbacks.
It’s really a matter of cutting down and cutting out the already underrepresented,
underutilized, and underpaid underlings.
How DEI Cutbacks Are Impacting Brand Marketing And Agency
Strategies
There’s already been a dip in Black History Month
campaigns—and executives say the trend will only worsen
By Lindsay Rittenhouse and Ewan Larkin
The ad industry continues to feel the impact of brands
rolling back their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, as evidenced this
month by the scarcity of Black History Month support from marketers.
The regression is sparking concern among diverse-owned
agencies that fear their businesses will be impacted, and who also worry that
the current falloff in diversity efforts will cause Black Americans to distrust
brands.
“People are running scared like a bunch of hapless sheep
who have forgotten they work at the most powerful companies in the world and
have the power to shift, shape and drive culture, not bend the knee to the
basest parts of it,” said Lola Bakare, a chief marketing officer adviser and
owner of inclusive marketing firm be/co.
Lack of opportunities
There has been a conservative backlash against
DEI, including at the federal level, with President Donald Trump
implementing an executive order to stop DEI programs across the government and
its agencies. Meanwhile, Target, Walmart and McDonald’s are among a
growing group of brands that have pulled back on DEI.
The result is a dwindling of business opportunities
around multicultural or diverse marketing, said Joe Anthony, the founder and
CEO of Hero Media and the Hero Collective, causing agencies in the space to
rethink or recalibrate.
“I have to now compete with my general market
counterparts for general market-only business, which this industry has shown an
opposition towards awarding us,” added Anthony, who co-founded diversity and
inclusion conference Blackweek.
Part of the reason for the retreat is a confusion in
terms. While multicultural marketing and DEI are “related and connected, they
are not the same thing,” said the CEO of an agency who requested anonymity. DEI
is related to internal company practices and how businesses create more
equitable and inclusive workforces, the CEO said, while multicultural marketing
is external, a form of segmentation of target consumers.
There’s “a very sad and frankly ignorant conflation of
the DEI rollback and what business critical targeted marketing should look
like,” said Myles Worthington, CEO and founder of Worthi—an agency
dedicated to helping brands connect purposefully with marginalized
consumers. “These audiences are still massive in size, buying power and
influence—and only getting larger—regardless of what the administration is
doing about DEI.”
Impact on Black History Month support
Campaigns celebrating Black History Month seem to be
directly impacted by this conflation. Several people who spoke to Ad Age said
marketers have trimmed initiatives around Black History Month, and Ad Age has
observed a noticeable decrease in Black History Month campaigns this year
compared to the recent past.
Anthony said that’s an especially disappointing trend
given that campaigns around DEI, including those tied to cultural observances
like Black History Month, are one of the main “things keeping our segment of
the industry afloat.”
Jason Klein, chief operating officer and co-founder of
SeeMe Index, an AI platform that evaluates inclusive marketing, said that
according to consumer trends platform Spate, for the first full week of Black
History Month in 2023, there were 232.5 million views of content on TikTok with
a #blackhistorymonth related hashtag. In 2024, that number fell to 215.7
million views. This year, views of the first full week of content with the
hashtag dropped to 190.1 million views.
The question, said Klein, is: “Who is pulling back on
BHM: brands, creators or consumers?”
Some people interviewed believe the culprit is brands.
“What we’re seeing is that some brands have lost the
courage to live their values in fear of being called out by conservative
activists,” said Stacey Wade, CEO and executive creative director at Nimbus.
“In today’s political climate, supporting Black History Month is viewed as a
DEI initiative, and DEI itself has become solely framed as a Black initiative
[leading brands to mistakenly conclude] that this support could adversely
impact their brand.”
“It also confirmed what a lot of Black consumers already
knew—brands love Black culture, but they don’t love or value Black consumers
enough to support what’s important to their community on a consistent basis,”
Wade said.
Kumi Croom, managing director at Duncan Channon, said
“this retreat is shortsighted,” pointing to U.S. Census data that shows a 276%
rise in Americans identifying as two or more races between 2010 and 2020,
“jumping from 2.9% to 10.2% of the population.”
“Black History Month campaigns aren’t just about
celebration, they’re about authentic connection,” Croom said. “Companies that
choose to sit this out risk alienating consumers who are paying close attention
to which brands show up and which ones retreat when it’s no longer convenient.”
Some people maintain that there are marketers who are
investing in connecting with Black culture throughout the year rather than
running a one-off ad timed to Black History Month in February.
“Rather than confining their efforts to a single month,
many are embracing a year-round commitment to Black culture,” said Andy Checo,
managing director of PR and social at d expósito & Partners. “This shift
isn’t about doing less—it’s about doing better, ensuring that meaningful
engagement becomes the norm.”
Nike is an example of a brand that “remains committed to
Black storytelling and community investment,” Croom said, and “its recent Super
Bowl ad showed us that they’re taking a stand and sticking up for marginalized
groups.”
Nike’s Super Bowl comeback, its 60-second “So Win”
in-game ad, celebrated women athletes and their accomplishments and featured
stars including Sha’Carri Richardson, Caitlin Clark, Jordan Chiles and Sabrina
Ionescu.
How DEI cutbacks are affecting agencies
Brands had already started to rebrand DEI after the
Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to effectively end affirmative action,
and those efforts have accelerated in recent months, according to multiple
executives interviewed by Ad Age. Marketers are increasingly turning to
agencies to help them navigate the way they message about such efforts moving
forward.
“There’s been a lot of conversation around, ‘Do we now
just say diversity, or do we now talk about inclusion? Because diversity is
also a little charged,’” said Tara DeVeaux, CEO of Burrell Communications, who
said that none of Burrell’s clients have yet paused or canceled
diversity-focused campaigns, or reduced the agency’s scope. (She declined to
comment on the shop’s relationship with McDonald’s, which recently retired some
diversity goals.)
Other marketing services businesses are feeling a sharper
impact. Larry Adams, the CEO and founder of XStereotype, an AI platform that
gathers insights about identifying racial bias and risk factors in campaigns,
told Ad Age that a campaign he was working on, backed by a government agency,
to “promote healthier outcomes for Black audiences,” has been shut down.
“There’s just widespread confusion on how to proceed,”
said Adams. “Contracts are being canceled and paused.” While some clients have
signaled a willingness to stay the course on DEI, there’s largely been “a full
stop,” he added.
Since January, a few people have suggested to Adams that
he rebrand XStereotype and make it seem less like it’s a “fact-checking”
platform on race—a decision he said isn’t out of the question. “If enough
potential customers are like, ‘Hey, I don’t want anything to do with anything
that sounds racial,’” Adams said, “you know, I have to make the right decision
for my business.”
Many shops are bracing for further changes in the year
ahead. As brands continue to pull back on DEI programs that will limit
opportunities available to agencies, said Coltrane Curtis, founder and managing
partner of Team Epiphany.
Curtis said diverse-owned shops aren’t often considered
for traditional reviews or lead agency assignments and instead have to rely on
relationships at brands, a challenge that will only intensify as marketers
eliminate DEI-specific roles.
The CEO of the agency that does multicultural and general
market work said the best thing for agencies to do right now is stand firm on
what they do best and continue to produce effective work that will demonstrate
why marketing to diverse audiences matters.
“I don’t want to be simplistic,” this person said, but
“great work” is how clients will continue spending money, “how search
consultants are going to call you … The best antidote is to do great work.”
One holding company executive said agencies with
government contracts are particularly concerned that their internal DEI
initiatives may eventually be attacked. Those agencies are essentially
“employees of the government,” this executive said. “They bend to the winds of
profit.”
A silver lining
Still, some agency executives believe there’s a silver
lining. Brands’ cutbacks on DEI may spark broader conversations about the
historically disproportionate investment in diverse communities, according to
Anthony.
“When these brands start feeling it in their pocketbooks,
with respect to their inability to sell products to an important growing
consumer base that is not decreasing in size or buying power or influence, then
objectivity will have to come in,” he said.
An executive at a diverse-owned agency, who also
requested anonymity, said the one positive he’s taken away from all of this is
that his team knows the clients that continue to work with them are truly
committed.
“A lot of people have been asking me, ‘are you seeing
less traffic? Are you seeing less inbound? Do you feel a dip?’” the agency
executive said. “To be honest, I feel a dip in people who are just browsing. As
a guy who is focused on my revenue line, [that’s been] a boon for me. My phone
doesn’t ring unless someone’s a serious buyer for the first time in a
while."
He said it's a “welcome miss” that brands are not just
calling his agency “in order to check a box.”
There are also brands that continue to stay the course
and several people interviewed said these are the companies that will win in
the long term.
Wade pointed to Costco as an example for other marketers
to follow. The membership-based retailer has recently refused to budge to
conservative activist pressure and instead reaffirmed its commitment to
diversity.
Said
Wade: “They didn’t stutter when they put their 10 toes down on that fertile DEI
earth.”
