Advertising Age published performative PR from BRIDGE, an enterprise that the trade publication labeled as follows: “an independent trade organization pushing for diversity, equity, and inclusion in marketing.”
Not sure why BRIDGE would be deemed independent, given its “Leaders” include a Board of Directors defined as “the governing body of BRIDGE, composed of a combination of DE&I leaders, business leaders, and other C-suite leaders in organizations who are driving the change agenda internally.” That is, the board features up to 30 individuals whose professional roles cover Chief Marketing Officers, CEOs, and Human Heat Shields from White advertising agencies. Conspicuously absent are any legitimate ad agency leaders—to twist a phrase, “Where are all the White people?”
How can one assume independence in relationships firmly rooted in codependence? Hell, it’s almost laughable that these folks—while likely well-intentioned and respectable corporate citizens—cannot offer evidence to prove they’re driving the change agenda internally, externally, or in any dimension. This especially applies to the White advertising agencies, where annual confessions confirm firmly established and perpetuated systemic racism.
All of which makes BRIDGE sorta offensive. If the representatives from brands like Campbell’s, Colgate-Palmolive, H&R Block, and Unilever were honestly dedicated to change, they would burn their bridges with Adland representatives such as Publicis Groupe and WPP. After all, the co-conspiratorial unions symbolize hypocrisy of the highest order.
BRIDGE is part of a thoroughly damaged infrastructure.
Brands Pilot DE&I Program To Foster Companywide Inclusion
After finding many brands’ social posts were 23 years behind on representation, DE&I trade org BRIDGE created a program that is being piloted by Campbell Soup Co., Condé Nast and Sephora
By Lindsay Rittenhouse
The majority of the top 50 brands that post content to social media are 23 years behind in terms of reflecting the actual racial makeup of America, based on U.S. Census data, according to a recent analysis by BRIDGE, an independent trade organization for progressing diversity, equity and inclusion in marketing.
That analysis was used as the jumping-off point for BRIDGE’s new Inclusion Maturity Assessment and Capability Building Program (dubbed IMAX for short), which it is launching to help brands implement inclusion as a business practice across their entire organizations, internally and externally, to drive growth.
“Our whole mission is to move the narrative of DE&I away from philosophy to operationalizing inclusion as a business practice because we fundamentally believe that it's the next opportunity for business growth,” said Sheryl Daija, the founder and CEO of BRIDGE, which is an acronym for the gaps within belonging, representation, inclusion, diversity and equity. “Unfortunately, we have seen the attacks that can happen when you’re talking about philosophy, opinions and beliefs, versus when you have something that is steeped with the same rigor that other business practices have.”
Marketers including Campbell Soup Co., Condé Nast and Sephora are piloting the program, which involves evaluating the equities and inequities that exist for underrepresented communities across companies’ product availability, pricing structures and services. The program starts with understanding where companies are in terms of their inclusion efforts both internally and externally—rating them on a maturity scale across 72 business practices and five dimensions of the workplace and marketplace. Then, a team of experts works on how to tackle the gaps they identify and implement change for the companies.
“We were excited about BRIDGE’s IMAX program as it extends beyond the scope of existing DE&I assessments that are primarily focused on culture and the workplace to include marketplace actions,” said Abigail Jacobs, senior VP of brand and integrated marketing, Sephora. “As a retailer with extensive programs around building equity across our business, and especially our stores, we’re always working to ensure that our practices drive positive impact and change.”
The IMAX social media analysis revealed most brands are 23 years behind in properly reflecting the racial makeup of the U.S. in social content.
IMAX is led by BRIDGE’s board of directors and steering committee, as well as an academic team that included Omar Rodríguez-Vilá, professor of marketing and director of education at the Business & Society Institute at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School; Sundar Bharadwaj, professor of marketing at University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business; and Dionne Nickerson, assistant professor of marketing at Indiana University.
The program evaluates DE&I across various areas of a company including within the organization, their marketing management processes, commercial practices, communications and advocacy programs.
“The biggest gap we see is in commercial practices, in products that are designed specifically to address the needs of underrepresented communities,” Rodríguez-Vilá said.
Most companies do not properly measure the market, Rodríguez-Vilá said. Currently, they measure the market based on “‘Where is my current revenue coming from?’ and ‘Who are my biggest customers? If 80% of my customer base comes from this group, then I go after that group.’
"You’re not looking at the potential growth that could be embedded in segments that are actually not consuming you, or are significantly under-consuming you, because you’re not including them in your offer,” he said.
Each of the 72 business practices being evaluated in the IMAX program is rated against a “maturity” scale of 70%, which represents a high level of inclusion.
“Following the assessment, it was awesome to see that the analysis reinforced many of our business practices were already on the right track,” Jacobs said. “We have 11 different internal workstreams focused on different parts of our DE&I journey and have been able to share these findings and act quickly on integrating them into our current work.”
The IMAX team used artificial intelligence to do the first part of its research, the social media analysis of the top 50 brands’ content that had people in it, Rodríguez-Vilá said. "We measured the diversity of skin tone, diversity of hair type, inclusion of people with disabilities and diversity of body types.”
In that analysis, Unilever’s Dove rose to the top and was one of the only brands that was not 23 years behind in terms of inclusion practices across its social media posts. Dove has done various campaigns to advocate for underrepresented groups including taking a stand against race-based hair discrimination.
“I receive a lot of data in my role, but I have never seen data of this nature that allows us to understand inclusion as a metric and helps us identify which practices we can share across brands to create and accelerate even further impact,” said Tish Archie-Oliver, head of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, Unilever U.S., and a BRIDGE Board member.
Dove declined further comment because it is not part of the IMAX pilot program.
Still, being inclusive across social media content is only one sliver of the pie and the IMAX program comes as companies have downsized their DE&I departments amid economic headwinds.
“The key is not to think of inclusion as a separate thing,” Rodríguez-Vilá said. “The first thing you need to tackle is the business case. There is also a role for a moral case and many leaders need to be able to articulate that to their employees. This is not just about selling more stuff. But you need both because, in the absence of a business case, the moral case is not going to sustain you.”
Rodríguez-Vilá said what also went into developing the IMAX program was having chief marketers and chief diversity officers work closer together than they’re typically used to—both parties are responsible for evaluating DE&I within the internal organization and in how the company is showing up in the marketplace. Typically, internal matters were left to chief diversity officers while marketplace matters were left to chief marketing officers.
“It unlocks this collaboration that didn’t exist before,” Daija said. “[Before] it was very siloed. IMAX creates a collaboration to allow all capabilities and practices to be dependent on each other, but also to leverage the power of each other.”
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