In 2021, inclusive marketing should be more than just featuring people from different backgrounds in your ad campaign.
Inclusive marketing encompasses the messaging, people, processes and technologies that enable marginalised or underrepresented groups to fully experience and connect with your brand. It strives to create a visual culture that is representative of things like skin tone, gender identity, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity, culture, language and/or physical and mental ability.
It requires you to understand — and authentically represent — the various identities, histories, differences and similarities that co-exist between people in Australian society today.
After all, Australia is a vibrant, multicultural country — home to the world’s oldest continuous cultures, and Australians who identify with more than 270 ancestries!
As the custodians for brands, we have immense power over the messages and images consumed by millions of Australians online, and in the media, on a daily basis.
Whether it’s the copy we write, the videos we produce or the ads we place, when we use our power for good, we are able to promote inclusion, celebrate diversity and overall, build a more cohesive society.
This insight led me to investigate how marketing and communications can be used as a tool for social change as my fellowship topic.
This has involved a lot of research, some revealing interviews and seen me question my own biases, privilege, and position in society.
While this journey of discovery is by no means complete, I’ve collated my findings so far into the production of this guide.
My hope for this guide is that it encourages more marketers and communicators to apply a diversity and inclusion lens to work they undertake, with the confidence that they are doing so in an authentic and meaningful way.
I’d like to sincerely thank each and every person who has generously shared their experiences with me in the development of this guide — Ben Nielsen, Tommy Hicks, Guy Turnbull, David Militz and Eugenia Tsoulis.
Eloise Richards
2020 Fuller Fellow