Diversity is good for business – so why isn’t the ad industry becoming more diverse?
In a room full of business people, it’s almost a certainty that most of them would have attended some sort of diversity workshop in the past. In fact, diversity has been, and continues to be, a priority for organisations across the board. Yet despite much being known about diversity, and even though it is a fundamental aspect of organisational success, we’re still not getting it right. This is the view of Samu Makhathini, associate account director at Kantar Millward Brown, speaking at a Kantar Millward Brown event. She pointed out that organisations are sacrificing their goals and wasting their money by not implementing diversity effectively, or not implementing it at all. Take the scandal earlier this year around an H&M ad which depicted a black child modelling a hoodie bearing the slogan “coolest monkey in the jungle” as one example. The clothing retailer was accused of being racist and lacking diversity in its advertising team for its failure to recognise that the image caused o...
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