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Can you remember the last ad that struck you because the people and stories represented in it were a welcome departure from what you usually see in marketing content? Maybe it was Proctor & Gamble’s Emmy-winning commercial, The Talk, which explored the difficult conversations about racism that Black American parents have with their children. Maybe this Campbell’s ad, which portrays a gay couple entertaining their child with a particularly corny Dad joke, comes to mind. Or perhaps this Maltesers commercial that features two friends communicating via sign language caught your eye.
On the other hand, maybe you can’t think of anything. Or, even worse, maybe what comes to mind are the kind of ads where models or actors with disabilities, or those who are people of color, LGBTQIA+, or neurodivergent, are portrayed less as believable human beings and more as symbols of a business’ attempt to come across as inclusive. Or, perhaps you recall advertisements where people with historically marginalized identities are portrayed according to stereotypes.
Yes, the advertising industry continues to struggle to represent people from, well, underrepresented communities. And even when advertisers nail inclusive casting, the content of their advertisements can inadvertently portray tokenism, stereotypes, or representations of life that simply don’t hold true for many communities.
This is a problem for a variety of reasons, not least of which being that advertisements have an impact on peoples’ sense of belonging in the world. As such, marketers have an ethical responsibility to ensure that everyone can see their lives reflected in marketing.
Though the advertising industry has many areas for improvement when it comes to diverse representation, they mainly fall into two categories: Representations of historically marginalized groups either lag behind those groups’ share of the general population, or are characterized by tokenism and stereotypes.
Let’s start by looking at those groups whose representation in advertising is disproportionate to their share of the US population. Latinx/Hispanic people make up 19% of the US population, yet they account for only 5% of those featured in advertisements. On the other hand, 61% of the US population is white, but they account for 73% of the people featured in ads.
The disproportionately low representation of historically marginalized groups is true beyond racial and ethnic identities as well:
On the other hand, some historically marginalized groups are represented more proportionately to their share of the population, but the quality of those representations is often poor due to tokenism and stereotyping. For instance, while the representation of Black Americans in advertising is proportionate to their share of the US population, over 35% of Black Americans feel that brands portray all Black people the same in their marketing, and 62% feel that many attempts at diverse representation in media and marketing are still stereotypical.
Similarly, while women have a less disproportionate presence in ads, those representations are often characterized by stereotype—for example, commercials portraying women as cooks and cleaners. And, while it’s easy to think that this kind of stereotyping must be improving over time, research indicates that it may actually be getting worse.
Also relevant to this discussion is the fact that the US is becoming more demographically diverse across multiple axes, particularly when it comes to younger generations. The last census found that the population is growing more racially and ethnically diverse at even faster rates than the US Census Bureau had previously predicted. Additionally, the percentage of people who identify as LGBTQIA+ more than doubled between 2013 and 2023. For advertisers, this means that the need to accurately represent diverse identities is growing more urgent by the year, as more and more consumers identify with historically underrepresented groups.
Which begs the question: How, exactly, can advertisers get diverse representation right?
Growing a marketing team’s inclusive marketing skill set is a marathon, not a sprint. Leaders can set themselves up for success by approaching this journey with openness, curiosity, and a dedication to continuous learning.
Advertisers should pay particular attention to ensuring their teams understand tokenism and stereotyping, establishing practices to acquire and retain diverse talent, and investing in ongoing professional development to equip their teams with the tools needed to produce high quality inclusive marketing content.
It’s easy enough to cast an ad with a diverse group of actors or models, but accurately representing diverse experiences is a more difficult task. As previously noted, this is one of the main pitfalls advertisers run into in the context of inclusive marketing—and tokenism and stereotyping are two of the most common ways advertisers can get those representations wrong. As such, it’s critical for any marketing team to understand tokenism and stereotyping so they can avoid them in their ads.
In advertising, tokenism occurs when actors or models from historically marginalized groups are cast without consideration for how people from those groups experience life—say, by portraying a Black woman engaging with hair products that Black women never actually use, or a deaf man living in a home without a visual alert system. These shallow portrayals use diverse actors and models as symbols or tokens, rather than authentic representations of the diverse experiences of these populations. Even more, many instances of tokenism coincide with stereotyping, which can happen in relation to gender, race, ethnicity, and culture.
Because of the prevalence of tokenism and stereotypes in advertising, marketing leaders must ensure their teams understand these concepts. This knowledge enables them to raise a red flag whenever tokenism or stereotyping arises during campaign creation.
Back in 2020, the advertising industry took steps towards progress and prioritizing authentic representation in marketing as many businesses committed to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in response to widespread protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. However, that momentum appears to be slowing of late, with many organizations curbing their diverse hiring efforts amidst economic pressures. The ethnic diversity of the advertising industry fell from 32.3% in 2022 to 30.8% in 2023, falling well short of the 42.2% of the US population that’s ethnically diverse.
There are innumerable ways that marketing organizations benefit from hiring and retaining a diverse employee base, not the least of which is that it invites new perspectives into the room while developing a campaign. Marketing organizations that prioritize the hiring of people who can craft authentic storylines that connect with consumers are more likely to be successful in their inclusive marketing efforts—and, critically, to avoid tokenism or stereotyping.
Notably, the goal here isn’t to put the onus of inclusive marketing solely on employees with historically marginalized identities, but rather to craft a diverse team to ensure that diverse ideas are brought to the table. At the same time, advertising leaders should prioritize training around inclusive marketing for all staff members to create a shared foundation of knowledge and vocabulary to support their diverse representation efforts.
Inclusive marketing is a skill set that can be as critical to a brand as effective communication or strategic thinking—but one in which marketers are often much less fluent. Many marketers name a lack of expertise, knowledge, and talent as obstacles to improvement when it comes to inclusive marketing, and 50% of brands are worried about getting inclusive marketing campaigns wrong.
To mitigate this, advertising leaders can invest in ongoing professional development to equip their teams with the tools they need to create media that authentically represents historically marginalized identities. This could include organizing annual workshops around diverse representation in advertising for employees, or bolstering any existing DEI programs with content specific to inclusive marketing.
In providing regular professional development opportunities for their employees, agency and brand leaders can ensure their teams are progressively upskilling in this area, and that their inclusive marketing efforts progressively improve in kind.
Amidst the many challenges facing marketers, it can be easy to put inclusive marketing on the backburner. But considering the state of diverse representation in advertising today, as well as the fact that the US is only growing more diverse, it’s clear that upskilling their teams’ ability to get inclusive marketing right is a clear and worthy priority for marketing and advertising leaders.