Survival Summit: Agencies have more work to do than brands when it comes to diversity
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At Wednesday’s Ad Age Survival Summit, God-Is Rivera, director of inclusion and cultural resonance at VML, asked people to imagine two different ads featuring families: in one, a person is graduating college, in the other, someone is starting a new job.
“Did anybody think about two gay dads and their adopted twins?” Rivera asked. “Did anybody think about a 50-year-old black woman finally finishing her degree? Did anybody think about a wheelchair-bound person starting a new job? No. I’m willing to bet probably none of you did.”
Diversity and inclusion, she said, are largely missing from marketing, which means the ad industry has helped create a default narrative that revolves around Caucasian families. Marketing shapes perceptions, she said, and the industry has “a responsibility to make these perceptions inclusive.”
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