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Should the marketing industry be doing more to promote the business benefits of inclusion?

Should the marketing industry be doing more to promote the business benefits of inclusion?

If you’re not inclusive by design, you’re marketing wrong.

Newton’s third law states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. So let’s consider, for a moment, the consequences of not being inclusive. Excluding people – in part or whole – makes marketing less effective. But it happens all the time.

Case in point: One in eight people have a disability, seen or unseen. Yet every day campaigns go live with content that is inaccessible to many.

Excluding this audience is a huge commercial miss. People with disability have a collective purchasing power of $13 trillion globally. UK households with at least one disabled person spend an estimated at £274 billion annually.

As marketers, our raison d’etre is to build brands and sell products. And to do so in a way that delivers greatest return on spend. Effective communication is not just about what you say, but how it’ll be received. To be relevant, accessible and salient requires a deep understanding of people and culture in all its rich tapestry.

If we reduce our audience to a one-dimensional monolith, then we will end up being exclusive by default or by design. For me, it’s less of a question of what we can do to promote the business benefits of inclusion. It’s the opposite.

We should ask why anyone would be exclusionary to the denigration of their work and the impact of their campaigns? Why narrow your frame of reference and be homogenous in your thinking and approach?

Being inclusive better equips us to address the most fundamental of questions: Who am I seeking to engage? What will resonate with them and make them take notice? What do they care about that might instigate action?

To reach the highest possible share of our target audience, and influence them to think, act or behave differently, inclusion must be an integral part of every aspect of our work, from strategy to creative, production to delivery.

To think of it as a bolt-on, or some sort of standalone initiative diminishes its importance.

When we launched Current Global we were intentional in making it an empowering place to work, where everyone can be themselves and grow. We are now one of the most diverse agencies in the comms industry. And we have codified inclusion through our human-first approach to everything we do.

But it’s more than people and processes. It’s an agency mindset that recognizes that inclusion is a powerful catalyst to more innovative, creative work.

Many things in life that started with improving accessibility are things that benefit everyone: The electric toothbrush, drop-curbs, voice recognition software, typewriters, bendy straws, audiobooks, and much, much more.

When we’re inclusive by design, we’re not only more representative and equitable to those who have been previously excluded, our work is better for all.

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