Where Your Ad Dollars Actually Go: The Real Work of Inclusive Marketing
Why True Inclusive Advertising Should Be Less About the Message and More About the Invoice
The collapse of corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) departments didn't surprise me.
The shock for me was how fast companies transitioned from an action of support to no action at all (performative allyship), when there is in reality a third option available to them. The real way to shine through inclusive advertising is not to put up rainbow logos in June or a black square in celebration of Black History Month.
The real way to shine through an inclusive advertisement is how your company spends money (who is making money through your advertisement), because the difference between representation and equity is found in the invoice, not the Instagram caption.
The Window Dressing Economy
Brands have historically considered diversity as nothing more than another marketing tactic instead of a true business imperative; they would run a campaign with diverse faces, give themselves a pat on the back, and then return to working with the same agency, the same media buyer and the same non diverse owned businesses, while the same agencies, the same media buyers and the same non diverse owned media platforms kept the checks.
That was never about inclusion; that’s just dressing the window with a media budget.
The issue goes beyond just the optics of diversity; to put this into perspective, the Black and African American population have a combined purchasing power of $1.8 trillion, while Black-owned media companies receive an estimated 2 percent of total ad spend; Hispanic consumers collectively hold a total of $2.7 trillion in purchasing power and Asian Americans have another $1.3 trillion.
These aren’t niche markets; they’re the market. Despite this, companies that can connect with these communities in a true and authentic way and have an understanding of the cultural context and are trusted by their communities have a very difficult time doing so, while legacy media platforms are reaping the majority of the media spending.
DEI departments in corporations attempted to fix this externally from an HR perspective. They focused on internal representation through employee resource groups and sensitivity training. While all of these initiatives are necessary, they have not addressed the external ecosystem of media that connects to these diverse communities.
As such, while you may have a diverse team in your office, you can still send millions of dollars to the same homogenous media partners that you have always done; and the system continues as is. But understanding what failed only matters if we're willing to look at what actually moves the needle.
Follow the Money, Not the Mission Statement
The first thing to do to find out if the ad campaign you are about to run is inclusive or not is to answer this question: Who gets paid? Often when we think of the people getting paid, we think of who is in the project(e.g. actors, models, etc.) or who has an active role in the creative development of the project (e.g. copywriters, designers, etc.).
However, we also need to focus on how much each of those participants is being invoiced for, and what do those invoices reveal about how these various roles have different ownership structures.
When you purchase media through diverse-owned publications, you are supporting additional growth of the communities that have historically provided many of your impressions but have traditionally been extracted from. The money that you are spending for those impressions goes far beyond purchasing those impressions.
The money that you spend on that media goes towards paying people's salaries, funding newsrooms, keeping media platforms alive to serve as a cultural anchor/information source/community gathering space, and creating new wealth in communities where wealth has been/continues to be systemically denied.
This isn't philanthropy, this is being a good business person. Media outlets that are diverse-owned are much better at understanding how to target their audiences than those of traditional media outlets.
These diverse-owned media outlets have developed a trusted relationship with the communities that they serve through years of telling their community's stories and being present for them beyond just their latest cultural moment.
By advertising in diverse-owned media, you will not be asking for permission to enter into their community, you will be accepted into their community through established gatekeepers of credibility.
Metrics support this idea that culturally relevant platforms always do better than generic media buys with how engaged people are, how they convert, and building brand loyalty over time. People are attracted to authenticity, and authenticity cannot be created by using stock photos or focus-grouped taglines. Real relationships are created by real publishers who do this work every day.
There is a strong business case for marketers to use culturally competent platforms, yet there are practical reasons why most marketers do not share those reasons publicly.
The System Wasn't Built for This
Most brands, however, don’t understand that wanting to work with diverse-owned media is not sufficient; the ability to do so at scale is underdeveloped and underfunded, as there are minimal resources available for such transactions, as they are often routed through traditional media buying platforms that were not designed to support those types of outlets.
The issue is not one of bias, although that has certainly played a factor; it is essentially inertia; it is much simpler to continue using the same platforms as before that have large sales forces, automated systems, and regular quarterly golf outings, as opposed to pursuing other avenues that would require ultimately both intention and leadership relating to the issue in order to be able to make investing in them a priority.
A few brands are beginning to understand this issue and have created direct relationships with diverse-owned publications. Additionally, they have restructured their receiving process to ensure that diverse-owned publications have the same opportunity to compete for advertising within their market as more traditional forms of media would.
Furthermore, they are committing to a percentage of their overall advertising budget for diverse-owned publications and are starting to reap the rewards not only in terms of advertising metrics but also from a reputational standpoint within the communities that they profess to care about. But one-off campaigns won't fix a structural problem that requires structural thinking.
Partnerships Over Transactions
Moving from just DEI messaging to actual inclusion requires looking beyond quarterly campaigns. It means creating partnerships versus transactions. It means understanding that when you support, through investment, diversity owned media, you are supporting the overall health of the ecosystem that benefits all of us who exist within it.
It means making multi-year commitments as opposed to one-time buys. It means paying rates that align with true value, and not paying bargain-basement cost per thousand impressions (CPMs) just because you can work down the smaller publisher, or share data, resources and behave with these partnerships as if they were any other strategic vendor relationship.
It also means sharing data and resources and behaving with these partnerships as if they were any other strategic vendor relationship. When you are doing business with media outlets who have their own voice and their own editorial standards; you will not dictate how they cover you. You will earn it. This may be uncomfortable for brands who have operated solely on paid and purchased placements, however, this is what provides the credibility of the relationship between the brand and the outlet.
The audience can differentiate between paid placements and authentic endorsements. The question remains; is the senior leadership ready to shift their respective businesses without utilizing a DEI department to facilitate these changes?
Where Responsibility Lives Now
It is up to media buyers, chief marketing officers (CMOs), and other procurement professionals to change this reality since DEI departments do not exist. There is no value in performing these actions if they have no impact.
No one is going to release press releases because they complete insertion orders differently; however, changing the way you do your insertion orders has a huge impact on the economic reality of hundreds of media outlets who are struggling to stay open when they have never been properly valued in the industry.
True inclusion requires making a purchase order, it means changing who you do business with, it means expanding your vendor lists, it means developing relationships with new platforms, and it means treating diverse owned media and their owners as core business partners rather than simply achieving a check mark next to diversity. It also requires taking an interest in the infrastructure that supports representation.
Brands that figure this out will not only do the right thing but also will be ahead of the market shift that is already happening; younger consumers are looking for authenticity and will quickly identify performative behaviours from a distance; they expect to see brands investing in the communities that they claim to care about through actual investment (dollars); not through declarative statements.
That shift is happening whether brands are ready for it or not, which means the time to act is shorter than most marketers think.
The Playbook Is Simple, The Execution Requires Courage
If you're a marketer reading this, wondering where to start, it's simpler than you think. Start with your existing media plan. Identify all of the media outlets that you currently buy from and find out how many of them are owned by someone who is from a racially diverse group. You then need to think about how you would go about finding and vetting potential alternative media suppliers that are owned by a diverse business owner.
It will take more effort to create a diverse supplier base than it has thus far taken to establish your current media buying base, but that's the goal. If we are truly serious about establishing an inclusive media ecosystem, we need to be prepared to put in the work to accomplish this, and the companies that will do this now will set themselves up to be the ones that lead in the future.
You do not have to have a DEI department to take action here; However, you do have to make the decision that it is a priority for you, and to align your spending with that priority. There is no complicated playbook for accomplishing this. The missing link to achieve this is simply courage.
You have a choice between using corporate messaging or remaining silent. Your choice is therefore going to be between making an extractive investment or making an investment that builds wealth for a diverse community from your media investment. As we know, inclusion is not created by how an advertisement was created; it is created through the agreements that are made to pay for an advertisement.
