Marketing Agencies need to Embrace Diversity

We want to let you in on a dirty little secret.

The marketing industry doesn't embrace diversity in its hiring as much as it does in the campaigns it produces.

We went looking for a singular study, the most recent, that breaks down the demographics of people in the marketing industry.

If you’ve worked in marketing agencies for any length of time, you’ll know that a quick Google search didn’t bring back the results we were looking for, but the results weren’t surprising.

Headlines such as "Marketing's Diversity Problem," "The Advertising and Marketing Industry Has a Diversity Problem," and "How do you Solve Diversity Problem."

Our industry develops brilliant advertisements featuring mixed-race families for Cheerios without making a deal about it or the wonderful Airbnb’s Host with Pride campaigns.

Unfortunately, the creatives and executives in our industry don't represent the same cross-section of society that makes up our audience.

One of the many things we take pride in at Merchant North is that when you step into our Ville de Montréal office, you'll see the same people as you see on the streets of this multiculturally diverse city.

Montreal is just behind Toronto as the most diverse city in Canada. The two cities routinely rank in the top 10 as the most culturally diverse cities in the world.

Montreal is home to an estimated 120 different cultural communities, 34.2% of which are from racialized groups. 56% of the city is bi-lingual, and 24% is tri-lingual.

The city is again ranked the second most gay-friendly city in Canada, behind Toronto but ahead of Vancouver at number three.

Merchant North reflects the city we call home.

We won't use this column to shame the #marketing and #advertising agencies that don't embrace #multiculturalism and #genderdiversity, but we will highlight many of the benefits they're missing.

The American Sociological Review, from 2009, indicates that companies with the highest racial diversity brought in 15x more sales revenue than those in their study with the lowest diversity.

McKinsey & Co. tracks the performance of large companies globally in their "Diversity Wins" reports, which track Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. They've done so since 2014, with their latest findings including data from over 1000 companies.

The data indicates that companies with over 30% women executives are far more likely to outperform companies with 10-30% women in the executive ranks. Not surprisingly, both groups outperform companies with less than 10% women in their executives.

In terms of profit, companies in the top 25% of ethnic and cultural diversity outperformed the bottom 25% by 36%.

CloverPop, a decision intelligence platform that helps large organizations "make the best decisions," analyzed its app data for diversity and decision-making.

In a whitepaper, they noted that statistically speaking, teams made up of decision-makers with diverse age, gender, and geographical makeup make the best decisions 87% of the time.

It's 21% higher than the average team's decisions included in their analysis.

The worst group was the decision-making group of all men, who scored just 58%, 6% points before the average in their study.

In the creative departments of marketing agencies, hiring people from various cultural or ethnic backgrounds boosts capabilities and expands the potential client pool.

Having more people who have experienced life through a different lens helps your agency speak authentically and gives a broader understanding of the potential highs and pitfalls of campaign ideas.

Better decisions, greater profits, and a larger potential client pool are all well and good, but we don't need sociological studies or white papers from big data companies to tell us what we already know.

Working at an agency as culturally and gender diverse as the city where we live is a beautiful thing.

It's a joy to come to the office every day. A joy to Come as you are.

Merchant North is hiring, and we'd love to hear from you.

Make the call.

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