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There is an unfortunate backward slide on DEI efforts happening in marketing, after a surge following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Consumer backlash has curtailed many programs at companies ranging from Bud Light to Target and most recently Tractor Supply, while agencies and businesses alike have scaled back their internal DEI agendas.
However, two agencies are doubling down on their DEI efforts, and making a business case for them. Ogilvy is helping its employees and clients connect through a program that reaches across offices and countries to ensure that everyone gets to know each other through their differences and similarities. Fitzco has created a diverse panel to review its work before it goes out to the public to make sure it supports inclusivity.
These aren’t the only agencies making a business case for diversity and inclusion, but programs like theirs highlight the need for the marketing world to stay the course.
A modern exchange of ideas
Ogilvy promotes a concept called “borderless creativity,” part of which is manifested in the Modern Exchange program. The idea came from Barbara Polanco, art director at Ogilvy’s Los Angeles office. She initially asked Tope Ajala, the agency’s global head of DEI, to connect her with other senior colleagues within Ogilvy, as well as clients, to spark conversations that would help inform her work.
That served as a challenge to the executive team to better connect their people globally.
“Six months after, [Polanco] came back with a big proposal: ‘I think the best way we can do this is to have something called the Modern Exchange,’” Ajala told ADWEEK.
That proposal led to the team gathering junior and senior level talent across the business and connecting them in a series of video conversations with candid dialogue.
An employee originally from the Dominican Republic talked with someone in the U.K. and found similarities through food, while Ogilvy’s CCO in Germany had a two-hour dialogue with a junior creative, and they’ve become partners and sponsors.
Having people and ideas come together helps the agency celebrate diversity, but also uncovers connections that might lead to better work and more progressive business practices. Ogilvy leaned into its commitment to DEI, utilizing a minority-owned company to do the production on the Modern Exchange video project.
