Break it, build it: Time to ensure our industry’s diversity and inclusion story has a happy ending
Simon Wassef, chief strategy officer at WhiteGrey, says the industry is overdue for a look of self-reflection in order to help it rise.
Spoiler alert: without serious deconstruction and reconstruction, our industry’s diversity and inclusion story will not have a happy ending. The best candidate won’t just magically get the job. People from minority backgrounds won’t just be able to rise up.
The answer isn’t ‘hiring on merit’ or more ‘dialogue.’ It’s acknowledging that genuine transformation will come from letting those who live the experience of being marginalised take the mic like the future of our industry depends on it. Because it does. It’s proven. Diversity drives growth in creativity, organisational culture and the bottom line.
Advertising was the original home for misfits, as Tony Hale brilliantly put it. But it feels like we’ve forgotten where we came from. Choosing grad scheme candidates based on the university they went to. Struggling to bring black and Indigenous talent into our industry. Bemused by Cannes juries that aren’t representative. Stuck with a gender wage gap of anything between 2-10%.
