This session ran inside the IRG100 program and was built around a call for change from Antonio Lucio, the program’s marketing diversity and inclusion partner. Its agenda was an introduction and learning, the call for change, breakout discussions, and a plenary debrief.
Lucio’s framing is blunt: it is a time of reckoning for the nation and for his industry.
Key findings
- Leading CEOs treat building diversity as a key priority, but the deck’s own summary of the record is that there is lots of talk and little change.
- Women became the majority of CMOs across the period shown, moving from 45 percent in 2018 to 48 percent in 2019 and 52 percent in 2020.
- Racial representation did not move over the same years. The figures stay at roughly 87 to 88 percent Caucasian, with African American, Asian, and Hispanic shares in the low single digits, and the deck concludes that marketing remains far from racial diversity.
- More diverse strategic decision making is measured at 45 percent against 70 percent.
- The benefits of diversity are described as well documented, and resilience is singled out as the critical one. The warning attached is against filling quotas, and to treat diversity and inclusion as two things.
Where marketing can act
The focus areas named for marketing are the team, the bench, agencies, partners, production, media, and content. Alongside them the session asks leaders to set goals and measure and track them publicly, and to join industry initiatives.
Three campaigns are held up as success stories: The Look from P&G, The More Mexican They Are from Aeromexico, and True Name from Mastercard.
The personal behaviors asked of the leader are to role model, celebrate internal wins, run inclusive meetings and discussions, make inclusive HR decisions, and open the mind and listen differently.
Where the session sits in the program
The session is part of the IRG100 roadmap, in the how module alongside human-centric transformation, open culture, and whole-brained, and it is listed there as diversity for growth.
The program was working toward a virtual Cannes finale on June 21, at which participants would finalize a humanized growth ambition and develop a humanized growth plan covering corporate initiatives and new value propositions. The finale included expert advice from Conny Braams of Unilever, Sanda Ojiambo of the United Nations Global Compact, Mark Read of WPP, Carol Chen of Shell, and Hans Ploos van Amstel of The Partners Group, and the election of a Humanized Growth Champion 2021.
Participants were asked to capture a personal success to share and a challenge to discuss, first in a three minute briefing and then in a 45 minute breakout.
Scope and limitations
The representation figures cover CMOs over three years and are presented without a stated sample or source on the slide, and the strategic decision making comparison is given as a pair of percentages without a definition of the groups.
Source
This page summarises Unlocking the Power of Diversity, by Institute for Real Growth, 2021-05-25.