Advertisers should support diverse voices by building partnerships with unique media owners, a new planning guide by the World Federation of Advertisers has urged.
The WFA’s Diversity & Representation: Focus on Media Planning and Buying guide highlights four key areas where bias can occur, while proposing questions and approaches that can be used to ensure progress.
The four areas are:
- Inclusive audience planning: ensuring audiences are diverse and inclusive at the planning stage;
- Supporting diverse voices: making deliberate decisions on media spend and building partnerships with unique media owners;
- Balancing brand safety with diversity: consciously managing brand suitability and safety alongside inclusion; and
- Measuring success: measuring all audiences fairly and investing in research.
It has been developed by the WFA Diversity Task Force with the support of GARM – the Global Alliance for Responsible Media
The initiative is led by WFA Diversity Ambassador Jerry Daykin and Diageo global media Director and WFA Media Forum co-chair, Isabel Massey. They said media was a critical element to consider when marketers tackle diversity gaps.
“We tend to think of diversity as a challenge for our creative or HR teams, but media also plays a critical role,” Daykin said. “The way a campaign is planned and bought can have a notable impact on reach & engagement across different audience groups.
“Making the right decisions can both ensure brands create more effective campaigns and, critically, play their part in funding a richer and more diverse media ecosystem. There is a delicate balance between ensuring we block hate speech but increase the funding of positive representative voices, and whilst the solutions can get technical, they all start with advertisers asking some of these simple questions in their brief.”
Daykin was EMEA senior director at GSK until he left the role in November.
Massey added: “It is our responsibility to not only create content that is reflective of today’s society, but for it to appear in media that is diverse and inclusive too. I am really proud that Diageo has committed to a multi-million-pound global investment over the next two years to media platforms and publishers who are working to make mainstream media more diverse and inclusive, and this guide from the WFA is a great point of reference for all advertisers.
“There’s still so much more progress to make and we need to work together with other brands, media owners, and agencies to drive industry-wide change.”
