Giving a voice to underrepresented; What is your brand vision
Brands often engage and respond to society’s calls to become an agent of change and make a social impact. With a legitimacy-seeking motivation to ultimately secure their survival, brands tend to adopt two key legitimacy-seeking strategies when addressing social issues. They may passively conform to external pressures, or proactively adopt strategies to address social issues. Often brands find it convenient to take a passive approach by mimicking referenced behaviours of leading brands that take a proactive approach.
Over time, different social movements and events become major points to acknowledge the challenges of disadvantaged, underrepresented and discriminated against groups and communities. They also become major points to reflect on previous practices intentionally or unintentionally contributing to such challenges.
Mardi Gras is one of those events that gives brands the opportunity and platform to express passion and commitment for diversity and inclusion, and to contribute to social acceptance, belongingness, equality, and empowerment. For some brands, it is a starting point for acknowledgement, reflection and action, but for many others, it is a point to conform and tick the box of good corporate citizenship, and then move on to the next event on the agenda.
‘Rainbow washing’ moves, such as slapping a rainbow onto the company logo and running pride-themed ad campaigns during the Mardi Gras season suggest such brands check their event calendar before becoming social warriors, to see if it is the right time. ‘I care for the LGBTQA+ community, only during the Mardi Gras period,’ these moves say. Commitment to equality and inclusion shouldn’t be limited to one-off moves and requires round-the-clock continuity.
With consumers becoming more and more socially conscious and critical, and turning callouts and cancel culture into the new norm, brands won’t gain a competitive edge if they have a myopic view and short-term approach toward supporting LGBTQA+ communities and giving the underrepresented a voice. It may actually put the spotlight on them within the community for scrutiny in relation to whether their actions back up their words.
If a brand is genuine, and sees itself as committed to making a social impact, it needs to have a clear long-term vision that can guide future moves and practices. A well-informed, clear vision will prevent the brand from drifting aimlessly and having just passive responses. Here, I suggest three components of a commitment-based vision for supporting the underrepresented:
Commitment continuity vs bandwagoning
A 2020 study conducted by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media found that just 1.8 percent of characters in ads from the annual Cannes Lions festival were LGBTQ, while Gallup reports that 5.6 per cent of US adults identify as LGBTQ. So, adopting a bursting strategy — pushing for LGBTQA+ values during Mardi Gras season — and then forgetting the issue for the rest of the year, fails the continuous commitment test. Perhaps one of the reasons brands are labelled opportunistic is that they are associated with a lack of commitment over time.
Level of commitment
Besides the choice of long-term vs short-term, one-off vs ongoing commitment, brands also need to decide the degree of commitment, and the depth and breadth of their involvement. Broadly classifying, brands’ commitment vision to making a social impact can fall into one of these major categories:
- Advocating and inspiring
Regardless of the focus of the business, whether selling ice-cream or soft drink, brands can integrate a significant level of commitment in advocating for inclusive values and inspiring the community. This is the approach taken by the majority of brands, advocating for inclusion and diversity values. However, the risk is that they may become a moral lecturer if they don’t practise that for which they advocate.
- Championing products
Creative brands communicate their message indirectly and through practice — championing their product to become the means of enabling diversity. It can simply mean a diverse product range that represents different groups of the community. Or it can be products that fulfil the functional and non-functional needs of different groups (for example, Joe Doucet’s graphic rugs celebrating the transgender community).
Commitment accountability
To avoid becoming a brand that only promises to do good things for society, a greater degree of accountability is necessary. Brands should report on how their moves are aligned with their inclusion vision, and how impactful their moves have been.
Several leading brands now have a social impact report, where they outline the objectives, the commitments, and the outcomes of such moves. In other words, while brands can continue rainbowing their brand packaging and their Twitter account, and advocating for equality and social acceptance, they need to report on the impact of such moves on the communities they were trying to help give a voice. Here are some questions brands can consider to evaluate the effectiveness of their actions:
- From last year’s Mardi Gras to this year, how did you contribute towards the underrepresentation of LGBTQA+ community — in the workforce for instance.
- What changes did you make to your products and services to better represent such communities?
- Have your moves increased awareness? How deeply have they influenced the status quo and stigmas?
- Have the general public’s perceptions of underrepresented groups been positively affected over time as a result of your initiatives?
