Embracing Diversity in Advertising Creative for Brands

Having been at Vidmob for the past five years and evolving with a high-growth startup, I’ve seen incredible progression in our offerings. However, this week’s product announcement might be the one I am most excited about – the Diversity Report. It merges our AI technology with our company goals and marks our commitment to diversity in advertising. It represents a leap forward in how brands can start to understand diversity within their advertising portfolios.

In an era where brand loyalty is increasingly dependent on a brand’s social impact, it has become imperative for companies to ensure their advertising meets these expectations. Despite commendable strides by many global brands toward prioritizing diversity in advertising, many groups remain under-represented, as highlighted by the World Federation of Advertisers Global DEI Census 2023. This gap in representation is not just a missed opportunity for connection with audiences; it’s a call to action for brands to reassess how their values align with their creative output.

A Safe Space for Progress

The introduction of Vidmob’s Diversity Report is our answer to this call to action. Our diversity report offers brands a view into how their advertising efforts represent diversity across various dimensions – including skin tone, physical presentation, and age. Armed with that data, brands can then determine the right benchmarks for individual products, regions, and create actionable insights that can guide them toward more inclusive advertising practices.

All of that being said, I’m well aware after talking to hundreds of brands over the course of my career that DEI efforts are, and should be, extremely nuanced and constantly changing, so expecting to nail it quickly is unrealistic. But, thanks to AI, the way we can approach diversity assessments in advertising has been revolutionized. We can automate these evaluations quickly, without human bias, and across global asset catalogs with the touch of a button. Diversity reports give teams a place to start or improve upon existing DEI initiatives. Marketers and agencies can access unbiased data to understand where their brands currently stand with representation of talent and use the data as a shared language in conversations (hopefully with a diverse team) as to where they should/want to be. 

The Business Case for Diversity

Beyond the moral imperatives, there are dozens of compelling business cases for diversity in advertising. Studies from our partners, Amazon and Meta, have shown that consumers prefer to buy from brands that not only stand for diversity but actively promote it in their advertising efforts. Moreover, campaigns with diverse representation tend to have higher recall rates, pointing to the potential for improved campaign and sales performance. 

If you’re trying to make a case for having an individual or team dedicated to DEI efforts, here are some great articles to include in your presentation. 

• Gender Equality Index
• IRI GEM Lift Study
• Geena Davis Institute: Channeling Black Audiences: Nielsen Study Shows Inclusivity Equals Profitability
• Facebook study
• Amazon

A Future Focused on Inclusive Creativity

The advertising we create and disseminate plays a crucial role in shaping perceptions and narratives. By providing brands with the tools to understand and improve their diversity representation, we are taking a significant step toward a more inclusive advertising ecosystem — and hopefully —a more emotionally-connected world (with the wonderful byproduct of improving the company’s bottom line).  

Let’s keep the conversation going, staying open to learning and improving the world of advertising and DEI, progress trumps perfection every single time. Here’s to making our content more like the diverse world they speak to, one ad at a time.