The way we target consumers needs to change if brands are truly to embrace diversity
Jan Gooding talked recently about the commercial imperative for brands to embrace diversity by moving beyond stereotypes and reflecting the complexity of the world. Her challenge to the marketing industry is for us to embrace the differences between people to make better, more effective work.
When I read it I did a little fist pump and thought to myself ‘YES!' – a senior client is raising the bar on the topic of diversity by talking about its commercial and cultural importance in the same sentence. This struck a chord with me because at Livity we are obsessed with how brands have a duty to challenge the status quo, change the world and the face of the marketing industry as a whole. From where I stand, the marketing industry is broken. At best it’s embracing diversity when it tells a good story. At worst it’s full of the same people making the same work for the same old stereotypes.
So how do we make the change to marketing so that it keeps up with a changing, multicultural Britain and becomes a force for good?
We must start, not just with how we make creative work, but with who we put it in front of. The way we target audiences needs to change if brands are to really embrace diversity and see the positive effects that can have on business.
In his book, ‘How Things Become Popular’, Derek Thomson talks about the Paradox of Scale – the idea that the biggest hits in culture (film, music, tech, whatever) are made with a small, well-defined group in mind. George Lucas wrote Star Wars so that 10 year old boys would love it; Facebook was originally made to appeal to the friends of Harvard grads; Brahms wrote his famous lullaby for one mother.
This centres on the belief that if a small group of people truly love something then the chances are that this excitement can be infectious and everyone can start to fall in love with it, which is an approach we've used. We focus on specific groups first – linked by their interests rather than demographics – talk to the centre of those niches, and then use creativity to uncover the raw human truths that come from these groups.
The key is to uncover and celebrate the inherent emotion that comes out of someone’s unique, specific and diverse experience – beating your best mate in an epic battle on Fifa, landing your dream job because you absolutely smashed the recruitment process or fighting for something you believe in – and then sharing it with your biggest addressable audience. That’s how you make brands and their marketing more diverse: by telling real, diverse stories.
This isn’t a case for going back to hyper-targeting and moving away from the wisdom of Binet & Field or Byron Sharp that focuses on scale and fame as a driver of marketing effect. It’s about finding your creative energy with a small group and then using this authentic emotion to connect to as many people as possible.
And that’s where we arrive at the most diverse work possible – in those places where we celebrate connections between people beyond their gender, colour of their skin or where they live. When you focus on the specific experiences people have – the shared human truths rather than the stereotypes that divide them – that’s where the change happens.
Katy Woodrow Hill is strategy director at Livity