Active allyship: marketing’s secret sauce

By Paul Phillips, Strategy Partner & Board Member, and Co-Chair of OMG UK’s LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group

When talking about allyship, the discussions often centre around individuals and what steps they can take to be an active ally for minoritised communities. But true allyship touches all elements of society, including brands. Research by Kantar’s Global Monitor 2021 revealed that an astonishing 88% of consumers agree that “not enough brands do a good job of representing people similar to me or my community”. That’s a mighty disconnect.

As one of the biggest media agency groups in the UK, Omnicom Media Group UK (OMG UK) works with market-leading brands and we’re in the business of forging authentic connections between brands (our clients) and the audiences they seek to engage.

We saw further evidence of this consumer disconnect through the thought leadership programme The Real Britain Series, developed by one of our agencies, OMD. Putting a spotlight on under- and mis-represented groups to understand the challenges they face surfaced a similar detachment: Only 24% of LGBTQ+ respondents saw themselves authentically represented in advertising. Add on more layers of intersectionality and they recede further into the shadows: only 20% of Disabled LGBTQ+ adults and 16% of LGBTQ+ adults aged 50+ saw themselves sensitively reflected in ads.

At OMG UK we not only practice active allyship to overcome this disconnect and to get to more authentic work for our clients but are also committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce that reflects our society.

We embrace the opportunity to empower this rich pool of talent – those that belong to marginalised communities – to step up and keep us right in our sensitive engagement of those communities, internally and externally.

But if we realistically expect them to do so we recognise that we must make our colleagues from those communities feel comfortable enough to self-identify and represent within our agencies, and therein lies the challenge: a report from The Deloitte University Leadership Center for Inclusion revealed that 61% of all employees ‘cover’ their identities in some way, “for fear of drawing unwanted attention or making others uncomfortable”. Compounding this reluctance to openly badge oneself is our category’s much younger age profile: the IPA Agency Census in 2020 gave the average employee age in a UK media agency as 32. We know from abundant research, including this Time magazine article published last year, that younger cohorts simply refuse to be defined, badged, or siloed in a binary way, preferring to embrace their gender and sexual fluidity. They may simply choose not to self-identify.

So, if organisations are to expect colleagues to self-identify and keep us right in their work, they must first create an environment of noisy acceptance and support. They should practice, in their recruitment and appraisal of people, a shift from a ‘Culture Fit’ mentality – in which there’s an expectation of colleagues to align with company values – to a culture based predominantly on allyship, asking people what wonderful difference they can add. The dividends for such a culture shift aren’t just warm and fluffy feels; McKinsey’s ‘Diversity Wins’ report shows empirically that a business that is truly and openly nationally-representative are 25% more likely to outperform the competition. There is gold in those hills.

These are principles we embody at OMG UK. But it isn’t just about a promise of acceptance on appointment. Once in our businesses, we want our colleagues to know they have year-round equity. OMG UK’s LGBTQ+ employee resource group (ERG), with the robust support of OMG’s People Teams, have worked to ensure that inclusion at OMG is ingrained in the full employee lifecycle. Our LGBTQ+ ERG’s promise is “Pride All Year Round”, with year-long initiatives such as accessible learning resources, gender-neutral bathrooms, inclusive HR policies, and a variety of live and online events where everyone can participate. It’s active allyship incarnate, with our collective efforts rewarded this year with Gold Accreditation in the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index and Top 40 placement in their UK’s Top 100 Employers list.

And, critically, it does precisely what we intend: creates a culture in which our people will step up, represent, and keep us right in authentic engagement of their communities on our clients’ behalf. Not only are they creating inspiring work, but they are delivering on campaigns for our clients that are lauded for their authenticity, engaging members of the communities in a considered and tailored way.

All of which bears witness to the fact that allyship is not only the right thing to do for your people, but it’s also good for business. Consumers that see themselves authentically represented are not only 2.7x more likely to buy the brand, but 50% more likely to repurchase it and twice as likely to recommend it.