The Growth Agenda Podcast: Brands must be bold, embrace diversity from the fringes and relook at board makeup

In episode three of The Growth Agenda podcast, CEO at a leading tourism organisation, top boss at a major ad agency and an exec creative director discuss why brands must show courage and a commitment to change-making and what this means in the diversity stakes.

Episode 3 of the The Growth Agenda podcast features (from L-R); Pia Chaudhuri, executive creative director at BMF, Sally Kissane, chief executive officer of Ogilvy Australia, Catrin Allsop, chief executive officer of Australia’s South West tourism organisation and host and editor of The Growth Agenda, Pippa Chambers

Brands need to move from being mirrors of mass audiences and make more conscious decisions to embrace diversity from the fringes, according to guests on the latest podcast from The Growth Agenda.

In discussing what courage and a commitment to change-making looks like and what this means in the diversity stakes, executive creative director at BMF Pia Chaudhuri, CEO at Australia's South West tourism organisation Catrin Allsop and Ogilvy Australia CEO Sally Kissane hit off an array of topics in episode three.

Ms Chaudhuri, who co-founded Only One In The Room, a collective formed last year to increase diversity in advertising, spoke about the new Destroy This Brief initiative that invites people to respond to a brief with game-changing diversity ideas. She also spoke about the role of agencies in helping guide brands towards making decisions about casting in ads.

“We have clients who it's not even a question that they would have a diverse cast and then you have other clients who have just never done it before, but with every step of the way it’s about reassuring them that it’s not going to upset [what they consider] their ‘bread and butter’ audience,” Ms Chaudhuri said.

She explained that while “unfortunately” a default starting position for many marketers is often white male – with some estimates based on census data that this group is only actually only 10 per cent of the population – many can be afraid of stepping away from this “overwhelmingly over-represented group”.

“While many brands and marketers still see the idea of actually leading their content with a diverse group as a risk, the real risk is that we‘re excluding the vast majority of the population [in our content],” she said.

“My advice to marketers would be to have the courage to lead with the other 90 per cent of us, but obviously in an authentic way.”

She added that in order to do so, this starts with having a diverse team creating the content and conversations must be around “absolute inclusion versus tokenistic inclusion” in order to make the real breakthroughs.

Western Australia-based Ms Allsop, who drives the implementation of Australia’s South West’s strategic marketing plan across intrastate, interstate and international markets, discussed the company’s latest ad campaign Queens On The Edge.

Created by 303 MullenLowe Perth, the content-led tourism campaign and video series featured a highly underrepresented demographic in advertising content – older women.

Ms Allsop explained how it had confidence in rejecting the common tourism style of young generations running along beaches as it had strong research and a devoted clarity of message. The campaign cut through and results also proved that it was a smart decision for the business.

“It was about sticking to that and not clouding that message with other age groups,” she said.

The biggest risk she argued was around balancing the new casting decisions with being edgy enough.

“It's really given us the courage to have more diversity in our campaigns,” Ms Allsop added.

“It's been a win-win that now helps us think more outside the square going forward as we try to be more effective.”

Ms Kissane said the construction and composition of boards across Australia also need to be looked at as this can often be “a reflection of everything that's wrong” with diversity. She also added that positions for junior employees should also be considered on board to open up new levels of conversations.

Listen to the full episode at theaustralian.com.au/podcasts