How Elephant’s XD Academy is helping to diversify the industry

We know that within creative industries, there is a dearth of diverse talent. One need only to look at the widespread reporting or workforce data voluntarily published by agencies and brands (including our own) to see how sorely lacking the advertising industry’s hiring practices have been. We know the roots of occupational discrimination are deep and systemic. Whether due to a lack of opportunities in underserved communities or unconscious and implicit biases that direct Black and Brown youth into certain fields over others, what is certainly missing is the exposure to possibility and access to education.

We, as the creative industry, have the ability to identify this problem, reckon with our past and make a difference for future generations of creatives. And in order to foster bright, young, diverse minds, we should utilize one of our most powerful tools: education.

Introducing Elephant XD Academy

At Elephant, we decided to turn our commitment to change into action—we made changing the face of talent in our industry a key priority for the company.

We began by participating in the 4A’s Foundation and its Face of Talent series of events, which connects advertising and marketing leaders with the next generation of diverse talent. We partnered with 4A’s Multicultural Advertising Intern Program (MAIP), and we created two partnerships for change with organizations whose missions focus on empowering future leaders: All Star Code in New York, and Fulfillment Fund in Los Angeles.

But the initiative we’re most proud of is one we created internally to develop new diverse talent: the Elephant XD Academy. The XD Academy, now in its second year, is focused on BIPOC talent who have an interest in our field but limited exposure to it; they are either students enrolled in higher education or people on their own unique career journey. Participants must apply to the program, and are generally sourced through our partnership with the 4A’s MAIP. The XD Academy is entirely free, and once accepted the only requirements are time and passion.

The academy in action

The XD Academy is a nine-week, part-time virtual boot camp designed to teach the core skills and foundations of digital product design. The sessions combine instruction from Elephant experts across disciplines––research, strategy, interaction design, motion prototyping and storytelling—through work sessions, presentations and independent assignments.

 Building on our inaugural XD Academy in 2020, we took the curriculum a step further in 2021 by giving the students a “real life” assignment to develop and execute. Teaming up with our client Malwarebytes, the industry leader in cybersecurity and protection, we challenged the Academy students to come up with new ways to amplify the Malwarebytes brand. We wanted them to generate leads, have consumers consider the company differently and deliver on Malwarebytes' positioning: “cyber protection for every one.”

One of Malwarebytes’ core beliefs is that everyone has the right to cyber protection, and this extends to audiences of the digitally vulnerable: older family members, multigenerational families, kids in school, entrepreneurs, small business owners, schools, day cares and mobile businesses (farmers’ markets, craft-based small businesses, food trucks, etc.). The assignment proved to be timely, considering the occurrence of cybercrime and identity theft has only increased during the pandemic, making the need to protect vulnerable audiences all the more imperative.

Our 2021 XD Academy participants were Eda Kutsal, Edwin Aristilde, Evelyn Chat, Gabrielle Cashe, Janeil Dickens, Melisa Robles Olivar, Paul Flores-Clavel and Zanah Maggio. These eight passionate creatives embarked on the nine-week boot camp and client challenge, and we were all so impressed by the ideas that emerged from their teams. They were creative, insightful, grounded in research and beautifully told.

Here are their final projects:

Mal—The First Viral Anti-Virus

Team 1: Evelyn Chat and Janeil Dickens

Insight: Among consumer audiences (and especially Gen Z), prevailing sentiments are that they are not “high profile” enough to be appealing targets to hackers, that what they have on their devices is enough to protect them from cyberattacks and that if they do need protection, it needs to be convenient and easy.

Idea: Meet “Mal,” antivirus protection in the form of a shareable, virtual pet: a peer-to-peer virus fighter that you share to protect your friends and family. Mal is customizable and “easily transmissible” via social media, and is gamified to encourage the spread and unlock more premium features and protection.

Impact: Mal enables you to spread cyber protection at scale through a “highly infectious” and fun antivirus-virus, to protect yourselves, your families and all of your connections from cyberattacks and harm.

Leave No One Behind

Team 2: Gabrielle Cashe, Melisa Robles Olivar and Paul Flores-Clavel

Insight: Because cybersecurity literacy varies and can feel like an unachievable personal responsibility, this often leaves our most vulnerable at risk to cyber harm. In an increasingly digital-reliant world, Malwarebytes reminds us to leave no one behind.

Idea: “The Fam Bam”: an application that the whole family can use—inclusive of all generations—with a simple dashboard, threat reports and live chat features to connect directly to a Malwarebytes agent to resolve issues in real time. Everyone is used to family plans for today’s digital services, and the Fam Bam adopts that paradigm for cybersecurity.

Impact: With the Fam Bam, you’re never really alone, and your whole family is protected from cyberthreats and harm.

Defender by Malwarebytes

Team 3: Eda Kutsal, Edwin Aristilde and Zanah Maggio

Insight: For many people, “cybersecurity” doesn’t resonate in the same way that “privacy” does. Privacy is more personal and real, whereas cybersecurity seems more impersonal and intangible. Talking about privacy and protection in your digital life is a way to immediately connect with people in a way that they inherently understand.

Idea: Defender by Malwarebytes will monitor and optimize the apps on your mobile device to minimize cyber risks. It will use personal privacy as a way to connect with people in a tangible and familiar way, help protect them and their loved ones from cyberattacks and allow users to see how their apps are using them.

Impact: With Defender by Malwarebytes, control is given back to the consumer, empowering them through intelligence and knowledge, exposing what their apps are actually doing in the background, and instilling confidence through information.

Congratulations to the XD Academy’s new faces of talent!

“I was so inspired by the ideas the Elephant XD Academy students came up with and honored that the Malwarebytes brand and mission played a central role in this important program to bring more diversity to creative professions,” said Dariusz Paczuski, chief marketing officer of Malwarebytes. “Congratulations to the XD Academy 2021 graduates!”

We started Elephant XD Academy with a single purpose: to help educate and provide opportunities for the next generation of diverse talent for our industry. Please join us in congratulating our 2021 graduates: Eda Kutsal, Edwin Aristilde, Evelyn Chat, Gabrielle Cashe, Janeil Dickens, Melisa Robles Olivar, Paul Flores-Clavel and Zanah Maggio.