Making the business case
“It’s very difficult to agree on what is morally correct in this country,” said Sheryl Dajia, CEO and founder of the group Bridge, which works to advance DE&I efforts among marketers. “We are a very divided country right now. So we are moving the narrative away from philosophy, opinion and beliefs, because it’s not a business case when you do that. We’re moving our mission to be about helping companies operationalize inclusion as a business practice for growth, because we fundamentally believe inclusion is the next growth opportunity.”
A growing focus of Bridge’s work is on helping more than 40 companies identify gaps in their DE&I efforts within their own companies and among their own brands to improve their growth prospects, she said.
“You have marketers, CEOs and chief revenue officers from a bunch of companies all craving for a more practical way of driving inclusion as a business practice,” said Yin Woon Rani, CEO and CMO of MilkPEP and a Bridge board member. “We’re going to keep the faith, stay the course, do the work and manage the narrative, because what I know as a consumer marketer is that the appetite for diversity in the consumer population is much higher than what you see in the business headlines.”
Check out more DE&I news here
DE&I continues to have other high-profile industry champions too. The Association of National Advertisers adds “belonging” to the DEIB acronym mix, and in a talk at the group’s Advertising Financial Management Conference in Orlando last Monday, ANA CEO Bob Liodice noted that it’s been “knocked on its behind a couple of times in the past decade, first with COVID, and second with a Supreme Court decision that effectively frowned on a lot of the work that we’re doing. But we have empirical evidence, in fact a lot of evidence, that DEIB drives growth.”
He cited Manoj Raghunandanan, global president of self-care at Kenvue, saying, “What’s good for business is diversity. What’s good for us is to advocate for it in the right way.”
“If you pulled back. If you’ve hesistated. If you’re watching your steps very carefully, think again,” Liodice said. “It’s critically important, because it results in growth.”
He also cited Procter & Gamble Co. Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard saying, “multicultural marketing may be the single most important source of growth in our industry right now.”
Also read: Inside the multicultural marketing debate
E.l.f. seizes the moment
“As a CMO, you have a choice,” e.l.f.’s Marchisotto said, adding that one choice is “you have to make shit up” if you don’t have the facts to back up the message. On corporate board diversity, as with marketing generally, it’s better to have the facts on your side, she said.