The majority of the top 50 brands that post content to social media are 23 years behind in terms of reflecting the actual racial makeup of America, based on U.S. Census data, according to a recent analysis by BRIDGE, an independent trade organization for progressing diversity, equity and inclusion in marketing.

That analysis was used as the jumping-off point for BRIDGE's new Inclusion Maturity Assessment and Capability Building Program (dubbed IMAX for short), which it is launching to help brands implement inclusion as a business practice across their entire organizations, internally and externally, to drive growth. 

“Our whole mission is to move the narrative of DE&I away from philosophy to operationalizing inclusion as a business practice because we fundamentally believe that it's the next opportunity for business growth,” said Sheryl Daija, the founder and CEO of BRIDGE, which is an acronym for the gaps within belonging, representation, inclusion, diversity and equity. “Unfortunately, we have seen the attacks that can happen when you're talking about philosophy, opinions and beliefs, versus when you have something that is steeped with the same rigor that other business practices have.”

Marketers including Campbell Soup Co., Condé Nast and Sephora are piloting the program, which involves evaluating the equities and inequities that exist for underrepresented communities across companies’ product availability, pricing structures and services. The program starts with understanding where companies are in terms of their inclusion efforts both internally and externally—rating them on a maturity scale across 72 business practices and five dimensions of the workplace and marketplace. Then, a team of experts works on how to tackle the gaps they identify and implement change for the companies.

Read more about BRIDGE here

“We were excited about BRIDGE's IMAX program as it extends beyond the scope of existing DE&I assessments that are primarily focused on culture and the workplace to include marketplace actions,” said Abigail Jacobs, senior VP of brand and integrated marketing, Sephora. “As a retailer with extensive programs around building equity across our business, and especially our stores, we’re always working to ensure that our practices drive positive impact and change.”

IMAX is led by BRIDGE's board of directors and steering committee, as well as an academic team that included Omar Rodríguez-Vilá, professor of marketing and director of education at the Business & Society Institute at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School; Sundar Bharadwaj, professor of marketing at University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business; and Dionne Nickerson, assistant professor of marketing at Indiana University.

The program evaluates DE&I across various areas of a company including within the organization, their marketing management processes, commercial practices, communications and advocacy programs.

“The biggest gap we see is in commercial practices, in products that are designed specifically to address the needs of underrepresented communities,” Rodríguez-Vilá said.

Most companies do not properly measure the market, Rodríguez-Vilá said. Currently, they measure the market based on “‘Where is my current revenue coming from?’ and ‘Who are my biggest customers? If 80% of my customer base comes from this group, then I go after that group.’

"You’re not looking at the potential growth that could be embedded in segments that are actually not consuming you, or are significantly under-consuming you, because you're not including them in your offer,” he said.

Each of the 72 business practices being evaluated in the IMAX program is rated against a “maturity” scale of 70%, which represents a high level of inclusion.

“Following the assessment, it was awesome to see that the analysis reinforced many of our business practices were already on the right track,” Jacobs said. “We have 11 different internal workstreams focused on different parts of our DE&I journey and have been able to share these findings and act quickly on integrating them into our current work.”

The IMAX team used artificial intelligence to do the first part of its research, the social media analysis of the top 50 brands’ content that had people in it, Rodríguez-Vilá said. "We measured the diversity of skin tone, diversity of hair type, inclusion of people with disabilities and diversity of body types.”

In that analysis, Unilever’s Dove rose to the top and was one of the only brands that was not 23 years behind in terms of inclusion practices across its social media posts. Dove has done various campaigns to advocate for underrepresented groups including taking a stand against race-based hair discrimination.

“I receive a lot of data in my role, but I have never seen data of this nature that allows us to understand inclusion as a metric and helps us identify which practices we can share across brands to create and accelerate even further impact,” said Tish Archie-Oliver, head of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, Unilever U.S., and a BRIDGE Board member.

Dove declined further comment because it is not part of the IMAX pilot program.

Still, being inclusive across social media content is only one sliver of the pie and the IMAX program comes as companies have downsized their DE&I departments amid economic headwinds.

“The key is not to think of inclusion as a separate thing,” Rodríguez-Vilá said. “The first thing you need to tackle is the business case. There is also a role for a moral case and many leaders need to be able to articulate that to their employees. This is not just about selling more stuff. But you need both because, in the absence of a business case, the moral case is not going to sustain you.”

Rodríguez-Vilá said what also went into developing the IMAX program was having chief marketers and chief diversity officers work closer together than they’re typically used to—both parties are responsible for evaluating DE&I within the internal organization and in how the company is showing up in the marketplace. Typically, internal matters were left to chief diversity officers while marketplace matters were left to chief marketing officers.

“It unlocks this collaboration that didn't exist before,” Daija said. “[Before] it was very siloed. IMAX creates a collaboration to allow all capabilities and practices to be dependent on each other, but also to leverage the power of each other.”