Procter & Gamble Co. is joining Grey Midwest and other Cincinnati-based creative agencies to launch Huenited, a non-profit group that aims to increase diversity in the city’s marketing and creative community by reaching out to high school and college students through scholarships, internships, mentoring and advocacy.

Most diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the marketing industry have been company-specific, national and focused on one part of the business – i.e. agencies or marketers. Huenited takes a different tack with a cross-industry effort in one city. Huenited, also initially led by executives from marketing and branding shops Katalyst Group and Hyperquake, aims to expose students to creative career options, plus offer mentorship, scholarships and internships to bring them into the industry.

“You can’t choose to pursue a career that you don’t know exists,” said Procter & Gamble Co. Design VP Tysonn Betts, who’s president of Huenited. “So the more we can expose students and their parents to the viability of creative careers the more likely we can get students to pursue them.”

The ad industry’s focus on diversity issues spiked last year in the wake of racial justice protests following George Floyd’s murder. But discussions that led to Huenited actually started a year earlier following a discussion Betts was part of at Brandemonium, a Cincinnati marketing conference.

Jamie Grady, treasurer of Huenited and senior VP of finance and operations for WPP’s Grey Midwest, approached Betts and Sean Rugless, president of Katalyst and now VP of Huenited, after the two were part of a Brandemonium forum on diversity in the creative community. Those discussions led to Huenited being founded this year. The group will be formally introduced in a presentation this week at an all-virtual version of Brandemonium.

“The idea was born of creating a collective, bringing together all of the marketing and advertising agencies in town and as many of the big clients we have that purchase these services,” Grady said. “If we can pull together all our energy, intelligence and money, we might actually be able to make some significant change in the industry within the city.”

Huenited begins as the city of Cincinnati became “majority minority” for the first time in the 2020 census. Data show 48% of the population identifies as white and 52% as non-white. In the city, 41% of residents are Black, 5% Hispanic, 3% Asian, Pacific Islander or Native American and 6% cited two or more ethnic groups. In the metro region, the population is 77% white; 12% Black; 4% Hispanic; 5% Asian, Pacific Islander or Native American; and 6% reporting two or more ethnicities. Nationwide, 60% of the population was white in the 2020 census; 13% Black; 19% Hispanic; 7% Asian, Pacific Islander or Native American; and 3% two or more races.

There’s been no citywide study on diversity and inclusion in Cincinnati’s creative industry, but Grady said it could definitely be better. “There are quite a few agencies that don’t have a single Black person,” he said. “Some have one. Even Grey, while we’ve made some amazing strides over the last two years, we’re still below the percentage makeup of the demographic we’re trying to speak to.”

A pitch deck for Huenited breaks down sponsorship commitments into four tiers, ranging from $5,000 and 50 hours annually in time commitment for small businesses up to 49 employees up to $50,000 plus 500 hours from the biggest companies with 500-plus employees. Grady said initial reception has been positive from other branding and marketing agencies and big local marketers, such as Kroger Co. P&G’s involvement as a charter supporter will play a big role in helping draw others, he said.

P&G last year reported progress on diversity in hiring and management over the past five years but showed needs for improvement, particularly with Black and Hispanic employees and managers, whose proportions remained below that for the U.S. population as a whole.

New York University marketing professor and industry pundit Scott Galloway, speaking at P&G’s Signal 2021 virtual event in July, challenged the company to drop requirements for college degrees if it wants to make strides in diversity hiring.

“We need more on-ramps into the greatest wealth creator to build the middle class in history, and that is U.S. corporation,” Galloway said. “What P&G needs to do [is] take 10, 20, 40, 50% of their entry-level jobs and decide that they don't necessarily require a traditional four-year bachelor of arts. Because when you say at P&G, or Apple or Tesla we are only going to hire college grads, what you've said is, ‘We want to hire less Black people. We want to hire less Latino people. We want to hire, less, single mothers.’”

“Certainly that conversation is not a new one and is maturing a bit now as we figure things out,” P&G’s Betts said. “As we’ve continued to recruit at P&G and tried to understand how to meet our own goals in terms of diversity, we understand that we have to do something different to get a different result. There are lots of folks in the industry who are practicing as creatives who may not have a college degree as a creative.”

Grady notes that one way Huenited will help address the education issue is by providing full scholarships for creative education in the city, which has, among other things, what Betts described as strong creative programs at magnet high schools, the top U.S. public design school at the University of Cincinnati, and other strong offerings nearby, including at the University of Northern Kentucky. Internship and mentorship opportunities from member companies will also play a role, Grady said.

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