"Following the death of George Floyd in police custody in the US, the United Nations (UN) has joined forces with global advertising trade body the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) to issue a statement imploring global brands not to waste their “privileged position in society”.
The UN and the WFA have committed to establishing a series of measures that will hold brands to account when it comes to both the diversity of their workforces and how they’re tackling inequality via their advertising.
The two global organisations already work closely together on the Unstereotype Alliance initiative, which unites marketers in a mission to banish harmful stereotypes from their communications. Now, they have pledged to work with the industry to develop “tangible accountability mechanisms” that support the structural drivers of equality and inclusion in advertising. [...]
In an open letter, the UN’s under-secretary-general and executive of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, said she welcomed an initiative from UK-based diversity collective Creative Equals last week which saw over 200 advertising bosses pledge to support black talent and take action on inequality in the industry.
The WFA and UN’s commitment to building systems that help measure diversity within brands’ leadership teams and workforces follows on from advertisers’ agencies having missed diversity targets set by the IPA in the UK.
Just last month, fresh data from the IPA revealed that the number of employees from an ethnic minority background at UK ad agencies dropped over the past 12 months.
The trade body’s annual Agency Census found that – as well as making up a smaller proportion of the UK agency workforce – staff from black, Asian and minority-ethnic (BAME) backgrounds had seen C-suite representation drop too.
Of the 24,866 employees recorded as working in agencies in 2019, the number of employees from a BAME background was found to have dropped from 13.8% to 13.7% year-on-year.
Though diversity at junior levels was up slightly at 17.7% (up from 16.9% in 2018), just 4.7% of C-suite roles were held by employees from an ethnic minority background – marking a drop of 0.8% since 2018."
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