What is inclusive marketing?
Why should it be a brand imperative, driving growth and creative excellence for brands and businesses?
Inclusive Marketing
Inclusive marketing is a strategic approach to the end-to-end marketing pipeline, which results in campaigns and comms that authentically represent a wide range of audiences and where offerings and messaging resonate positively with the audience they represent.
By building inclusion into your marketing strategy and framework to inclusive authentic representation in all forms including disability, gender, body shape, socio-economic status, LGBTQIA+ and more, you are more likely to increase your audience reach and grow your market share.
At Creative Equals, we live and breathe inclusion.
We’re here to help brands and businesses unlock new growth and drive creative excellence through inclusive marketing. We empower brands to amplify underrepresented voices, challenge stereotypes, develop unique and progressive narratives and break down barriers to participation.
The Business Case for Inclusive Marketing
And why progressive marketing is for ALL brands
Inclusive, authentic representation in marketing is powerful, drives creativity and fostering stronger connections between brands and their customers. Did you know, 62% of consumers stated that diverse and inclusive marketing influences their perception of a brand?
We also see a 83% higher consumer preference for brands with the highest diversity scores. Authentic inclusivity has a huge impact on purchase behaviours and brand engagement, with 64% of consumers claiming they are more likely to take action on an ad they consider to be diverse or inclusive.
Progressive, inclusive marketing shows:
3.5%
uplift in immediate
sales and
+29%
uplift in
consumer loyalty
+16.3%
greater in
long-term sales impact, when compared to less progressive advertising
Consumer intent to repurchase (brand loyalty) is
+42%
for brands with more progressive advertising
Brands with more progressive advertising are rated
+9.8%
more meaningful
Research from Cannes Lion Festival of Creativity 2024 and the Unstereotype Alliance
The business benefits of inclusive marketing
Inclusive brands and businesses are likely to see:
Brand growth - by reaching all of your audience, including the under represented and under served.
Increased customer loyalty – a sense of connection is created when seeing themselves represented in a brand
Better brand reputation – by demonstrating a commitment to social responsibility and equality
Improved employee morale and productivity – seeing that their company values diversity and inclusion
Partnerships and collaborations – open doors to collaborations with other organisations, influencers, and community groups
“Creative Equals has provided a strong baseline of where we are now and where we need to go. We also can see the potential for how we can use DE&I as a business driver with all our marketeers.”
Ruth Davidson, Diageo
The key principles of inclusive marketing
Authenticity:
When your portrayals of an audience are accurate to the lived experience of those you’re trying to reach, the audience with resonate with your messaging. To do this well involves avoiding negative or harmful stereotypes or narratives, and avoiding assumptions and shortcuts. The best way to build authenticity into your campaigns is to partner with the audience you serve.
Diversity:
Society is far from homogenous. Our audiences contain a wide variety of intersectional individuals with their own unique perspective and lived experiences. This might be across cultural identities, sexuality, gender, disability, socio-economic bands and more. Today’s consumers are increasingly demanding diversity and representation from the brands they engage with. Research found that more than six out of 10 consumers believe that diversity in advertising is critical. More than 40% confirmed that they want to see more racial diversity in adverts.
Acknowledge your bias and stay curious:
We’re commercially minded, and everyone has biases. Regularly checking your processes biases and baking bias mitigation into your marketing process can help remove them from your campaigns and comms. Adding curiosity in the mix is essential for fostering a diverse and inclusive marketing team. According to the Inclusion Curiosity Connection report, “Curiosity may be a natural friend to diversity. It opens the door to different points of view, facilitates insights and understanding, invites involvement and inspires greater engagement.”
Case Study: Philips
Since 2020, we have worked as a strategic partner to Philips embedding EDI as part of a global transformation project, embedding EDI into their brand and marketing divisions. We consulted with a range of teams from employer brand, HR, I&D, Procurement, and ensured Brand and E-Commerce comms connects and aligns with the wider business.
—
‘Creative Equals has been an invaluable strategic partner
to us over the last four years’
- Nathalie Lam, ESG Brand Marketing Lead, Supervisory Board Member, Lead I&D Marketing Transformation, Philips
Creating an inclusive marketing strategy
Brand and businesses are just as unique as the audiences they serve. We help co-create strategies and solutions to embed diversity, equity inclusion into the marketing value chain, providing value and a ‘return on inclusion’ with a tailor-made inclusion programme.
We provide a range of services, from consultancy, insight projects, inclusive comms reviews and inclusive supply chain audits. We curate marketing strategies that are tailor made to each client – creating a safe space to foster inclusive practices from the inside out.
Inclusive Marketing Services
Strategy and systems
We work with your team to develop or integrate DEI specialist strategic thinking into Brand, Marketing, Sustainability, AI and Comms strategies and processes.
Inclusive Brand Strategy
Strategy advisory at the intersection of Sustainability and DEI
Inclusive Innovation strategy and project delivery
Inclusive audience insights/analytics strategies; CX strategy review and development
DEI AI Policy, strategy and tools
Inclusive Sustainability
Inclusive Customer Experience (CX)
Creative Effectiveness
To deliver creative excellence and effectiveness, we build positive portrayal and authentic inclusion into your communications, activation and socials throughout your creative process.
Full inclusive Comms Review for gaps and opportunities across categories and brands
Inclusion Clinics for fast-turn around projects
Inclusive Creativity Panels
Creative Stewardship
Inclusive Semiotics
Social Impact Measuring & Monitoring
Cultural movements analysis
Process review and and embed training for teams
Creative Stewardship and Creative Councils
Social media training
Capability Building and
Culture Growth
Build your inclusive muscle in-house. The key to long-term capability building is in operationalising inclusion throughout your day-to-day processes with training to embed.
Inclusive Marketing Principles and Processes
Inclusive leadership training programmes for senior marketers
Full scale L&D programmes for senior marketers to deliver best-in-class DEI
Toolkits Inclusive playbooks and guidelines
Inclusion Skills and Applied bias training
Workshops on topics like backlash, creative excellence and future-proofing brands.
L&D internal Marketing Academy
Positive Portrayal Workshops and Inclusive Behaviours
DE&I 101 Psychological Safety