Inclusion: make advertising a force for change

11th June 2018

Advertising inclusion is something that needs to be implemented for the industry to flourish and increase societal participation, but what can be done?

INCLUSION In advertising has not improved sufficiently for advertisers to truly maximise ROI and brand trust, but through simple creative steps you can flourish.

Advertising has made steps to induce wholesale changes to how the industry operates, devises creatives and casts for roles in adverts.

What problems have blighted inclusion

Alienating people when casting for certain roles is a risk when attempting to merely contrive the presence of certain societal groups, but this misses the point entirely for a more diverse and reflective advertising sphere: it should convey equality in actions and premise.

What actually persuades and conciliates a consumer is the body language and emotion of the artist themselves, not the person portraying the character.

Problems only arise when you attempt to categorise a person a group based on stereotypes.

Should this be the case, you will ultimately endure weaker ad performance due to the alienation and context that you portrayed the individuals.

This is pertinent to the portrayal of all groups in society, which has ensured of universal inefficiency in some quarters.

CGON's cost-effective TV commercial production from Space City
Assigning different roles and dialogue styles based on artist differences or stereotypes will not assist inclusion.

The most common error a business can make when looking to induce instant response, is attempting to offer relevance to particular groups through contrived, gender, age or race specific scenarios.

Although it is the emotive resonance woven into the scripts and conveyed by the artists that leverages response and memorability, it is the fact other groups are excluded from these creatives that remains the issue, ensuring that subconscious associations have not been built with all members of society.

Whether it is those who are disabled; within an ethnic minority group, or of a different sexual orientation, many have not been reflected sufficiently in advertising, ensuring that these consumer groups are being wasted.

Therefore, from both a moral and commercial perspective, advertising as a whole needs to ensure that these mistakes are not replicated through steps that boost inclusion.

What your business can prioritise to improve inclusion and results

From a creative perspective, not a lot needs to change – no creative needs to be amended or doctored to suit different consumer groups.

There are still some elements that may require more attention from a media buying perspective — when looking to provide adverts that can be acted upon by disabled people — the core focus needs to be body language and tone.

The context of your creative delivery and how it resonates with all potential consumers is crucial if you are to conciliate all.

Remaining unequivocal is key; if your business changes tack in how it delivers on a particular point, you will haemorrhage trust from your creative, while viewers with learning difficulties will tend to take what is said in advertising literally, thus such changes will emasculate the commercial greatly.

Amazon produced an advert that truly appealed universally in the sense of not marginalising and alienating consumers.

Featuring a vicar and imam, the premise was that we are fundamentally all enriched by the gift of kindness, with differences in beliefs, appearance or jobs not affecting the emotional response and sheer feeling of joy as a result.

This perfectly secured an emotive premise for all to engage with, while no stereotypes in terms of gifts, home or other elements were intimated.

By remaining as objective as possible in the creative direction, inclusion was ensured, while efficiency optimised thanks to its generic contextual tack.

This is imperative; without a consistent emotional premise, you will ultimately endure ads that are not maximising efficiency.

In a targeted advertising sphere, you should only augment your advertising with graphics and complimentary on-screen text – do not fundamentally change the artists, locations and graphics to suit a particular consumer segment.

Cost-effective TV advertising production from Space City for Paradise Wildlife Park
When using targeted advertising, do not change the cast, context or setting to appease inclusion – like we did for Paradise Wildlife Park

In this instance you will stymie an ad’s ability to be conversed about and lose any form of mass awareness appeal – ads perform better in the long-term when they stimulate conversations on and offline.

TV advertising remains the strongest platform for this, while radio and outdoor advertising also remains relatively efficient.

Your next plan should be to ensure that these platforms replicate the contextual leverage from TV through creative interpretations.

Utilising agencies can be expensive and seem ruinous financial – especially where brand awareness advertising is concerned.

Production companies like Space City work transparently and at cost, with clear profit margins outlined to ensure that companies maximise budgets and ROI.

As well promoting sheer numbers in terms of those unrepresented in advertising, utilising them in a respectful and universal regard emotionally, ensures they can maintain aesthetic differentiation, but unified in terms of whether they can utilise your business and its services.

Space City has been producing TV, online and radio adverts for over 25 years, delivering sales increases of over 600% to some clients, while promoting diversity and inclusion through internal quotas, notwithstanding dialogue with LGBTQ+ advertising and marketing network, PrideAM and disability charity, Scope.

Contact the team now and ensure you lower costs and equip your business to succeed omni-platform with the award-winning one-stop advertising shop that is Space City.

Drop us a line

020 7371 4000

0161 210 3330

0117 900 0444

"*" indicates required fields

Name*