APG Noisy Thinking: This House Believes Strategy Departments Should Reflect the Nation they Advertise to

As DE&I policies undergo a seismic transatlantic shock, the APG strongly believes in the importance of representation. After all the job of the planner has always been to get inside peoples’ heads and lives to understand them better.

But what do we mean by representation? Is it realistic to even try to reflect the nation? And is it counted in hires or lived experience? Demographic descriptors or finely judged research? And what can we do as planners and strategists to make sure that however we approach it, our output is based on a real understanding of what it is like to be in other peoples’ shoes so we can translate that in a compelling way?

We asked Steve Lacey of Outsider Research, Omar El-Gammal of Mother, Jenika Hadipour of Leo Burnett and Marcos Angelides of Publicis Media to debate it for us, under the empathetic and humorous chairing of Josh Bullmore. 70 strategists sat in the audience and helped to create an amazing atmosphere of warmth and respect. Thank you to you all for your contribution.

We briefed Marcos and Steve to speak against the motion and Jenika and Omar to make arguments speak for it.

A foregone conclusion?

If you glance at the motion and you’re a thoughtful person, it looks like a no-brainer. Of course we should be hiring to be as deliberately reflective of the people we target as possible.

So at the start of the debate we made the audience vote (at least the 50% or so who could work out how to use the QR code 😊)

You may not be surprised to learn that 33 were for the motion and 9 were against.

But hear this. Before the debate three of our speakers were prepared, once they’d thought about the issues to argue it either way. And therein was the learning.

What this debate was not

This wasn’t a debate where the merits of representation itself were on trial. All the speakers spoke passionately about the benefits of diversity and experience. Instead it was a discussion of how best to go about creating inclusive and representative departments.

It would be easy to see debating this issue as counterproductive given the backdrop of the on-going backlash but we found that the benefit of a formal debate is that it’s a way to get to the best possible version of the argument.

It made us see that opposition can be a way of properly laying out all the issues rather than reinforcing entrenched positions. Forcing the arguments turned out to be hugely revealing and very nuanced, contrary to experience on much of social media. And if you do it in person with open minded people it can drive empathy rather than reinforce difference.

So what did we find out?

On the one hand we heard how important is to make diverse hires, in order to get new takes on a problem and get a proper up-front diversity of input to briefs. But when you do so you must create a culture of welcome and belonging. Whether it’s neurodiversity or gender or ethnic background, you have to be supportive to allow people give their best. (Indeed this is exactly what the APG’s Arrive and Thrive initiative is for).

Fundamentally, it’s about diversity of lived experience. We heard about what it’s like to work in an agency in the middle east, the only Arab planner, and be called ‘token’; wheeled out to show the agency ‘got Arabs’. But equally what it is like to be that same person, hired by a UK agency, and given a major UK brand to manage because you are able to use your skills, the different facets of your personality and the diversity of your experience and bring them to bear on the problem, regardless of who you apparently ‘represent’.

Because you can’t reduce representation to demography or a department to a tick box That is too reductive. We are all many things. You may be an Arab and a Muslim but also a keen gardener. It’s the mix that’s important not the label because we all have more than one story. And as planner you can lean into your different experiences to help you empathise and understand others.

Be windows, not mirrors

If you get this right it makes you far more thoughtful about the output – what we put in front of our audiences. And what does representing the nation’s diversity in our output even look like? Arguably, it doesn’t have to mean holding up a mirror to people’s lives. Many people don’t want that anyway. Perhaps it’s better to think of advertising as giving people a window onto other worlds, rather than as a mirror of their own.

However much we might agree morally with the motion it is a practical impossibility. Most of the labels we use: the ‘north’, ‘London’, ‘neurodiversity’ and notions of disability are essentially stereotypes. A northerner could be an ex-miner, a remain voting Liberal or a wealthy suburban woman. And eastern European could be Lithuanian or Czech.

(If you take the argument to its logical conclusion we’d make sure that we have plenty of Reform voters represented in our liberal strategy midst.)

This is about empathy – not the empathy where you live in other peoples’ shoes, but cognitive empathy and the ability to open your mind to new ideas.

Is this the lost art of Planning?

Perfect representation at its heart is not really practical. If you were to reflect the census in strategy departments not only would they become immediately and unfeasibly large, the practice would wipe out small and independent agencies leaving only the networks. Indie agencies are core to what we do!

Equally you can’t make representation the responsibility of a couple of planners. Not only is it exhausting and wearing always being asked to ‘represent’ a particular group, it stifles the planner’s imaginative capabilities, the fact that they can and should reach out to others to round out their understanding through formal and informal research.

Lived experience can bring insight and passion but you are not your audience (as Mark Ritson says) and thinking like that can distort outcomes.

What to do?

So what do you do when you are hiring? You need to hire the best person for the job. Nobody wants to be hired for anything other than their ability. But when you’ve hired a few people look back at the last 5. If they are all much the same there is a bias and the data will shine a light on that problem.

In your work, tend to use behavioural data as it cuts through bias and helps get to brilliant answers.

And remember the best marketing is based on universal truths that bring people together.

But we need to open to new ways of working. Foster cultures of respect and humility. Understand the bias in how we work. Be more sensitive to the idea of ‘difference’. And be very, very aware that the decline in DE&I policies that is coming will require us to marshal all our most powerful emotional arguments.

I hope that this debate and the way in which it was held will help us keep challenging our thinking and most important, our behaviour.

The Result