Leading up to our Visible & Vocal: Insights, Impact & Action Panel and Mixer Event, Matthew Tsang, who will moderate this timely, much-anticipated discussion, shared his insights on the need for inclusive marketing, his own experience with representation, and the progress the industry has made around diversity.
You built an agency specifically around inclusive marketing. What gap in the industry were you trying to fill, and has the challenge evolved since you started?
We founded AndHumanity to fill the gap of agencies not authentically representing the diversity of audiences, often ignoring underrepresented voices in strategy and creative, resulting in work that doesn’t truly resonate with the new mainstream – which is ever-increasingly intersectional and nuanced. The challenge still persists, but there are improvements. Many brands – especially in the midst of DEI backlash – are still committed to doing this work and proving the post-2020 DEI hype wasn’t performative for them. Beyond this, the challenge is brands understanding that given how diverse our population is becoming, inclusive marketing is just good marketing. Period.
Inclusive marketing is the topic of a lot of discussions. What does it actually look like when it’s done well versus when it’s implemented on a surface level?
Done well, it integrates our guiding principle, “nothing about us, without us,” which means – for example – a campaign that focuses on a specific audience, like 2nd Generation Chinese Canadians, will have 2nd Generation Chinese Canadians (with decision-making power and cultural competency) involved in the process, all the way from the briefing stage to the implementation. There are more elements as well, like underrepresented media spend and year-round engagement with underrepresented communities (rather than just on dates of significance, etc.).
You speak openly about the Asian Canadian experience in marketing. How has that shaped the way you think about representation and the stories people living this experience tell?
My identity and my complex relationship with my identity have definitely shaped my view of representation and how much it truly matters. Growing up, I held a lot of internalized racism because of my desire to fit in, paired with the fact that nothing I saw in media reflected how I felt inside. Marketing has the ability to be a storytelling engine to help people like me growing up, address these sorts of issues.
When clients push back on inclusive marketing, whether on budget, risk, or relevance, how do you make the case?
As mentioned above, inclusive marketing is just good marketing. There is more risk in terms of ROI and irrelevancy if you try to ignore your audience – which is becoming increasingly diverse. All-inclusive marketing is connecting brands to this new diverse mainstream that will reward the ones who “get” them. In this age where audiences are bombarded with ads every day, in high quantities, it’s quality and resonance that will attract customers.
From where you sit, is the Canadian marketing industry actually getting more inclusive or is it moving slower than the conversation suggests?
I think relative to other countries, it’s still quite progressive, so I would say that it is getting more inclusive. The quantity of brands jumping on board post-2020 was higher, but the ones that have stuck around have proven this truly matters to them, and that’s extremely important in actually achieving any sort of progress. What’s really moving the needle forward is that audiences themselves are becoming more culturally competent, aware of their own intersectional identities, and actually care about social justice – so brands are following suit, which makes the industry more progressive than before.