Inclusion as Innovation: Stay Ahead by Leaving No One Behind

After George Floyd was murdered in 2020, those who embraced diversity, equity, inclusion and compassion weren’t meant to be the vanguard but, rather, the norm. Calls for change that began more than three years ago received few meaningful answers, even among the brands and marketers on Adweek’s pages. In February, a survey from recruitment diversity advocacy group Hue found that 85% of employees said their brands failed to invest in more racially diverse hiring—with 80% saying those brands did nothing to create a more equitable working environment. Increasingly, frustrated marketers of color have quit their jobs as a result. With McKinsey, Gartner and others routinely citing the benefits of an inclusive workforce and policies, marketing leaders who embrace equity reap the rewards of spearheading change. In fact, McKinsey noted in 2020 that companies with gender-diverse leadership teams were 25% more likely to have above-average profitability than their less diverse counterparts. For the most ethnically diverse firms, it’s a 36% edge. This year's Marketing Vanguard Award honorees are those very leaders using their influence to make inclusion a key element of marketing innovation. "We know that we can’t achieve our purpose without a workforce that represents the lived experiences and perspective of those we seek to represent," said Marketing Vanguard Award honoree Christine Hsu Evans, president of Headspace. "This is critical as we aim to ensure that our content increasingly mirrors the diversity of voices and experiences across our team and our member population." When inclusion is the vision If the products and services your company is selling have universal appeal, it makes no sense to sell them with homogenous marketing. “My desire was to move people from apathy towards their money, to emotion towards their money," said Andrea Brimmer, chief marketing and PR officer of Ally Financial and a Marketing Vanguard Award honoree. "If you're smart with it, it can change the trajectory of your life." Brimmer has been with Ally since 2006, when it was known as the General Motors Acceptance Corp. (GMAC). A mission since the 2010 rebrand was to make the financial services company, well, an ally for its customers and employees. "When I took over as CMO [in 2015], the vast proportion of our customer base was an older, more affluent customer, which we obviously still value and have a lot of,” Brimmer said. “We needed to cultivate a younger and more diverse audience, because that's where the world is going, and the change in that alone has been substantive and makes up the vast proportion of our customer base today." Headspace launched its meditation and mindfulness app a little more than a decade ago, but it became a lifeline for those left unemployed and overstressed by lockdowns and lingering health, financial and social concerns during the Covid-19 pandemic. Even as the pandemic waned and Headspace merged with telehealth company Ginger—where Hsu Evans served as CMO—the company realized it had become essential to a broad array of users. "Mental health has become one of the defining societal crises of our time, yet we know that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all when it comes to mental health," she said. "We want our members to see themselves where our brand shows up—not only in our marketing, but also within the Headspace app." Sometimes, that means getting an influencer like singer John Legend involved in a campaign. When Roe v. Wade was overturned last year, it meant partnering with online women's community Peanut to launch the Headspace Women's Collection to support healthy conversations about sex, with a group that included women expecting babies, grieving widows and trans women. "While our focus on inclusivity and belonging is a business advantage, we do so because it’s aligned with our vision and purpose as a company," Hsu Evans said. UNDERSTANDING THE AUDIENCE With only 46% of Gen Z confident in their finances compared to 71% of millennials, H&R Block's “A Fair Shot” found an audience in 2023. Awareness of the campaign increased 13 percentage points over 2022, with more than 75% of Gen Z adults holding a favorable view of H&R Block as a result. “We’re asking, ‘Who is our community? Who are our customers? Who can we best serve, and [how can we] move beyond broad definitions and really understand what they are up against economically?’” said Marketing Vanguard Award honoree Jill Cress, CMO of H&R Block. “Last year, Gen Z was one of the primary audiences that we targeted, and they significantly contributed to our growth,” Cress said. “This segmented approach and bringing our expertise and care to life in different ways for different audiences is definitely paying off.” Reimagining Barbie As chief brand officer of Mattel, Marketing Vanguard Award honoree Lisa McKnight spent the better part of a decade transforming Barbie from a polarizing figure into more than 170 dolls embodying a broad spectrum of skin tones, hair types and body shapes. McKnight said those dreams wouldn’t have come true if Mattel hadn’t made inclusion as essential to the Barbie brand as her bespoke shade of pink. “Not only has it given us an advantage, but it's price of entry,” McKnight said. “You absolutely have to be selling products, experiences [and] have a workplace that reflects the larger population and the world around us—it's an absolute requirement.” McKnight credits the three other women in Mattel’s C-suite and the five women on the company’s 11-person board. She also noted that Mattel measures the diversity of its workforce, takes surveys of employees’ comfort levels and looks for areas—IT and manufacturing, for example—where Mattel can create more opportunity. That foundation made it easier for the brand and agency partner BBDO San Francisco to reassess Barbie roughly eight years ago. It opened up the discussion of Barbie to more voices—kids, parents, fans, employee research groups and cultural consultants from different backgrounds—and heard their concerns. It worked internally to see how a broader Barbie universe should accommodate new dolls: Can everyone fit in the cars? Were the Dreamhouses wheelchair accessible? Was Barbie herself relatable, and would a YouTube feed that gave her a voice help? When the questions were answered, the tinkering done and the dolls sold, the responses McKnight received from girls with prosthetic limbs, hearing aids and, most recently, Down syndrome, confirmed the company was on the right track. “She just felt seen,” McKnight said. “Even kids that don't have these disabilities are getting exposure to other types of people through our toy line, and it's helping them build empathy as well.” Inclusion has brought Barbie even more fans. In 2021, during the pandemic, Barbie became the biggest toy brand in the world and remains the world’s best-selling doll. And then there's Greta Gerwig’s billion-dollar summer blockbuster version of Barbara Millicent Roberts. “The movie was absolutely fiction and clearly exaggerated to make a point and to trigger conversation,” McKnight said. And it certainly has, just in time for Mattel to begin Barbie's 65th birthday celebrations in 2024. Barbie’s renaissance has repaired the brand’s image to such a degree that five years ago, Mattel started The Barbie Dream Gap Project to help girls around ages 5 and 6—when researchers say they start doubting their abilities to be as capable and smart as boys. Working with groups including Girls Make Beats, Black Girls Code and Save the Children, Mattel is trying to offer a future as limitless as the Barbie brand. 'What's right for the business’ As president of Expedia Brands for Expedia Group, Marketing Vanguard Award honoree Jon Gieselman and his team are crafting campaigns from universally relatable viewpoints that allow potential customers to see themselves—and their concerns—in each ad. "It comes from a place of not trying to achieve a goal of diversity and inclusion," Gieselman said. "It comes down to what's right for the business, and I just don't see a difference between the two." The approach has paid off for Expedia, which entered 2023 with a company-record number of members and app users. The 312 million rooms booked by Expedia Group in 2022 were more than any other year in the company’s history. The company itself, through its annual diversity report, has set a goal for gender equity among its global workforce by 2025; 25% of new U.S. hires from underrepresented groups; and more inclusive workplaces for employees of all abilities (with help from new vp of global disability inclusion Kathy Martinez). “We believe travel is a force for good,” Gieselman said. “You just become a better person, the more you get exposed to other people, other places, other cultures—places that are different than you.” TELLING THE BRAND'S STORY Expedia Group had big logistical problems when Gieselman arrived. It was trying to market more than 20 brands, few of which had features or programs compatible with one another. Under his watch, the marketing focus narrowed to three brands—Expedia, Vrbo and Hotels.com—and the One Key loyalty program that serves them all. But it began telling different stories around those brands. With help from agency partner Anomaly LA, it recruited actress Salma Hayek Pinault, who used passion fruits to explain the differences and complexities of Spanish-speaking travelers and the countries they visit. During the 2022 Super Bowl, Expedia brought in actor Ewan McGregor to tout the value of "experience" over “stuff.” Around the same time, Wieden+Kennedy produced a Muppet-scored tribute to the broad, diverse definition of family for Vrbo. “We were trying to expand the meaning of Vrbo, which was primarily understood to be, ‘Oh, you're going on vacation with your family: your kids, your aunt, your uncle,” Gieselman said. “[‘A Place for Together’] is just a much bigger idea: Sometimes you travel with your college roommates, your friends, people from work." Finding allies inside and out For Brimmer and Ally, change started from within. Ally’s executive suite went from one woman in 2015 to nearly 50% women today. More than half of its staff is comprised of people of color, with senior director of multicultural marketing Erica Hughes forming a diverse marketing team and bringing in creative agency Translation to broaden Ally’s message. In seeking a younger, more diverse customer base for its diversified financial products, Ally used real customers in place of actors in its “IconicALLY” campaign. It’s expanded sponsorships to include the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), Major League Soccer (MLS), Nascar, The PGA Tour, Charlotte FC and its Ally Arena in Fortnite. When the NWSL went through a player abuse scandal last year, Brimmer led other league-sponsor CMOs (including Nationwide’s Ramon Jones) through detailed demands for action, made a $250,000 investment in the league’s Players Association and ensured the players’ championship game would be seen in prime time. As a result, Ally has reached an intersection of young male, female, LGBTQ+, Black and Hispanic fan bases. Its brand valuation has tripled since 2015, 65% of its traffic now comes from women, and Brimmer said Ally has reached its highest levels of awareness, likability sentiment and trust in the history of the company. At Headspace, Hsu Evans also recognized the need for intersectional diversity. The company's workforce is comprised of 69% female-identifying employees, 44% non-white workers and 9% who identify as belonging to the LGBTQ+ community. It also includes licensed therapists and psychiatrists, data scientists and Emmy Award-winning producers. Hsu Evans credits Wizdom Powell, Headspace’s chief social impact and diversity officer, with promoting inclusion and mental health and wellness throughout the company. Headspace still sees room for improvement. It acquired inclusive mental health platform Shine a year ago and has committed to diverse hiring, cultural competency training for care providers, increased content and allyship for underrepresented communities and improved workplace discourse. "While we’ve made significant progress in making our brand relevant to more people, our role in showing up for people on their mental health journeys is a constant process, not a destination," Hsu Evans said. This story is part of The New Dynamics of Marketing Innovation special feature.

Marketing Vanguard

Inclusion as Innovation: How These Marketing Leaders Stay Ahead by Leaving No One Behind

Ally’s Andrea Brimmer, Mattel’s Lisa McKnight, Headspace's Christine Hsu Evans, Expedia's Jon Gieselman and H&R Block's Jill Cress discuss diversity in marketing

Jason Notte

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