Our wonderful WACL President Karen Stacey wrote about our WACL “Levers for Change” last year for the Future Leaders Club  - and our ambition for 50% of all leaders in our industry to be women.

Sadly, it seems we’re now facing a seemingly bleaker picture. Against a backdrop of a world where diversity, equality and inclusion is under threat not just of going backwards but disappearing completely - we need advertising more than ever as a beacon of positive representation. 

Yet this isn’t just an ethical or moral imperative – it’s also got a clear business case. With recent Unstereotype Alliance research showing inclusive advertising drives both sales and brand equity.

Work Like the World is Watching

This imperative is reflected in our third strategic WACL lever - aptly titled Work Like The World is Watching. It’s all about creating workplace cultures where women can really thrive, and ensuring we’re properly representing all the women who make up our consumers and audiences too. But we’re not there yet. Here’s a scary stat - only 6% of CEO’s in the FTSE 350 are women. And this has only increased by 2% since 2017. 

Advertising and communications can play a huge part in fueling that representation - we saw in the huge research piece from the Unstereotype Alliance, conducted in 58 countries, 392 brands, between 2024 and 2024 that and let’s make no bones about it -  inclusion equals income.

Campaigns with more inclusivity demonstrated a 3.5% sales uplift in the short term and 1-2 years after the campaign ran it drove brand building with a whopping 16% sales impact.

And if that wasn’t enough evidence, we see in Kantar Brand Z metrics that inclusive advertising drives 33% higher strong brand consideration and 62% likelihood of being a consumer’s first choice.

The need for change

And yet still despite the evidence, there’s still so much more to be done.

The research also shows:-

Only 1% of ads featured someone with a disability versus 15% of the global population

People over the age of 40 are woefully underrepresented, particularly women, only 21% of ads featuring this demographic

And last by no means, let’s talk about regional and social mobility bias. According to UM research, 56% of non-Londoners feel that the way they’re portrayed in ads doesn’t resonate with who they are.  A further 32% felt that Northerners weren’t shown as often in ads as campaign developers were catering to their own ‘regional bias’. 

Or worse still, terrible caricatures. I still cringe at agency creative work depicting out of date Shirley Valentine style models as the modern day depiction of Liverpudlian women.

Hear from the North’s top brand leaders driving systemic change

To discuss this and much more, I’m super excited to be hosting a power panel at the end of this month at the epic MAD // UpNorth event.  I’ll be joined by three of  the UK’s top marketing leaders, Kenyatte Nelson Chief Customer Officer Co-Op, Katie Jackson Chief Marketing Officer Channel 4 and Zoe Harris, Chief Marketing Officer On the Beach.

Together we’ll be discussing  how we can make a difference together to authentically champion diversity and inclusion in communications? We will of course also be exploring how some of our wonderful Northern headquartered brands are leading the way.

Ultimately we need to understand, when it comes to representation in marketing & communication - what does good look like?  And crucially how do we get there?

How can we unlock better representation in our creative work but also in our ways of working to foster more inclusive creative practices across every axis of representation.

And perhaps, just maybe, unleash the power of creativity to do good.

Check out the panel on 26th February and the superb agenda here Attend | MAD//UpNorth | MAD//Fest

Dawn Paine is an active and longstanding WACL member and has chaired their Talent Sessions Committee driving WACL presence outside London through events and mentoring for next generation female leaders. A former CMO at Nintendo and Universal Pictures, she is now CEO and Co-Founder of Liverpool headquartered global creative agency Aurora.