Equality, diversity, and inclusion are essential touchstones for any successful modern business, especially when it comes to internal processes like hiring. Ensuring that your company is a great place for everybody to work is an absolute baseline of what you should be doing right now.
That’s a given, or at least it should be, but brands that increasingly need to stand by their values should also be putting that inclusivity at the forefront of their customer-facing output. A focus on inclusive marketing is the most obvious way to achieve that. Unfortunately, it’s also something that can very quickly go wrong.
With risks like virtue signalling or even causing offence, ill-conceived inclusive marketing drives could unravel your company quicker than almost anything else, especially amongst socially conscious young consumers. So, how do you get the tone of inclusive marketing just right? Working with a nationwide digital marketing agency that can bring experience and broad reach to your projects is a great first step. It can also pay to consider successful inclusive marketing drives, and why they work, such as the following five iconic examples.
# 1 – Google’s Pixel 8
Google went all-in on authentic representation with last year’s Super Bowl ad, when a Google 8 Pixel advertisement highlighted inclusive features for visually impaired users. The advertisement shows a visually impaired user through his eyes, navigating smartphone usage including features like the camera setting.
The ad is perhaps most iconic because it doesn’t simply slip into the risks of virtue-signalling that use a sighted person’s impression of visual impairment to get the point across. Instead, Google took careful steps to ensure a fully inclusive cast, with Stevie Wonder narrating, visually impaired actors, and even a blind director. All of which highlights the importance of layering inclusivity throughout a marketing drive like this, rather than simply on its surface.
# 2 – Mattel
Marketing isn’t just about the advertisements a brand puts out there; it also refers to how you present your products. This is something that the toy and entertainment company Mattel highlighted last year, by vowing to make 80% of its games color-blind accessible. This statement, which highlights the too-often unseen struggles of colorblind individuals, is part of Mattel’s deeper drive to ensure inclusive design processes, which includes working with design teams who have experienced colorblindness and partnering with experts who understand color deficiency.
The far-reaching implications of Mattel’s inclusive marketing focus are proof that, sometimes, a single inclusive ad isn’t enough. Instead, it can be far more effective to make deep-seated, informed inclusivity changes that are truly research-driven and headed by own voice representatives to your brand image itself.
# 3 – Urban Decay
Disability is too often an invisible issue when it comes to the beauty world, but this is a trend that Urban Decay threw off in style back with its #pretty different campaign back in 2021. A particularly iconic video uploaded to their Instagram featured Grace Kay, an actor, entrepreneur, and clothing brand founder who was born with Down syndrome. The video shows Grace applying Urban Decay products, and drew a lot of positive praise from the Down syndrome community. Best of all is the caption that accompanies the video, which includes a quote in Grace’s own words stating, “I have Down Syndrome and it is not a bad thing! I love it! Being different is beautiful. Everyone is unique in their special way. Isn’t it cool Urban Decay’s motto is ‘Pretty Different’?”
Despite being pretty straightforward, this campaign is effective in large part because it lets Grace speak for herself, adding authenticity and giving a true voice to the star of the show. The campaign’s #prettydifferent focus also invited uploads from a vast array of users to ensure fully inclusive, customer-driven content to match.
# 4 – Gillette
Transgender representation is still sorely lacking in the marketing space of many big businesses, but this is something Gillette was at the forefront of changing a few years ago, when its groundbreaking ‘Your First Shave campaign’, which included an advertisement featuring Toronto-based artist, Samson Bonkeabantu Brown as he learned to shave for the first time alongside his dad. The tagline for the campaign was especially effective, and stated simply, “Whenever, wherever, how it happens – your first shave is special.”. This came shortly after Gillette changed its famous tagline, ‘The best a man can get’ to ‘the best a man can be’ to avoid connotations with toxic masculinity.
Gillette’s inclusive campaign is iconic largely because it highlights how, even if you’ve previously been part of the problem, you can also be a leading part of necessary change. Even as a brand with undeniable links to traditional masculinity, Gillette is taking pains to show its customer base that doing things differently isn’t always a bad thing. And that’s something we can all get on board with.
# 5 – Coca-Cola
Often, we think of inclusive marketing as a new idea, but Coca-Cola is living proof that inclusion should’ve always featured in brand marketing drivers. That’s because Coca-Cola was making this a priority way back in 1971, when its iconic ‘Hilltop Ad’ displayed people from various cultures and countries singing about ‘buying the world a Coke’ on an Italian hilltop. Even so many years ago, the advertisement was so impactful that it received over 100,000 letters of glowing praise.
Coca-Cola might not get everything right, but this advertisement, and its impact, is living proof that you shouldn’t simply prioritize inclusive marketing because it’s trendy. Instead, it’s worth breaking the mold to provide something that highlights the values and good that you genuinely believe in, and that your customer base most likely believes in, as well.
Conclusion
Inclusive marketing might still be saddeningly short on the ground, but there are plenty of brands out there getting this right, and learning from them is the best option you have for improving your own marketing focuses. Without a sniff of virtue signalling in sight, each of these campaigns has done something entirely different with what inclusivity means. Are you ready to join them?
