‘The best ads inspire culture, the worst bully it’: Responding to DEI in adland

There has been a lot of talk recently about Steve Harrison’s book, Adland’s Progressive Gaze.

Harrison, an award winning British copywriter, wrote his book as a response to purpose-driven advertising, and the rise of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion).

It is fair to say that the silent support for this book has been deafening. Fans, I assume, are showing their fanaticism quietly by buying the book rather than defending Steve. A few predictable voices are rounding on the author. They say the book is self-published, a clear sign that it must be crap. And how dare anyone challenge the gods of diversity and purpose?

I have only just started the book — Steve kindly sent me a pdf — so I can’t offer a review yet. However, I have been following both his posts and his defence of his opinions when in the line of fire, and admiring his courage and eloquence. The DEI machine can seem like a Death Star, and we get in its way at our peril.

Adland’s Progressive Gaze is an attack on advertising’s woke elite, and their ideological capture of our industry. At some point, the brief became for brands to socially engineer the population rather than reflect it.

It’s true, for decades, minorities were woefully underrepresented in advertising. At HHCL in the 90s, Naresh Ramchandani’s Fuji Film ads were ground-breaking, as was Trevor Robinson securing a black spokesperson for a national retail chain.

Championing the use of non-white, non-binary and disabled people in advertising decades ago was a struggle. I wrote a campaign that featured an inspirational boss in a wheelchair. To inspire without being able to stand added extra gravitas.

There’s a wheelchair in there somewhere: End frame of the Blackcurrant Tango ad

The client hired an able-bodied actor to play the part. “We don’t have ramps in our head office” was their excuse. If you scan the crowds around Ray Gardner’s boxing ring at the end of the St George Tango ad, there’s a man in a wheelchair, but only because we requested him.

Now it’s almost impossible to watch an ad, let alone a commercial break, without diversity and purpose. Clients feel unable to show kids playing soccer unless they are girls. I cast a young girl footballer in an ad for HSBC in 2016. Back then, it was a statement. Now it feels like band-wagoning.

A recent study found that 51% of TV ads in the UK feature non-white actors, despite the non-white population of the country being around 14%. When an MP pointed this out (albeit clumsily), she was called a racist by many in adland.

Yet she spoke for a large number of viewers frustrated at the industry’s failure to reflect the majority of the population. People don’t buy from brands that make them angry.

Diversity, I have found, isn’t diverse at all. I have never worked with anyone in an agency who is in a wheelchair. I have never worked with someone who is over seventy. I have never worked with a woman in a burqa, or anyone who has been in prison, or in a gang, or who lived on the streets.

The author Chas Bayfield

Regardless of their colour or gender, most people in adland come from the same middle class bubble. There was a trend a few years ago of agencies hiring international ECDs, but most of these men and women were wealthy, educated South Americans and Asians, not people from the favela or the slum.

Having been underrepresented for decades, a recent survey found that over 60% of people in design and creative advertising roles are now women. A black Muslim hospital porter who had failed to break into the industry told me that advertising is now filled with middle class white women taking jobs from middle class white men, climbing over people like him to get there.

A few years ago, the founder of an organisation purporting to redress inequality in advertising agencies described me as “washed up, old and white”, and ordered me to use gender neutral language when I referred to her and her team as “guys”. To her, equality only had one metric, and fairness for the over 45s wasn’t on the agenda.

My gut feel is that most people want the best minds in their company, regardless of who these minds belong to. Yet not many are prepared to do the grunt work of talent scouting outside of private schools and elite universities to find them.

The best ads have always led and inspired the culture. The worst ones try to bully it. In wanting some common sense and balance in what was once a beautiful industry to work in, I stand with Steve.