What I learned from being a token
Avish Gordhan, ECD at M&C Saatchi, describes what it is like to be a ‘token’ diversity hire, and offers the industry advice on how to avoid this and move forward from it.
Years ago, Mandie (my female art director) and I were hired at a new agency in Australia. At a subsequent industry lunch, I met one of the candidates who didn’t get the job. When he discovered that we’d been appointed, his response was, “Of course they didn’t go with me. A woman and a brown guy … ticks all the boxes.”
My response: “Maybe we were just better than you.”
Zing! What a comeback!
Very good article Avish. Even though we like to think advertising is a meritocracy, tokenism is rife throughout our industry — and not just for people of colour or sexuality. We invent ageist clichés, like ‘all millennials have short attention spans!’ Or perpetuate out-dated, 1950s, atomic family assumptions like ‘Women are the key decision maker for grocery purchases!’ We even write them into briefs that get made into ads.
In my experience, ‘diverse hires’ also go beyond nationality, skin colour, gender or sexuality. They usually have a background vastly different to the majority of the creative department. Maybe they grew up in a cult. Grew up in a favela. They’re Mormon. Don’t drink. From the Shire. From Campbelltown. Indigenous / First Nations. Or they backpacked to Australia, lost their entire savings at gunpoint in South-East Asia and the only job they could get when they arrived was as a handyman in a brothel, before they discovered advertising. I have hired and worked with all of the above, and their insights never cease to amaze me.
I really hope we stop seeing creatives as ‘the brown’ guy, ‘the girl’ team or ‘the pale, male, stale’ team and start seeing what these individuals can bring to the table. Every creative has strengths and weaknesses, some are good at comedy, others good at emotional, others good at functional. It is our job to guide and shepherd them to greatness.
Next time a client asks for ‘a girl team’ to work on a tampon brief or ‘a guy team’ to work on a beer brief, we need to start the education process. Why not ‘a comedy team’ or ‘an emotional team’ and judge people’s outputs, not their looks or background. A meritocracy.