DEI progress has been slow but we must keep it top of the agenda

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is a contentious topic — so much, in fact, that I’ll admit I was a little nervous when writing this piece.

Nervous but excited, I should say, because it’s something I care about and impacts me personally. As a business development consultancy whose clients are agencies and whose team speaks to hundreds of brand decision-makers every month, Future Factory can offer a perspective on what we’re hearing and seeing in the industry.

And what we’re hearing and seeing is a bit depressing…

DEI taking a hit

Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the marketing world became politicised, with myriad brands showing their support of Black Lives Matter.

For some brands, this support extended to a commitment to working with agencies that had diverse teams. For the first time, agencies were telling us they had won a pitch because of their commitment to diversity.

This was unprecedented, a big step in the right direction and a clear indication that brands were putting their money where their mouth was.

Fast forward to 2024 and we have a very different situation. This past year was a tough one for brands and agencies, and DEI budgets have been cut as a result.

Not only that, but working with suppliers that have diverse teams is much less of a consideration now than it was a few years ago. Indeed, few agencies mention this any more and the briefs we’ve seen recently rarely mention DEI as a deciding factor when choosing who wins. This is backed up by the intermediaries we’ve spoken to as well.

Cost has always been important when selecting agencies and now, as the UK fights its way out of last year’s recession, it seems to be the driving force behind decisions. And it’s not just DEI that’s taken a hit. In a similar vein, we’ve also seen sustainability credentials deprioritised by brands as they consider financials above all else.

A ‘must have’, not a ‘nice to have’

It’s possible that when the economy bounces back and the threat of redundancies is less present, brands will once again seek out suppliers with more diverse teams.

Yet, even if brands no longer see a company’s diversity (or lack thereof) as a deciding factor when choosing who to work with, potential employees — especially Gen Z — most certainly do. Agencies and brands both run the risk of losing top talent if they don’t start seeing DEI as a “must have” instead of a “nice to have”.

That’s not to say that change within the industry hasn’t happened.

Speaking from my personal experience as a queer, Asian woman, I feel much more comfortable in my own skin than I ever have before.

People at Future Factory spend half our time working from agencies’ offices. When I started out as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed account manager in 2011, it was not uncommon for me to be the only non-white person in the entire building. Gone are the days — I hope — of people in agencies asking me if I work in HR or IT, simply because of the colour of my skin (sadly, this did actually happen).

Higher awareness

Perhaps the biggest change is that there’s much more of an awareness that we need to be doing better as an industry, as well as more of a dialogue happening than there was previously, with topics like neurodiversity, for example, finally being on people’s radars.

And with the emergence of these new topics, one of the biggest opportunities we have is to create DEI strategies that appropriately address intersectionality so that our efforts don’t become fractured. We’ve even seen the emergence of companies like Creative Equals, which is doing fantastic work by helping agencies and brands embrace DEI and get things right.

People sometimes ask me if I feel progress has slowed down in our industry or if we’ve gone backwards. In truth, I don’t think either is the case.

Sure, it’s been slow-going, but change was never going to happen overnight — undoing decades of inequality takes time. However, if we want to make the most out of the recent gains and keep the momentum going, we need to keep DEI a topic of discussion within our organisations, from the most senior staff to the most junior employees (and with allies by our sides).

How will we will know when we’ve done enough? It’s hard to say, but I think a decent indicator would be when brands don’t have to specify in briefs that they want to work with diverse agencies because that diversity will be a given.

This year has been a funny old one, but we’re in the final stretch. Let’s see what 2025 has up its sleeve.

Kimi Gilbert is managing partner at Future Factory