While at the surface inclusive marketing may seem like the most recent industry buzzword or simply a politically correct list of criteria to check off when running a creative marketing campaign, it’s far deeper than that.
While at the surface inclusive marketing may seem like the most recent industry buzzword or simply a politically correct list of criteria to check off when running a creative marketing campaign, it’s far deeper than that.
For brands, inclusive marketing offers a new foundation on which to build trust with consumers, affording an opportunity to build credibility, reliability and relevance in an era when skepticism surrounds both advertising and technology.
For consumers, inclusive marketing has the potential to affect our lives on a profoundly intimate level – from whether the products we’re offered take into consideration such dimensions of our identity as our ability, skin tone, gender, size, age, culture or height, or whether we’re served a brand’s ad via paid social media and display advertising based on the superficial target categories assigned to our pixels.
At home in the Great White North, diversity and inclusion remains at the forefront. Much of the country’s population growth can be attested to a sustained inflow of immigrants as permanent and temporary migration accounted for 82.8% of all population growth in Canada during the first quarter of 2019. In addition, according to the 2016 census, 22% of Canada’s population was born in another country, resulting in the highest number of foreign-born residents among G7 countries.
Rooted in such a diverse multicultural landscape, Canadian brands, agencies and partners must proactively reevaluate what they are developing, who is involved in the creation of products, how they are telling the story of the product, and to whom they are sharing that story.
“I think we’ve finally reached a moment in time, where our differences are beginning to be celebrated,” says Dan Kalinski, CEO, iProspect Canada. “Brands who have broken through the market clutter with culture-based or one-to-one product differentiators are emerging and are proving that inclusive marketing and product development is not only good for society but also for a company’s bottom line.”
