The global marketplace is also becoming increasingly diverse, and inclusive marketing includes more groups. Inclusive marketing works to reach a larger audience of potential buyers by looking past preconceived notions of gender, age, race, income, sexuality, language, location, and religion (among other things) to highlight common pain points and experiences and make sales. Little by little, inclusive marketing campaigns have been tackling the issues with the greatest impact on society, integrating and making visible social groups that were not represented before. As audience becomes more diverse, inclusive marketing is crucial to help your business stay relevant. Inclusive marketing arises as a need to give social value to brands.
What strategies do brands use to create an inclusive marketing campaign?
Appeal to a wider audience
Cater for modern consumers, your customers want to see diversity. Focus and conduct more in-depth research than you would normally do. In addition to finding out superficial customer data about your potential customers, such as age, you need to know their concerns, worries and, especially, their sensitivities. In this way, your marketing strategy will not hurt your customers’ feelings. Underrepresentation, systemic discrimination and stereotypes are sadly a well-documented reality in marketing and advertising. Companies and brands fail drastically to reflect the societies they are meant to persuade.
Tell real stories
The more authentic the story you tell, the more impact you will have on your customers. Many brands make the mistake of representing a certain group in their campaigns in a way that has little or nothing to do with reality. In these cases, the target group will not be represented and, consequently, the brand will fail to attract their attention and interest.
Seek to unite the clients
All groups are united by a value, a cause or a feeling. Show that your customers care about diversitity. For a brand, it is very important to find what unites them so that it is reflected in the message you want to transmit. The objective is to attract their attention and get them interested in the brand. Of course, it is very important that the message transmitted corresponds to the actions carried out by the company.
Use inclusive language
The language you use is as important as the message itself. The term inclusive language refers to the use of language to construct an equitable discourse that makes diversity of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social status… visible.
The use of inclusive language in marketing is an excellent tool to strengthen the equitable representation of human diversity.
Guarantee the representativeness of all groups.
Remember that the aim is to be inclusive, so it will be necessary to be representative of all the groups that make up today’s society.
If only one type of group is represented in the strategy, we would no longer be talking about inclusiveness. Having a diverse team could help you to understand better how to reach all customers.
Don’t fall into stereotypes
Today’s society is full of stereotypes, especially when it comes to groups, but these should not be part of a marketing strategy. It is about sending a respectful message and sticking to reality.
Apply inclusivity in your own company
There is no point in launching inclusive messages in campaigns if the company itself is anything but inclusive. Although more and more companies are implementing inclusive marketing, it should not be applied if the company itself is not inclusive.
Once you have followed these steps, incorporate inclusion into your global marketing strategy!
Putting it into practice
What would an inclusive marketing strategy look like in practice? The following brands, which managed to create a successful pro-business inclusive marketing campaign, are great examples of inclusive marketing
Procter & Gamble
P&G, known for owning a number of grooming companies such as Tide, Dove and Gillette, is known for creating initiatives to ensure inclusivity in its marketing and products. Not only does P&G include people from diverse backgrounds in their ads, but they also use their platform to tell stories that spread powerful messages about equality, address controversial topics and discuss issues related to diversity and identity.
One example of P&G’s inclusive ads is a 2018 Emmy-winning ad called “The Talk”.
ThirdLove
ThirdLove is a lingerie company that promotes lingerie for all body types. To reinforce this brand message, they feature real women of all ages, shapes and races in their marketing campaigns.
In their campaign To Each, Her Own, we can see women of different backgrounds, sizes, ages, races…
Mercedes Benz
The car brand launched a marketing campaign under the title “Painted with love”, Mercedes Benz Canada, accompanied by a short film that generated almost one million views. In support of Pride, both Mercedes and members of the LGBT community shared real-life experiences of how homophobia should be dealt with.
As a result, Mercedes opened her arms to consumers of all sexualities. What she did was encourage people not to continually lament and made them see that negative experiences do not define a person.
Although success is possible to achieve through inclusive marketing campaigns, there are other brands that, in practice, failed in the attempt, costing the company millions and the reputations.
This is the case of the Swedish clothing brand H&M, which made the mistake of showing an African-American boy wearing a sweatshirt with the slogan ‘the coolest monkey in the jungle’, a serious marketing error in an increasingly conscious and inclusive world. This cost the brand literally millions: protests, closed shops in South Africa and lost sponsorships.
After this huge mistake, the Swedish brand hired a ‘Chief Diversity Officer’ to get out of the crisis and not make such marketing mistakes again.
To wrap it up, inclusive marketing is not just a trendy buzzword. It describes a critical, strategic shift that businesses need to make if they want to stay relevant with changing audiences and grow in the years to come.
Inclusivity will just be an inherent piece of what we do as many consumers want a more ethic and inclusive marketing place.