What you need to know: 

• Australia's advertising has gone a long way to move the dial on ethnic and cultural diversity, but there plenty of room for improvement, according to the latest figures from the ACA and MFA's latest industry census reports. 
• Havas Creative Group's ANZ boss, James Wright, says we're tracking behind the US, where the onus for diversity in the agency sector has been driven by client pressure. 
• What DE&I initiatives have often failed to do, according to Reg Raghavan, the founder of multicultural agency CulturalPulse, is recognise the business case for cultural diversity in the agency sector, particularly given that Australia's consumer base is "increasingly Asian". Recognising that commercial opportunity, in his opinion, is one way to fast track change.
• Some agencies are already onboard. Omnicom Media Group (OMG) has a dedicated diversity unit and the group's ANZ boss, Peter Horgan, says they're considering "diverse media solutions" at the beginning of every brief – and he says they are outperforming.
• Indie comms agency Think HQ has also integrated diversity into its business model, per founder Jen Sharpe, thanks to the acquisition of multicultural engagement firm, CultureVerse.
• However, recruiting and retaining diverse talent remains a challenge. TBWA's Renata Yannoulis and senior strategist Kiranpreet Kaur Dhillon agree that advertising isn't a career path that traditionally appeals to some migrant communities. Without adequate representation within agency leadership, ethnically and culturally diverse talent who do enter the industry are often left without advocates or role models, and that can mean churn. 
• Raghavan says that there's also an underrepresentation of new migrants, whose insights and experiences can differ vastly to second and third-generation immigrants. Dhillon and Yannoulis both note that it can be difficult for these individuals to penetrate advertising and media's homogenous culture. 
• Solving those challenges in part comes back to a DE&I initiatives, with many agencies making headway. But some have more to show for it than others. 

Advertising in Australia is the most diverse it’s ever been. Much of that can be put down to the work of advocates and leaders to drive change – particularly over the last few years.

It’s also due in part to the scrutiny agencies – like other businesses – have been under to get diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) policies in order. 

But HR-driven approaches tend to miss the commercial upside of true ethnic and cultural diversity given Australia's increasing multicultural society and exploding population.

Global chairman of Havas PR and Group CEO of Havas Creative Group in Australia, James Wright, says talent with different backgrounds gives agencies the “edge”, “particularly now with clients really looking for solutions that reach different communities” that are “effective and sensitive” and “likely to drive an action or outcome”.

That means having those communities represented in an agency. But after returning to Australia market last year following a five-year stint in the United States, he says the market is well behind.

The lag, he suggests, is largely due to demands on the client side: US clients are much more sensitive to diversity on screen and behind the scenes. But Wright reckons we’re slowly catching up. “I think clients are expecting agencies to step up in terms of who’s in the room,” he tells Mi3.

Commercial upside 

Reg Raghavan, founder of multicultural specialist agency CulturalPulse, says the business case for ethnic diversity is crystal clear – marketers want to reach minorities, and having a diversity of cultural experiences makes for better agency insights.

The commercial value of diversity is particularly evident when you look at the significant opportunity to market to Asian audiences in Australia – the Chinese community alone accounts for 5.5 per cent of the national population according to 2021 census data.

“Australia is one of the most diverse countries in the world,” says Raghavan. “We've got a lot of migrants from Asia, compared to the US or UK, and so our consumer base is increasingly Asian. And not only that, but Australia’s future also is towards Asia as well,” he suggests.

Reaching those consumers means understanding how values and experiences differ across different cultures, and between first, second and third generation migrants. Going beyond the “assumption that everybody acts and behaves in the Anglo-Celtic way with Anglo-Celtic values”, says Raghavan, requires diversity of thought to produce insights that “sit across all communities”.

Token efforts

While there’s been efforts to get that right, Raghavan says it’s normally evident when the diversity initiative doesn’t run any deeper than the casting decisions.

“Sometimes we see really inauthentic representations of people together in an ad because they just throw a Chinese person with a white person with a disabled person and an indigenous person – like, hang on is this authentic?”

The connection between diverse talent and diverse target markets has led to the creation of specialist shops like Raghavan’s in recent years. But it there's opportunity for all agencies – and recognising growth is a fundamental principal.

Omnicom Media Group (OMG) has a dedicated unit, aptly named ‘DIVERSE’ and OMG chief Peter Horgan claims it's outperforming.

He says it's all about delivering results, not "showing up for the sake of it”.

“We believe that diverse media solutions need to be considered at the beginning of every brief – during audience analysis – and then be considered in every aspect through to creative.”

Per Horgan, clients that are running diverse media are consistently seeing stronger engagement, return on media spend, and higher acquisition rates, compared to their “mainstream media” campaigns. He says that could come down to higher average disposable incomes and education rates amongst multicultural audiences, cultural value for brands and, in some communities goods as status symbols, and generally a lack of competition on multi-cultural platforms.

Independents are seeing the same trends. CultureVerse, the multicultural communications firm acquired by indie agency ThinkHQ in 2021, reports flow on effects from marrying that focus with genuine cultural talent diversity.

“The key to ensuring diversity in your hirings is to bake its strength into both your business model and your work culture,” she says. “With 51 per cent of Australians having been born overseas – or having a parent who was – diverse hiring should just be a business no-brainer, and one that common sense and an eye for talent can deliver.”

80:20 rule

While it’s difficult to get a clear picture of what ethnic and cultural diversity looks like across the agency sector, the latest census-style surveys conducted by peak industry bodies provide indicators. (It's roughly 80:20 depending on how you carve it.)

The Advertising Council Australia’s (ACA) recent Create Space report had 86 per cent of the agency talent it surveyed identifying primarily with the “ethnic majority” – i.e. Anglo-Celtic, European and North American. 18 per cent identified primarily with an ethnic minority and the same proportion spoke a language other than English at home. Asian ethnicities were best represented, making up a collective 11 per cent of the industry.

Similarly, the Media Federation of Australia’s (MFA) 2023 census tells us that the majority of media agency talent identify as being Australian (52 per cent) or European (32 per cent). 22 per cent identified as having an Asian background, with more marginal representation from the Americas, Africa and the Middle East. Overall, 29.6 per cent spoke a language other than English at home.

Those numbers are solid against the national Australian population, but they’re not yet quite at the levels you might expect considering that Sydney and Melbourne – where the bulk of agency talent are based – tend to over index on ethnic and cultural diversity. As a comparison to the MFA and ACA’s stats, 42 per cent of Sydneysiders and 37 per cent of Melbournians spoke a language other than English at home according to the 2021 Australian census, with Mandarin, Arabic, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Greek and Punjabi ranking highly.

Chicken or egg

The strong skew of cultural diversity at the junior levels, per Create Space, is a testament to the chicken or egg predicament that adland has been presented with when it comes to getting diversity right. It’s both a testament to the work done to bring ethnic minorities into the industry, and the culprit in keeping that talent moving through: role models are few and far between.

According to the Create Space report, more than a quarter (26 per cent) of talent that identify as being an ethnic minority are likely to leave their company due to a lack of inclusion or discrimination, compared to 16 per cent of the ethnic majority. Casual racism had been observed in the workplace by half of the survey’s Asian respondents, and 24 per cent of regularly had their names constantly mispronounced, or received nicknames they didn’t agree to. 

TBWA\Australia’s Renata Yannoulis, who is a member of the ACA’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee, says that these experiences, while seemingly minor, occur at a “frequency and volume” that can “really have a negative impact on individuals”. She notes that it’s even more of an issue when you look at the intersections between ethnicity and gender.

For strategist Kiranpreet Kaur Dhillon, it’s not a matter of “overt discrimination”, but rather comes down to active efforts to make minorities feel comfortable in the workplace. “Do people feel they’re understood? Are they being spoken to and respected in certain ways?”

Ultimately, Dhillon says that comes down to having greater ethnic and cultural diversity within agency leadership who can advocate and act as a role model for those at the more junior levels. And therein lies the rub.

Without anyone like her to take cue from in the workplace, Dhillon says she spent years working through her cultural holidays before building up the courage to take them. “No one ever told me that I can’t do that… I just never thought I could.”

While top tier representation will lift as junior talent moves through the ranks, agencies shouldn’t rely on time alone to move the dial.

Yannoulis says that effectively communicating HR policies and updates can go a good way to making sure that staff from ethnic minorities can experience the benefits of DE&I initiatives.

“That’s like a freebie for the agencies and C-suite people,” she says. “Sometimes when you're on that committee, you think immediately everybody knows, and you think it's a no brainer that everybody wants to have access to this information. [But] they don't know where the intranet is. They don't know where to start. They don't know where documents are living.”

Broadening horizons

Raghavan says that addressing cultural diversity also means understanding that the experiences of new migrants differ vastly from those who are second or third generation. If agencies need to tap into the Chinese market, for example, they can’t rely on having “one junior person who has an Asian ancestry that’s second generation” in the room. But this nuance is quite often missed.

Dhillon and Yannoulis both agree that the cultural homogeneity of the agency sector can make it more difficult to penetrate for those who don’t click with the stereotypes – class and geography also tend play a role.

“We joke that people will end up wearing the same type of clothes, wearing the same types of sneakers, right? They're going to probably drink the same beers, and they have to fit into what used to be Friday drinks – which is now Thursday drinks as well,” says Dhillon.

“We might end up having someone who looks a bit different, but they’re likely going to be the kids who already find it easy to fit in with the eastern suburbs kitsch… So we’re still missing out on experiences that come from a different identity.”

To this point, Yannoulis, who grew up on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, explains that she “learnt from a really young age how to code switch and to present to like everyone else and all of the white kids around me”. She says for those who are more embedded within their own cultural set, it’s much more difficult to integrate – or to even find their way into the industry in the first place.

“You have to be in a pretty privileged position to take on years of full-time study as well as potentially years of unpaid internships… we have to make that entry level a more even playing field.”

There’s also a communications issue to be solved – advertising isn’t an industry that has traditionally had high levels of awareness within migrant communities. Even when it does, Yannoulis says that for many second or third generation migrant kids, an advertising career doesn’t live up to the “quite traditional markers of success” that they’re under pressure to achieve – it’s not rewarded in the same way as “medicine, engineering or finance”.

Yannoulis says that while the tides are slowly shifting on that front, there’s an opportunity to educate both students and parents to make the advertising industry appear just “as prestigious as we believe it to be”.

Talk vs. walk

As ever, agencies are often quick to outwardly celebrate the steps forward they’ve made to embrace cultural and ethnic diversity within their own walls. As it turns out, the consensus seems to be that those shouting the loudest don’t always have the most to show for it – but many have been doing the work behind the scenes.

OMG seems to be one of those. Beyond the group’s DIVERSE unit, it’s been backing up talk with a robust policy approach at the global level. And boss Peter Horgan isn’t afraid to admit to the complexities that come with getting diversity right.

“Determining how far our business should engage in social issues, identifying and understanding authentic actions for each pillar we support, building sustainable positions over time with these communities and allocating finite time and resource is complex,” he says. “We don’t always get it right. Owning our mistakes and staying on the path are important.”

Horgan says that OMG’s approach goes “beyond headlines”, with principal-based leadership and regular data-driven decisions having made the biggest impact internally. “Whilst we still have much to improve, we remain committed to walking the talk and making meaningful progress."

One of OMG’s stablemates, Clemenger Group, is tackling ‘multicultural diversity’ as one of four key pillars in its DE&I strategy, looking closely at its recruitment practices, alongside a flexible public holiday policy and annual diversity training for talent. The group’s chief people officer for APAC, Raj Tapper, says those efforts are underpinned by the belief that “only the most diverse, progressive, and thoughtful workplaces can create the most unique, effective, and creative outcomes”.

Acquisition vs. retention

At Havas, James  Wright says the holdco has selected cultural and ethnic diversity as one of three key pillars its addressing in its diversity strategy this year – along with First Nations and LGBTQIA+ inclusion.

That approach is underpinned by a 2024 roadmap that covers off three phases surrounding awareness and engagement internally, followed by policy and communication of guidelines, and finally external partnerships.

“There’s no one solution to this, but there’s also some macro issues that we need to tackle, and systemic issues with the country and obviously within our agency. But how do we also drive progress?”

ThinkHQ's Sharpe says that centring inclusion and intersectionality within the work is the quickest way to open up agencies to a bigger talent pool. She’s also cynical about the impact of some of the policy approaches she’s seen elsewhere in the industry. “Token initiatives only end up ‘othering’ candidates who really should just sit comfortably and safely in any Australian workplace,” she says.

Similarly, indie media shop The Media Store says it’s achieved a “rich mix of ethnic diversity over the years” without the need for targets. Chief operating officer, Jacquie Alley, says that’s due to a “relentless commitment to prioritising value-alignment and curious questioning” within the agency’s recruitment process. Retention has also been a key focus area, she says. To that end, they agency has recently developed a scorecard for evaluating cultural initiatives, which encompasses values alignment, well-being, and inclusivity metrics.

Publicis Groupe has been vocal about its DE&I initiatives at the global and local level. Chief talent officer for APAC, Pauly Grant, says it’s been a “holistic approach”. “We continue to hold ourselves accountable by tracking and measuring our progress and regularly reporting back to the business. By implementing these strategies, we aim to create a diverse and inclusive workplace that mirrors the communities we serve and sets a standard for the industry,” she says. Part of that, is mandatory diversity training for staff that focuses on unconscious bias, cultural competency and inclusion leadership, with transparent reporting to boot.

Big impacts

While it’s easy for the DE&I conversation to become simultaneously heated and fluffy, Raghavan says that the work produced by adland has a real impact on “Australian social life” – “it’s actually bigger than this industry”.

Dhillon agrees. She says that having multicultural talent with lived experience sitting on the brief is fundamental to creating insights that resonate positively with ethnically and culturally diverse communities. I.e. driving connection, growth and shaping a future beyond monoculture.

“The role we play in society is massive. We represent voices on behalf of people and to people on such a scale. And so we impact the way kids grow up, what they think, what they see, what are the norms. We impact dialogues, we impact just common language and culture,” she says. “And if we don't do that from an honest place that actually reflects the breadth and diversity of people around us, we're definitely not doing justice to our roles.”

Equally, properly addressing the full marketplace will inevitably lead to growth.

“If we can work together to recognise the value – the commercial value not just the DE&I initiative about having people of colour represented – [that will make the difference]. I think that's why we're so committed to the business case side of things, the commercial aspects,” says CulturalPulse's Raghavan.

All of which presents a similar opportunity for diversity in publishing, both internally and externally: As OMG's Chief Investment Officer Kristiaan Kroon recently told Mi3:

"DEI and CALD [Cultural and Linguistic Diversity] audiences are on the agenda for large business and governments, and there are targets to reach those diverse audiences. So if you are a specialist publisher and reach diverse audiences, you will see growth,” said Kroon.

“If you are a generalist – you will get squeezed."