Advertising 2021: Cultural Fluency, Gender & People of Color

2020 has thrown many challenges at advertisers, not least of which is how to respond to changing social values and culture. Coming out of the pandemic many consumers are expecting to see meaningful change and there’s a lot more riding on brands getting it right. Our 2021 resolution is to help, by providing advertisers with what they need to make good, fact-based decisions to manage their brands’ cultural fluency.

Revisit our recorded webinar to hear data from a broad sample of consumers on topics at the intersection of equality and advertising. We share how advertising is doing at diversity and inclusion, and what consumers would like to see more and less of – including some really interesting tactical learnings on gender roles and on featuring people of color the way they want to be depicted. We also put forward a model of how brands should think about cultural fluency in advertising, aligned with research approaches for guidance, benchmarking and measurement.

Listen in for these 3 key take-aways:

• Consumers want a more equitable post-pandemic world, and they believe that brands must play a role in building cultural inclusiveness
• Many brands are representative in their advertising today, but consumers do not think this is enough.  Advertisers must think beyond table stakes tokenism.
• To guide clients who want to benchmark and advance their cultural fluency, Ipsos has created a framework for the development of advertising, illustrated with primary research and current examples