UK – Industry to Track Portrayal of Ethnic Diversities in Advertising

From next week (30th November) the industry will be able to track the numbers of people from ethnically diverse communities cast by agencies and advertisers as artists in TV commercials.As a result of conversations between the IPA and Clearcast, agencies will have the option of stating whether the actors within their advertisements are from Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups when they put forward their submissions to Clearcast.  This will be through the addition of two tick boxes on the Clearcast submission form; ‘Ethnic (BAME) featured artist?’ and ‘Ethnic (BAME) walk-on artist?’ that agencies will be able to fill in as appropriate.

This development forms part of the IPA’s wider diversity initiative and once the information has been submitted, it will be collated by the IPA to form an annual benchmark survey.

Says Hamish Pringle, IPA Director General: “We’re most grateful to Chris Mundy for his positive reaction to our proposal. Through this simple addition to the Clearcast form we will be able to track our progress on one of the three key commitments we made in 2003, namely to increase the portrayal of people from ethnic diversities in ads to be representative of their importance as consumers, and citizens.”

Says Chris Mundy, MD, Clearcast: ”Whilst Clearcast’s specific role is to advise on and clear commercials against the TV Advertising Standards Code, we see ourselves as having a wider responsibility to our industry and the viewing public, so we’re delighted to make this contribution to the cause. We see this data having an impact not only in terms of improved portrayal, but also in encouraging increased diversity of employment and more effective marketing to the BAME sector.”

Says Saad Saraf, member of the IPA’s Ethnic Diversity Forum and CEO of MediaReach: “The BAME markets are already very large and continue to increase in importance, so we welcome Clearcast’s contribution. I believe strongly that a commercial will appeal more to a BAME target audience if it reflects it, and casting the right people is an essential component in effective communication. This isn’t as easy as it might seem, given the complexity and fast-changing nature of the cultural mix in the UK – after all over 300 languages are spoken in London alone.”

This information is being collected by the IPA for research purposes only.

Background information:

• In 2003 the IPA launched an online guide to ethnic diversity in the UK as part of a self-declared ethnic diversity week for the ad industry. See: http://www.ipa.co.uk/Content/Diversity

•  The guide was the culmination of a two-year project by the IPA Ethnic Diversity Group, then co-chaired by Ray Barrett (Creative Director of Barrett Cernis) and Jonathan Mildenhall (Managing Director of TBWA) and looked at the portrayal and employment of ethnic minorities in advertising.

The project communicated three significant findings:

• That advertisers need to wake up to the opportunities of the ‘brown pound’ (an economic view).

• BT got it right in portraying ethnic minorities in ads (a portrayal view).

• The ad industry must sell itself harder to attract more ethnic minority employees (an employment view).

The report also highlighted:

• 7.9% of the UK population is of ethnic minority origin, in London this rises to 31%.

• The combined disposable wealth of this group is estimated at some £32billion.

• Only 4% of IPA agency employees are of ethnic origin.

• Of this 4%, 70% are in support disciplines such as IT and finance.

Figures from the 2008 census showed that of the 140 agencies submitting a full census return, 95 provided information in respect of the ethnic diversity of their employees. Figures from these agencies indicate that those from a non-white background account for 8.4% of the employed base. This is an increase on 2007 figures, where 5.9% of people employed in 67 agencies were from a non-white background. The 2009 census will be available from January 2010.

The BME agency representation figures are improving, however work still needs to be done. The IPA is working on a collaborative project to update the 2003 guide which will be re-launched on completion.

The main IPA contact, responsible for the administration of the Ethnic Diversity Forum affairs is Adah Parris, IPA Account Manager – adah@ipa.co.uk.

Source: Adland

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