Four industry leaders from across the media, marketing and advertising industry have set up a new initiative to improve the representation of culturally diverse backgrounds in senior roles, which falls well below Australia’s evolving demographic makeup.
If you hold up a mirror to the media and advertising industry it does not reflect modern day Australia. The higher up you raise that mirror through the upper echelons of an agency, the less it represents the multicultural society that Australia has become.
In the two cities where the majority of the industry lives and works – Sydney and Melbourne – around 40 per cent of people speak a language other than English at home. In advertising agencies that figure sharply drops to 18 per cent.
The problem is even more pronounced in senior leadership roles where only 12 per cent of the c-suite and executive management identify as being from an ethnic minority (see chart below – source ACA Create Space Census 2023).
For Mediahub chief strategy officer Linda Fagerlund – a first generation Vietnamese Australian – that is an issue, and not just from a human values perspective.
“Too often, and particularly from a media perspective, we think about cultural diversity as kind of a siloed, niche thing. You might have a particular campaign or problem to solve against a multicultural audience, but that’s no longer who we are as a society,” she said.
“Australia is multicultural in its entirety, so every time we’re thinking about Australia, we need to be applying that multicultural lens so it can no longer be an afterthought. It needs to be baked into the way we think.”
Plenty of studies have shown that having more culturally diverse voices in the room creates better insights, fewer blindspots and work that leads to better outcomes in business and advertising.
Fagerlund says the industry is missing a trick by not promoting culturally diverse talent to the top to “future proof our industry”.
She has teamed up with three industry leaders – It’s Friday head of connections strategy Michelle Miroforidis; BWS head of brand marketing An Le; and Dentsu Creative’s strategy partner Graham Alvarez-Jarratt – to launch Smelly Lunch Stories, an initiative that aims to raise awareness about the lack of cultural diversity and inspire the industry to increase the number of leaders from different backgrounds.
The Model Minority Complex
Fagerlund told B&T that although the industry has made great strides on improving gender diversity, cultural diversity is “largely unspoken” and points out that unlike the UK and US, Australia’s advertising industry never had its Black Lives Movement moment outside of client’s brand work.
“From my experience coming up in the industry as a young female from a cultural background, I really did feel like an outsider,” she said.
“The industry is doing a better job attracting lots of people from all backgrounds, but as you progress and reach those management roles, particularly the c-suite, it gets far less culturally developed.”
There are many reasons why culturally diverse talent is being ignored, but a big part of it, argues Fagerlund, is unconscious bias, which she said has been exacerbated by the expectations placed younger talent from different backgrounds.
“I’ve long suffered from what I call the model minority complex,” she said. “You’re expected to work really hard, earn your place, blend in as best as possible and don’t ask for much more. That’s something that is quite common in people like myself, who come from a migrant background.
“These cultural codes influence the way we behave, our leadership styles and how we interact with others in the workplace. It means there’s often invisible biases and barriers that prevent us from being considered for those senior leadership roles.”
This lack of career progression and higher levels of discrimination (see chart above) are leading to one in five people from ethnic minority backgrounds to feel like they do not belong in their workplace.
Half of the industry’s Asian respondents have observed casual discrimination and 24 per cent have their names consistently mispronounced or have been given a nickname without asking – double the percentage of the overall response base.
As a consequence, 28 per cent of those that identify as an ethnic minority are likely to leave their company due to a lack of inclusion, according to the ACA’s Create Space census (see below).
Lifting the Industry
Smelly Lunch Stories aims to change that by hosting events that showcase senior leaders from different cultural backgrounds to tell their stories and share their lived experiences. The aim is to identify what has helped and hindered their careers and to rally together to find solutions.
Beyond events, the initiative will produce content and storytelling across different formats, mentoring and providing support networks.
Smelly Lunch Stories will kick off with its first event on 31 October at social enterprise restaurant Kyiv Social in Chippendale, Sydney.
It will feature Gambol creative’s Camey O’Keefe; Pedestrian.TV co-founder and Linkby co-founder and CEO Chris Wirasinha; WPP’s ANZ president Rose Herceg and Smelly Lunch Stories’ An Le.
The name “Smelly Lunch Stories” will be familiar most Asian kids who used to be teased in the schoolyard by the foreign lunch they brought to school. That sort of bullying behaviour really stunk during childhood.
The lack of cultural diversity at the top of agencies is a stench the industry should eradicate if it wants to remain cultural relevant as Australia grows up and evolves.
