If our unconscious bias is behind the marketing we produce how do we stop it – when it is unconscious? – Suits&Sneakers
If our unconscious bias is behind the marketing we produce how do we stop it – when it is unconscious?
We can only know what we know. Our unconscious reveals a lot about how we have been raised as people, and how we think as creatives and strategists in our work. The marketing and advertising that we produce reveals our values, our beliefs and unfortunately the flaws too. Some of our unconscious wiring reveals things that actually hurt other people, but we often don’t even know we’re doing it.
According to Kantar 2019 85% of marketers think they’re doing a great job to remove gender stereotypes from our marketing. Sadly 63% of consumers think we’re doing a terrible job at reinforcing stereotypes. I tend to agree. The agencies that also say that ‘we do a pretty good job at this kind of thing’ are often the ones that send a red flag up my pole because I know they are not thinking broadly enough about what diversity is. In the same breath that they say they’re doing a great job, they can often reveal things that are clearly in what I call ‘Diversity Oversteer’ which is potentially going the complete other way, or they only do diversity in one area with confidence (probably gender).