Everyone will shine together

Diversity is hot. During New York Fashion week, Rihanna launched her Savage x Fenty lingerie collection and has been hailed by the public for its very diverse look of models. The show featured models in all shapes and colors and even two pregnant models walked the runway. Rihanna is already known for making diversity the focus of her products, after releasing a 40-shade foundation range for her make-up brand in 2017. More and more brands have followed since, creating products that represent all kinds of different social minorities and making inclusivity the main focus of their marketing campaign and PR. But are there any downsides to targeting minorities instead of majorities and are there authentic ways to convey the message if you don’t want to appear to just jump on Rihanna’s bandwagon of diversity?

 Figure 1 Fenty Beauty is regarded one of the pioneers in promoting an actual  all-inclusive approach in the beauty industry. Source image: Fenty Beauty

Diverse industry = success of diversity?

Alice Claridge has already discussed the ‘diversity’ development in PR and marketing. In her blog post, she applauded Nubian Skin for communicating the inclusivity message very well through social media and advertising. She raises a very interesting point that inclusivity happens from within, from within the companies and PR agencies that present us the diversity message. Having a diverse working environment that actually consists of people that belong to the societal groups that are being targeted through marketing and PR, will ensure that the needs, wants and habits of all people – not only those of the majority - are more accurately catered to and, consequently, the message will appear more authentic.

Personalize the inclusion

Besides being more knowledgeable about your audience’s consumer needs and appropriate ways to communicate to them through having a more diverse PR field, you can explicitly emphasize that your brand does not only care for the consumer that fits the societal box of heteronormativity. Being public about your company’s diversity might help, and also having the face(s) of the company to be diverse or part of a minority (i.e. Rihanna for Fenty Beauty). Personalization of your message or product can help the public to easily understand your brand stands for (Denner, Heitzler & Koch, 2018).

Excluding the majority?

You can wonder whether these very explicit strategies, like Fenty Beauty and Nubian Skin used, might limit your target audience too much and might not speak to people who do not fall into this niche. A suggestion might be to use more subtle cultural elements. Research has shown these cues will still be picked up by the niche audiences and will not result into the majority not being able to not identify with the brand (Johnson & Grier, 2011).

Inclusive or offensive?

Another pitfall might be that PR strategies that very overtly use cultural elements are also not very well received by people who actually are being targeted as they might think the content does not represent their culture well or still ends up being offensive (John, 1999), like the 2017 Dove ad in which a black woman turns into a white woman. Diversity might be a hype, but make sure to use it tastefully and accurately. Inclusion should not only be a buzzword, and hopefully a more diverse future PR industry will set a new ‘normal’.