A Diversity Report for the Advertising/Marketing Industry — And A Call to Action

By Bill Duggan

ANA

ANA's Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing has just released the new report, "A Diversity Report for the Advertising/Marketing Industry." This report bundles three recent studies to help provide a measurement of diversity at ANA client-side marketer member companies. Each report examined gender and ethnic diversity, specifically:

1. ANA Member CMOs: Gender and ethnic diversity of the CMO/CMO-equivalent at 747 ANA member client-side marketer company members.
2. ANA Overall Membership: Gender and ethnic diversity of the overall ANA membership, representing more than 23,000 individuals.
3. ANA Board of Director Company Marketing Departments: Gender and ethnic diversity among the U.S.-based marketing departments of ANA board member companies. Seventeen ANA board members participated in this "diversity scorecard" initiative, representing 9,677 marketers in total.

The three reports are incredibly consistent and paint the following picture.

1. Women overwhelmingly comprise the bulk of the marketing industry's workforce.
   • That skew is 67 percent female and 33 percent male, according to the ANA Overall Membership study.
   • The skew is 63 percent female and 37 percent male among the U.S.-based marketing departments of ANA board member companies.
2. Women, however, lag somewhat behind in marketing leadership roles.
   • Women have 45 percent of the CMO or CMO-equivalent level roles, per the ANA Member CMOs study.
   • Women have 46 percent of the "senior level" roles in marketing among the U.S.-based marketing departments of ANA board member companies.
3. Ethnic diversity is poor in the marketing industry across the board, especially for African-Americans/Blacks and Hispanics/Latinos.
   • Among the ANA overall membership, 6 percent are African-American and 8 percent are Hispanic.
   • In marketing roles among the U.S.-based marketing departments of ANA board member companies, 7 percent are African-American and 7 percent are Hispanic.
   • African-Americans have 3 percent of the CMO or CMO-equivalent level roles, per the ANA Member CMOs study; Hispanics have 5 percent of such roles.
   • African-Americans have 4 percent of the "Senior Level" roles in marketing among the U.S.-based marketing departments of ANA board member companies; Hispanics have 9 percent of those roles.

Meanwhile, African-Americans and Hispanics account for 13 percent and 18 percent, respectively, of the total U.S. population, per the United States Census Bureau.

Improving diversity is good for business and growth. According to McKinsey, there is a direct correlation between diversity in the leadership of large companies and two measures of financial outperformance — profitability and value creation (measured as economic profit margin).

To accurately know the current state of diversity/gender equality and the progress we are making (or lack thereof), a public measurement is required. We look to measure everything else in our industry, but when it comes to knowing whether we have diverse talent, such measurement — at least what has been shared publicly — is lacking. As the saying goes, "You can't manage what you can't measure."

The ANA is committed to such a public measurement and will repeat and update this study (all three reports) in a year.

We will call on others in the industry to participate as well by contributing their diversity scorecard information, which will remain completely confidential and be aggregated with other companies for reporting. We need to publicly track ourselves with real data from client-side marketers, agencies, publishers, media companies, researchers, suppliers, and vendors. The ANA will make this call to the industry in first quarter 2019.

Bill Duggan is a group EVP at the ANA.