On Sensitive and Inclusive Marketing

How do you include sensitivity and inclusivity in your marketing? 

In a recent episode of our podcast Marketing in the Wild, I shared a personal reflection and thoughts about how we can approach sensitive topics and practice inclusivity as professional and individual marketers. In light of the recent shootings, Pride month, and Junteenth coming up, we’ve had conversations in our workplace about sensitivity and inclusivity regarding social media and marketing. 

While I only know my own experience and privilege, we can all approach it as marketers and say, “Hey, did this campaign land well? What happened?” In the end, marketing is supposed to connect a company with its end consumer. So how should we be staying sensitive? How do we stay inclusive? And what does that look like? Our team discussed examples that we saw on our social media feeds and in our inboxes and came up with a few questions that we find could be helpful in navigating creating content and marketing 

If you are thinking of sharing about an event/celebration month, you should ask yourself these questions:

1. Why are we including information on this event/celebration? Is this something the company values, believes in, and genuinely supports?
2. When creating copy, who’s voices are being included? Are you including people on who the event/celebration is centered? Or at least coming from a sensitive/inclusive place?
3. Who is benefiting from the promotion? Are the people we are celebrating a part of the benefits i.e. donations? 
4. If you are repurposing past content (which you know we love to do) is it still appropriate and does it include inclusive and sensitive language? 

If your company is at point A and you would like to be at point Z, don’t forget that it does take steps. That is where those diverse teams help because we can all help each other learn together. 

In fact, we want to hear from you! 

I want to create more podcast episodes on inclusivity and sensitivity. My goal is to interview people about how to celebrate and/or commemorate specific cultural events. Interviewing people who are closer to it, who understand it, is important to me and the Stratos team because we think that we all have room to grow.

If you have this question that you would like to ask or know somebody who could speak on inclusion, whether it’s for any community, please send them my way.

And, if you have seen a marketing campaign that brought awareness inclusively and sensitively in a way that you love, we want to see it. Email us at info@stratoscreativemarketing.com.