Insights for this piece were contributed by Catherine D. Henry, SVP Growth, Metaverse & Innovation Strategy; James Nicholas Kinney, Chief of Diversity and Talent Discovery; Sam Haskin, Inclusive Marketing Practice Lead; Susan Parker, Executive Creative Director; and Vanessa Zucker, Director of Marketing and Communications

Who defines what’s innovative? Design processes have historically been blinded by biases of gender, ability, ethnicity, and so on—but these biases have an undeniable and sweeping impact in holding innovation and technological progress back.

Today women drive 70-80% of all consumer purchasing decisions, yet 90% of all products and services are designed by men, for men. For instance, the vast majority of medical research is based on studies of men and car crash dummies are largely designed based on the male anatomy. This systematically builds a world that ignores half the population and impacts critical aspects of everyday life for our people.

This gender bias holds true not just in designing for innovation, but also in the stories we tell about innovation, where women as well as a diverse array of identities have been underrepresented or entirely kept out. Rushali Paratey, a Creative Technologist at MediaMonks, puts it succinctly: “The perspective and experiences of all kinds of people is crucial to innovation and design as they reflect the totality of the human experience.”

Embracing Diversity in Storytelling

We believe in narrowing and closing these gaps in gender and diversity—we are not only putting women in positions to impact and drive effective innovation in our industry; we’ve also worked to build inclusivity beyond the standard roster to tip the scales when it comes to how women are represented in the narratives we propagate about innovation. If you want to see this in action, just look at this year’s Super Bowl. Among more than 60 commercials, we showed up with one of only three female-directed spots. It’s a staggering (but not surprising) ratio—and is emblematic of the need for more women’s voices.

Realizing this, Beryl Chung, a Creative Director based in Amsterdam, drives WoMMen in Tech, a platform that publishes a publicly accessible video and podcast series to make the expertise, drivers and ambitions of women in the predominantly male digital media industry more visible and available to all. And as Beryl exemplifies with this initiative, there’s an incredible amount of conversations necessary at all levels in our industry, and the world in general, about the incredible amounts of intersectionalities that exist. 

Designing for Everyone

Both history and the present abound with examples of products and services designed with a biased lens that are poorly suited for diverse audiences. While no one today thinks twice about the need for accessibility options in physical public spaces, accessibility is more often than not an afterthought in digital—despite growing laws and regulations in digital accessibility. Yet without including diverse voices in the design process, it’s easy to delay much-needed innovation and problem-solving. 

It starts with systematically understanding, considering and applying forethought. As Anna Herr, a Creative Tech intern at MediaMonks, says, “It’s about getting women into tech in the first place. From a young age, women are looked down upon or are discouraged from exploring tech-related fields. We need to give girls access to tech-related courses, unbiased support and visible female role models for a career in tech.”

When we create ways to personalize communication and to connect with audiences that are more diverse and inclusive, we enable a larger part of the population to share their voices, transforming the experience for everyone—especially in industries that are plagued with biases. Nora Henriksson, Managing Director of MediaMonks Stockholm, applies this mindset when bridging the gap between modern marketing and sports—including projects focused on growing women’s sports.

“This is an area where there’s so much untapped potential, but it’s also about building a better foundation for young girls to continue playing when they become teenagers, for them to be able to dream about being professional athletes,” she says. “By communicating around women’s sports in an interesting way in digital channels, the community can also break free from being measured only by broadcast numbers and stadium visitors. There are new ways to connect with the fans and by that create growth. Sports has so many interesting stories and it ought to be an inclusive experience.”

Diversity is a key component to the work we do. And it starts with creating teams with different perspectives capable of reaching diverse audiences. Meike Overdijk, who recently joined us as a Creative Tech intern, reiterates the importance of diverse teams as “having the ability to perform better because the number of different backgrounds (and therefore opinions) bring more diverse solutions and promote critical thinking. I think that making sure a team has diverse members should be the standard since this leads to better results in the end.”

To support this, it is vital to establish leadership that nurtures a culture of diverse viewpoints—and ensures team members feel comfortable and supported in sharing those perspectives with their peers and colleagues. A formal initiative we kicked off this month is our Women in Leadership program, offering mentorship opportunities to both established and up-and-coming women leaders across S4. 

We steadfastly believe that diversity is one of the keys to unlocking innovation and that better-informed and less-biased innovation and storytelling doesn’t need reinventing the wheel. Writing these intersectionalities back into the process of designing and innovating for the world, and the stories we tell about innovation shifts the ground we stand on as a new way emerges.

We understand that the power of creativity is amplified by diversity of background and thought. Still, the technology field historically lacks the diversity needed for true innovation–a problem that’s compounded by the impact that digital has on all aspects of our lives, ranging from education to work to socialization and more.

That’s why we’ve built the S4Capital Fellowship Program, which aims to mitigate these challenges by empowering young, exceptional students from traditionally underrepresented communities to leave their own mark in shaping the path of technological innovation–interested candidates can apply now. To better understand the program’s significance, we checked in with MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar, who is one of the S4 leaders that Fellows can expect to apprentice with.

What’s the S4 story to you, and why do you personally care about what we do?

I personally care about S4 being a platform to innovate, which spans the work our industry creates and produces, the way the work is done and delivered, and who does the work and where. Each of these fuels the excitement and energy of our team culture. There are few opportunities where you’re offered a platform to make real, lasting and meaningful impact on an industry you love, and that’s S4 to me.

What’s the fellowship story, and how did it come about?

It’s really a continuation of Sir Martin’s career; he knows better than most about what it means to break into an industry as an outsider, and how important it is to create opportunities. He made them for himself, he made them for others at scale throughout his career, and I’m proud to see that focus continue at S4. It’s a doubling down on our promise and pledge on diversity, equity and inclusion, and I’m excited to see the careers that will launch at S4–and hope to see the program continue to grow!

Why is the fellowship important to you, and what will your contribution be?

I hope I can be a useful mentor, first and foremost, and give people a strong start that gets them excited by our industry–which, for all its faults and foibles, can create amazing opportunities. That’s important, because our core promise to our people and clients is that our teams are a reflection of the communities we work in, and the end-consumers that we’re trying to reach.

What should the fellows expect?

The access to senior leadership as well as our agility as an organization means you can be anyone, and you can be anywhere–but you can’t stand still.

What do you want the Fellows’ impact to be on the company and its clients?

I want our fellows to become the future CMOs of our clients! But just so we’re clear here: we want to be an open door for more diverse talent to join an industry that has historically been exclusive to so many. I expect we’ll have some very impressive Fellows joining the team, and I’m excited to see how they will influence our work as well as our ways of working.

For the start of the S4Capital Fellowship Program, we’re seeking U.S. graduates from Historically Black Colleges and Universities who boldly question the status quo and rip up the rulebook when confronted with challenges, using creativity and analysis to launch new ways of thinking, working and doing. If you’re energized by a passion to build on the foundation of a new era, we encourage you to apply.

Are you ready to launch a career that pushes the industry forward?

For brands willing to truly differentiate and transform, diversity is key. Much like how digital transformation entails a focus on increasing technical literacy within your organization, powering up a brand’s creative potential requires the brand or business to focus on diversifying teams and embracing inclusivity-led growth. (You can read this post’s Spanish version right here)

Think about it: your talent pool designs your products, experiences and services. With more diverse talent, you’re better equipped to offer a greater variety of experiences; with a plurality of genders, races, cultures and backgrounds, a workplace becomes a breeding ground for innovative and fresh ideas. This is why a focus on diversity was critical to the rapid growth of our office in Buenos Aires, which serves as a strategic creative hub for the Americas and has recently hired its 200th Monk after four years in operation.

Able to develop and iterate on fresh ideas, brands have extracted real bottom-line value from diversity-based growth, too: those with greater gender and race diversity are 25% more likely to have better financial returns than less diverse organizations, and Google found that women-led and gender-balanced videos enjoyed 30% more views than others. These findings suggest there is a strong demand for inclusive content, but organizations that aren’t diverse and inclusive themselves will struggle to create it. So, while many organizations have a desire for growth, they shouldn’t merely view it as an expansion of the business—it’s a critical opportunity to integrate new, diverse voices into your creative process for the better.

Similarly, this vision has driven a people-focused strategy for inclusivity at Firewood Marketing, which merged with MediaMonks last year. Kamron Hack, Director of People at Firewood, wrote about her strategy: “Instead of creating employee resource groups just for the sake of having them, or implementing diversity training without knowing what type of training was needed, we invited our employees to tell us who they are by submitting poems, statements, stories, and pictures that we displayed in an open space to share with one another.”

Building Better Teams

We understand that our clients have a real desire for diversity of all types—for example, multicultural messaging. Sharing the stage with MediaMonks at a Brand Innovators summit, Nestle’s CMO Alicia Enciso mentioned how such initiatives must be top-of-mind for today’s organizations. “When you’re trying to market multicultural, you also must have a multicultural team,” she said. “Diversity needs to be a priority internally, externally and everywhere in between.”

With diversity front and center, we’ve accelerated our increase in personnel from a variety of backgrounds. At the same time, these efforts have had the added effect of improving our offerings of premium digital content–platforms, digital design, video games, VR, and much more–for clients from all types of industries around the world. In our Buenos Aires office in particular, which serves as a creative hub for the Americas, we’ve found that the quality of work has increased in lockstep with our capacity.

“We want to keep incorporating talents from different disciplines and cultures,” says Erika Irei, HR Business Partner at MediaMonks Buenos Aires. “We are focused on building a team with greater diversity, particularly on technology leadership or creativity, which is a big challenge for the industry.” In this respect, diverse teams are just better: they bring together a plurality of perspectives and experiences and are uniquely equipped to tackle a large variety of creative challenges for different markets.

From future-proofing your business to achieving a higher quality of work, diversity can truly impact your organization on many levels. And it’s not just about achieving growth or what diversity can do for the bottom line; cultivating a more inclusive workspace is simply better for teams that like to feel heard, exchange ideas and challenge themselves. For both consumers and employees, diversity is key to enhancing the overall brand experience.