The Communications Council is putting diversity further up the agenda, with CEO Tony Hale saying advertising is still too “white bread” to be truly representative of a diverse Australian community.
Speaking to AdNews, Hale said diversity across religion, ethnicity, sexual preference, age and gender is important for advertising to work at its best, but said most people would agree “we've become a very white bread industry”.
“It is important to get diversity across all measures and across all sectors of the community because I think that advertising works at its best when you have different points of view that are in mild conflict – that results in different solutions,” Hale said.
“To be truly representative in a diverse culture like the Australian community, you need to have diversity in order to effectively reach all of those different mindsets, and I think that a flaw of the industry is that we don't at the moment.
“I think it's a fair comment to make of the industry to say its still a bit too white bread, its still too Sydney, North Shore private school.”
While Hale said he couldn't be certain of the reason why advertising hasn't reflected the diversification of the greater Australian population, he believes some of the cause is the changing pathway into the profession.
He said that over the last 30 years, specific advertising-focused tertiary education courses have become the way into the industry, which can often skew towards more traditional Anglo-Saxon backgrounds.
“I think the pathways into advertising are pretty set and they often don't appeal to all backgrounds,” Hale said.
“Many of those in our industry have followed a traditional recruitment process, having studied the relevant subject, or know of someone who has taken that route already.
“We need to work on building awareness of entry pathways among different and more broad communities.”
One thing the Communications Council has done to address that pathway, is to promote the NSW branch of its advertising education program, AWARD School, to colleges and areas further west, where it had previously not been targeted.
Hale said that building diversity across all areas of advertising is something he wants to turn his attention to in the future.
“I think there is a role to have more diversified background into the industry,” he said.
Hale's comments follow those of Wieden+Kennedy founder Dan Wieden to AdNews during his visit to Australia last month.
Wieden started an arts program for underprivileged youth in Oregon, Caldera, 18 years ago as a way to inspire confidence in young people. He also criticised the lack of diversity within the industry.
“We give a bunch of white middle-class kids the chance to take the culture of the inner city, and through the work sell that culture back to those people,” Wieden said.
“But the people in the inner city don't even understand that they have the chance to play this game. That just seemed fucked up.”
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