Talking about diversity and inclusion is always a challenge (literally cognitive) to talk about people's perception of certain topics, and this is always a great challenge. All people are conditioned to have their certain perceptions, with their certain psychological bases, which in short are mostly socially collective determinations.
That's why talking about diversity in an efficient way has the demand of meeting the waters of people management with marketing and the media in general.
Speech acts are generators of meaning. Meanings are incorporated and translated into actions.
This is a phrase from Samuel Araújo, a figure of great intelligence who shares his reflections on Tiktok (@samueldearaujomateus).
And it is in this phrase that we will develop this meeting of the waters.
Our media scenario has always been a great (if not the greatest) means of influencing people to have specific opinions so that these opinions induce the flow of capital, either directly or indirectly. This means that when Marlboro wanted to sell more of the cigarettes, and here we can use the campaigns of 98, it brings a symbol of freedom and adventure to the masculinity of men, and induce that the act of smoking (Marlboro of course) is an act of value to men.
In the Winston brand, we found an ad that says the following sentence: "People are always saying that cigarettes cause low weight in newborns. This only brings gains! An easy birth, a thin and elegant baby and all the flavor of Winston." And below in the propagating we find the phrase: "Winston. When you're smoking for two."
These examples do not fit perfectly into the theme of D&I but declare how the media has the power to shape people's perceptions, after all we all know how common it was for all people to smoke everywhere, including inside planes.
Citing examples of greater connection, we can mention a campaign of the olive oil brand Galo, which in one of its pieces writes: "Our olive oil is rich. The dark glass is the security."
Another example is the Devassa beer brand that gives us the following phrase: "It is by the body that the real black woman is known."
Going to the advertising of the 19th century, we find one from Lautz Bro's and CO's on a soap, and the graphic art is a wealthy white washing a poor black (who is extremely happy to be washed/clarified), offering the idea of such good quality of the product that it is able to clean a black.
I believe that at this point my point has already been made clear: the media is decisive in the perception of the great mass of consumers, and this perception can be translated in many ways, including tragic and violent ways.
Let's enter our current reality right now.
The media is elitist, expensive, white and highly detached from the social reality of most people. But today through the data that are possible to go through analysis it is understood that the vast majority of people even with a lower consumption power, still have a high value to spend when considering their total sum. And at this moment the despised enter the profit projection in the view of the media.
Diversity becomes a theme. But who develops this theme?
And then we found another problem. Allow me a correction: several problems.
The main one is the cultural mismatch as a result of social segregation, lack of representativeness and lack of access of people in this scenario.
It's a very simple calculation. Who do you think will produce a beautiful campaign against racism, a white person or a black person?
White people can indeed produce excellent pieces on, as long as they have the necessary education on the subject and can thus make a faithful conduction of reality. And here comes another problem: at what point in the training of these professionals were they literate on the subject? I think you already know the answer.
While diversity does not knock on the door of the media to have a serious and perhaps unpleasant conversation, the story will still be guided by the mentality it has always had, as we can associate with the examples cited above.
We need the strategic organization of alignment of the speeches.
A change of narrative between small groups is not possible while this narrative does not reach the large groups, especially the producers of meanings.
And that is precisely why we at DiverCidade decided to follow this path and at the same time occupy these groups that produce meaning and establish our own.
DiverCidade has always thought of end-to-end solutions to the theme of diversity, that is, we have always thought about correcting the structure that causes problem X, not just "medicating" the pain of the cause.
We decided to open new business units (soon you will know all of them, I promise) and one of them is our producer Uprise. Our relationship with agencies, other producers, newspapers and professionals in the field is old, but we decided to stop just orbiting for them and enter the midfield.
Now we work in the education of those who do but we also educate by doing. Our team, as you already know, contains the biggest names in the diversity and inclusion market and also contained big names in the media, who in an incredible way decided to enter this journey with DiverCidade.
As proof of this market need I will score something that was incredible for us: with a week of officially Uprise we already have projects running. It is not arrogance on our part to say this, not least because DiverCidade is a collective movement, we only achieve this because we have a skilled and committed collective that allows us this, but in any case it is proof of necessity.
We as clipping people start a movement to improve our lives and the lives of ours, and we will not stop. We can't.
Let's occupy the market and society the way it should be: from end to end
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