The Fall of DE&I in Marketing: From Urgency to Afterthought

Remember that whirlwind of corporate virtue signaling back in, like, twenty twenty? Yeah, feels like a fever dream now, huh? After the whole George Floyd thing went down, every brand and their mother was tripping over themselves to prove how woke they were. Suddenly, DE&I wasn’t some obscure acronym whispered in hushed tones in the breakroom; it was the hottest three-letter word in the marketing biz.

Fast forward to today, and the vibe is… different. Remember God-is Rivera? Total badass, used to head up culture and community over at Twitter (RIP Twitter, BTW). Anyway, God-is saw firsthand how quickly Elon Musk slammed the brakes on all that DE&I progress when he took over. Turns out, what Elon wants, Elon gets, even if it means turning back the clock on, you know, basic human decency.

Sadly, Twitter’s not exactly an outlier here. Across the entire advertising landscape, that whole “DE&I is a top priority” thing seems to have fizzled faster than a can of La Croix at a frat party. Those shiny new DE&I execs companies were tripping over themselves to hire? Yeah, lots of them are out of a job now, thanks to “restructuring” and other corporate euphemisms for “we don’t actually care that much.”

The Rise and Fall of the DE&I Executive

Let’s rewind for a sec to the Before Times (pre-Elon, pre-pandemic, simpler times, man). Post-George Floyd, agencies were scrambling to make good on all those diversity pledges they’d been spouting for years. Problem was, most of them had absolutely zero clue where to even start. Thus began the Great DE&I Hiring Spree of twenty-twenty one.

Companies threw money at the problem, creating fancy new “Head of DE&I” titles left and right. They hired folks like Kai Deveraux Lawson, who was brought in to lead DE&I at Dentsu Creative. Jeff Marshall landed the chief diversity officer gig at UM. These were smart, passionate people, ready to shake things up and make a real difference.

But here’s the thing about shaking things up: it makes people nervous. Turns out, not everyone in those wood-paneled boardrooms was actually down with dismantling systemic racism and whatnot. Who knew, right?

The Flawed Foundation of DE&I Efforts

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t all about mustache-twirling villains in suits actively trying to sabotage progress (though, let’s be real, some of that probably happened). The truth is, a lot of DE&I initiatives were set up to fail from the get-go. Why? Well, picture this:

• Short-Term Thinking: Companies treated DE&I like a trendy new marketing campaign, not a fundamental shift in values. They wanted quick wins and impressive numbers to show off in their annual reports.
• Superficial Metrics: Speaking of numbers, the focus was all on optics. Hire a bunch of people from underrepresented groups, check that box, pat themselves on the back. Never mind if those people felt supported, included, or empowered to actually change the company culture.
• The “W” Word: Ah yes, the dreaded “woke” label. Some execs were terrified that pushing too hard on DE&I would alienate their customer base and hurt the bottom line. Because, you know, profits over people, amirite?

Basically, it was a whole lot of performative allyship without any real, systemic change. Is it any wonder so many DE&I pros ended up feeling like they were banging their heads against a brick wall?