A couple of years ago, I was invited to pitch for a very interesting brand and go-to-market strategy assignment with a strong DE&I component. When reaching out to me, the client also mentioned that they decided to reach out to several minority-owned businesses (POC and women-owned businesses), which wasn’t a good start for me.
I eventually won and completed that assignment, which became one of the coolest projects I’ve ever worked on. In this article, I want to reflect on and share some of my learnings from the pitch and the project.
In all sincerity, I hesitated to write this article. It is a very ‘sensitive” and potentially polarizing subject -someone will for sure be offended- and I am sure that by publishing it, I’ll expose myself to potential criticism. Taking some of my comments out of context would be so easy. Oh well.
Now, this post is not about politics, identity politics, culture, or anything like that. It is about running a strategy practice, my personal experience, and what I have learned pitching and running this project.
The company needed help. It had grown significantly during Covid and wanted, in the words of the CMO, to “regain control of their growth”, i.e., grow based on a sound strategic direction rather than on the “whims” of the market. An above-average part of this growth had been generated by African American consumers, who now represented a significant percentage of their consumer base. Hence, there was a desire to apply a DE&I lens. This company was already socially responsible and active. It had, many years back, created a foundation financed by a significant share of its profits that supported a variety of non-profit organizations, including several African American ones. It was basically a purpose-driven company that never bothered communicating its purpose. A breath of fresh air in a world of virtue claims inflation.
My initial reaction when the CMO reached out to me was that I had no chance of winning this assignment in today’s cultural climate. I am an “old white male” and belong to this group that, in today’s social, cultural, and political environment, everyone loves to hate and blame for all the evil in the world. We are probably the only demographic group that is socially acceptable to attack in public. On a side comment, the most obvious expression of this sentiment that I experienced was when, quite a few years back, I was interviewing for a chief strategy officer role at a large independent agency, just to be told by the CEO, the old school gentleman type, during the interview, that he’d prefer to hire a woman, preferably a woman of color. I ended the interview, of course, and he ultimately hired his dream candidate.
Back to the project.
I have worked with this client before at another company. We trusted and respected each other. So, I candidly asked her whether I even had a chance to win this assignment. Her answer reassured me to at least try, and despite my initial reservations, I decided that it was worth my time and effort to submit a proposal. The assignment was too interesting to pass up.
Lesson #1: Showing up is half the battle
The first lesson was that simply by submitting a proposal and showing up, I found myself on the shortlist of companies that made it to the second round of the process, the interview. In fact, several of the invited companies didn’t bother submitting a proposal and showing up. It’s so basic but so essential.
Lesson #2: Do What You Think Is Right For The Business
The client had a very specific idea on what process they wanted to follow. And while it was a great process, I felt it could be improved. So, I made some changes and explained why I made them and why they made sense to help achieve the assignment’s objectives and deliverables. And why my scope was bigger and more expensive due to those changes. A maybe risky move, especially if your potential client has a very clear vision of what they want to do. But this has been my mindset throughout my career: do what is right for the business.
I learned later that a couple of the agencies simply presented their boilerplate credentials, not putting much effort into understanding the client’s situation or thinking about the best way to help them solve their problem. Others just played back to the client the process they had initially suggested.
This helped me move one step forward.
Lesson #3: Put The Right Team Together & Focus On Expertise
My business model is to put together teams of experts for each assignment with the specific skillset needed for the task rather than charge the people I have on a payroll. My team already comprised a quantitative researcher and a second strategist. What I needed and wanted was a DE&I expert. Of course, this would help give my proposal credibility, but more importantly, it would allow me to actually solve the business problem and assignment. I know my strengths, and I know what I don’t know.
A few years ago, it was not uncommon for agencies, especially midwestern agencies, to send out emails to their “networks” to request a referral for a freelancer of color needed for representation during a pitch because the prospective client requested diversity. I wasn’t looking for superficial representation, I was looking for expertise.
I tapped into my network and discovered a fantastic professional to complete my team. She has a PhD in Cultural Studies/Critical Theory, Black Studies, Gender, Sexuality & Feminist studies. And she is a passionate social activist. In other words, she couldn’t have been more different from me. Our only “visible” similarity was maybe the fact that we are both immigrants. However, everything she said during our initial meet & greet was smart, intelligent, and thoughtful, and clearly demonstrated her passion and expertise. So, 5 minutes into our first chat, I knew she was the right addition to my team.
Now, this is not a fairy tale, and to be honest, working together over five or six months with the rest of the team wasn’t always easy. But it was the right business decision, and it ultimately improved the outcome.
Lesson #4: Don’t Just Assume, Provide The Business Rational For Your Choices
I am a German living in the USA. I have lived and studied in 9 different countries and cultures, in 3 different languages, and on 3 different continents. Throughout my career, I have worked with teams from every part of the world. So, I don’t need an HBR article to tell me about the benefits of diverse teams. I know it from personal experience.
And since the project had a strong DE&I component, I could have assumed that that’s what the client was looking for. But I also know from experience that clients need to understand the business rationales for their decisions. Businesspeople need to see the strategic and economic value of doing things. And be able to explain it to their bosses or the board. After all, they usually work for for-profit organizations. And frankly I thought, or was hoping, that my competitors would tap into the current public discourse to make their DE&I case and wouldn’t make the effort to make a business case out of it.
So, we created and added this slide to our pitch. We tried to “sell” the strategic benefit of our DE&I lens. The slide alone didn’t allow me to win the pitch, but I know it helped.
Lesson #5: Beware Of Your Own Prejudices, The Collective Narrative, And Today’s Accepted Beliefs
The process we recommended included a qualitative phase and a quantitative one. During the qualitative phase, we spoke to 80+ potential target audience members, including many women of color.
One theme that consistently came up was the importance of representation in the companies they wanted to do business with. This is no surprise; we were expecting it: They wanted to do business with people like them. This feedback very much reflected the public sentiment and discourse. So, it would have been easy to recommend a brand strategy primarily rooted in inclusion and diversity.
The surprise came when we quantified our learning (always quantify your learning) and asked respondents about the relative importance of various criteria when choosing a specific brand within that category. Representation and “doing business with people like me” suddenly ranked much lower in the list of decision-making criteria. This information contradicted our accepted beliefs to the point that we questioned our data at first.
More important to our respondents were the category-specific benefits and the ability of the brand to deliver against those benefits. To use an analogy, the decision to go to a restaurant (and return) is primarily based on the quality of the food and the service, not the owner’s ethnicity. That is not to say that representation isn’t important, it just showed us that other criteria were perceived as more important in selecting this brand.
I see a similar phenomenon in the world of sustainability and sustainability claims. Consumers won’t care about and won’t be motivated by your sustainability claims if you don’t over-deliver on the basic category benefits (if your food product tastes bad, no health benefit will motivate them to buy you).
Lesson#6: Play To Your Team’s Strengths & Needs Of Your Clients
In important meetings, the casting and choreography matters. Who presents what matters. I, for example, always let the quantitative research guys in my team present their work. It is typically a bit dryer and more detailed than if I would present the research learning, but it also carries more authority and weight (you want your research guy to be a bit dry and detailed). When I present youth trends, I let the younger, cooler person in my team present.
A few years back a friend and I launched a start-up focusing on the needs of new moms to connect with other new moms. The start-up ultimately failed but made me, at the time, really skilled at engaging moms in social media (without a budget). We were building an online community for the pre-launch. I turned this expertise into a HuffPost article entitled 24 clear signs you’re a mom, which went viral, reached over 5 million readers within 24 hours, and was translated by the HuffPost into Japanese, German, and Spanish. So, I would say that my experience at the time was legit. When I started my consulting practice, I tried to “market” this knowledge and expertise on connecting with moms emotionally to various brands, without success. It turns out that as a 6 foot 6 man with a German accent, I lacked perceived credibility in marketing to moms. Today, I would let the moms in my team present those insights.
Back to the project.
I was surprised when, one day, my DE&I expert asked me to present a section of the project that dealt with DE&I. She argued that it would be better received and more credible if it were presented by me, a white man. Especially since there were quite a few white men on the executive team. She worried that she wouldn’t be taken as seriously or be as credible as a woman. At first, I was hesitant as, in my view, she is an excellent presenter who presents with confidence and authority. But I agreed. In hindsight, I think she made the right call. Sometimes, it is easier to get convinced by someone like you, especially when the subject is edging your comfort zone. Just like I wasn’t able to convince female marketing executives that I knew more about connecting emotionally with moms than most.
Lesson #7: Every Client Has A Comfort Zone You Need To Respect
Early in my previous career as an advertising strategist, I learned that every client feels comfortable with a type of creative. You can nudge and expand this comfort zone for the sake of the business, but you can’t “force” them to embrace a creative idea and execution they aren’t comfortable with. I believe this is true with many other elements, such as risk-taking, levels of innovation, and DE&I.
Based on that experience and belief, we recommended a clear business, brand and go-to-market strategy. But we weren’t as “firm” on the DE&I part of the strategy. Instead, we showed our clients different degrees of potential DE&I involvement to help them assess which one they’d feel more comfortable with and to give them choices.
To conclude
The company is now in the process of implementing this new brand strategy. It has been listed for two years in a row as one of the fastest-growing companies in its region. It also continues to make major progress in its DE&I and social responsibility commitments.
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Am I the first choice for most companies looking for a brand strategy with a strong DE&I component or large ethnic consumer sub-segments? Probably not. I do not look the part; unfortunately, that is what most people will be looking for first.
However, is it possible to develop this type of strategy as an “old white guy”? Of course, it is, when doing the right thing for the business, bringing together the right team of experts, being careful about one’s own biases and prejudices, and understanding your client’s appetite and comfort zone. After all, the primary purpose of a project such as this one is to lead to strategic business decisions that will help the company grow and succeed. A brand strategy is not a social justice program.
Let me know if you found these tips helpful and what kind of learnings and experiences you’ve had.
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