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‘It’s a lot of soul work’: Ogilvy’s new DE&I director on being an adland activist

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By Laura Blackwell | Content Executive

February 15, 2023 | 7 min read

After recently joining Ogilvy as its director of diversity, equity & inclusion, Matt Foster speaks to The Drum about standing for inclusivity in a commercial industry.

'If you want peace, work for justice'

Full circle: DE&I is about creating an environment with the right conditions to attract and ultimately retain employees. / Maria Oswalt via Unsplash

Matt Foster has been shaping initiatives for workplace equality for nearly a decade, with the lives of Porter Novelli and BCW. Recently, he landed what he says is his dream job: director of diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) at Ogilvy UK.

Three months into his new role, Foster is excited to finally be able to deploy data to fuel parent company WPP's wider mission to understand the relationship between ethnicity and consumer experience in the UK. Here, he speaks to The Drum about facing the opposition with open arms and modeling a better culture.

You’ve become a big name on campus in this space. How did you end up in this role?

It's interesting. I have built up a reputation, but I think it’s mostly because this role is an interesting one because on one hand, you’re supporting the business, but on the other hand, it’s also a role that requires a lot of what I call soul work. There’s an element of activism aligning your purpose and values to the work that you do.

So, it’s a very fortunate position to be in. But I worked very hard to get here. From being 100% client-facing to then being 50% client-facing and heading up inclusion in my previous agency, to now wholly focussing on inclusion here at Ogilvy; it just needed some structure and some formal leadership to make it happen.

How did you make that cross-over and convince people of the business value of DE&I?

It started about seven or eight years ago when I was working for an Omnicom agency. I was a director and there was an appetite in the business to introduce DE&I as an idea into the agency, but there was no sense of how to do it. We started small – I launched the first inclusion network at the agency and it grew from there. But that side hustle which was on top of my day job became something that was seen as a critical success factor for the business.

Is DE&I change as difficult to implement and measure as people might think?

I think maybe there are challenges with measurement – only because data, when it comes to identity, is very sensitive, and that's one of the key markers of trying to measure DE&I. If you take representation, for example, representation isn’t the means, it’s the outcome.

By that I mean, a good DE&I program should create the right conditions, so that people are attracted to your company and want to stay and grow their careers. Therefore, the outcome is ultimately a better representation of currently underrepresented groups. So, we’re trying to encourage people at Ogilvy and WPP level to self-disclose, meaning there’s a piece around creating a culture of trust.

Not everyone sees the value of DE&I as an investment or something that benefits everyone. How can we communicate it better?

Part of what we’re trying to do at Ogilvy is change the narrative. There are lots of people who are afraid to talk about issues around DE&I who may feel that it's punitive, or they might be punished for their views, so they might not be so forward in expressing what they're thinking. It's about creating an environment where it's safe to talk about it.

People always talk about how the white heterosexual man probably does feel disenfranchised in the current environment. But I speak to that person with open arms and I say, “you are key to change, and without you coming on board and understanding what your role is, we may never be able to get to (for instance) gender equality”.

At the heart of what you're doing is the consumer experience. How can the ad industry drive change in this area?

[WPP report] The Consumer Equality Equation specifically looks at the consumer journey of minority ethnic and also white consumers. Over 82% of respondents said that brands play an important role in shaping Britain's culture.

If you look at UK minority ethnic communities and project their disposable income between 2021 and 2031, there’s about £3tn up for grabs. So, brands can – and should – impact British culture. “Here's the value you can unlock if you learn how to improve your interactions with ethnic minority consumers”.

We’re still trying to figure it out. But one thing we know at Ogilvy is that it’s really end-to-end. It starts here at this agency, with the tools we use for planning and creativity. When we start to brainstorm, do we have DE&I baked in right from the start, integrated into our tools, our assets and our planning processes? Do we have prompts at every stage of the journey, including production?

Closing the Gap is a series shining a light on issues around underrepresentation and the work agency leaders are doing to advocate for change.

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