Why Is BAME Creative Talent Still Not Represented at the Top?

It’s that time of year where advertising journals release their lists of top creatives. In the last two years in particular, these lists include very few or no BAME creative talent. 

Am I shocked? Not really. 

I often refrain from writing about DE&I as I like my work to do the talking. The last time I wrote about this subject was back in 2016 when I co-wrote a Campaign article in collaboration with my brothers entitled ‘Normalise diversity and encourage more Asians to join the creative industry’. That was over six years ago and whilst the industry has changed in many ways since then, the need to address the lack of BAME creative talent at the top table has remained the same. 

Firstly, BAME is a term I am uncomfortable with as it generalises diverse racial groups into one tidy label. But I’ll use it loosely here as it’s a term the industry understands. I also believe the definition of what makes a creative team in advertising needs to be addressed too. We should be moving beyond the notion of ideas coming solely from this department. Designers, writers, creative technologists, videographers, motion designers and coders are all creative and bring their expertise and ideas to the table. All of these people work in tangent with traditional creative teams. 

If we modernise what a creative team means, then the whole industry can tap into a wider pool of potential and capable creative leadership. How does this relate to BAME people? From my observation there is a lot of BAME talent sitting amongst these disciplines. If we look for leadership talent, including future CCO’s, ECD’s and heads of department from these pools, we can encourage more BAME representation in these roles.

This year, the IPA reported 7.1% BAME representation in senior leadership within UK agencies. So what percentage are we looking at in top creative roles? You cannot escape the notion that current C-suite representation consists of people that have benefitted from a privileged background. Race, coupled with socioeconomics, has spanned decades of UK history creating unbalanced equity and unconscious bias. How can we start to tackle this? Change in our industry needs to start at the top. If there is incentive to invest in BAME coaching, talent sponsorship and even working with headhunters who strive for inclusive recruitment methodology, we can encourage more representation. Otherwise, the dearth of non-white leaders continues in our creative spaces. It is vital industries represent who the UK is today.

BAME talent is often pigeonholed, only given the microphone to discuss DE&I. This is a mistake; it shifts responsibility for the DE&I discussion to people of colour adding to the existing pressures and barriers of their roles. More needs to be done by allies to promote their work and in turn help them be seen by the wider industry. There needs to be more BAME representation on creative judging panels, that way the industry capitalises on diversity of thought whilst also opening opportunities for BAME people to show their talent and raise their profiles as experts. 

Returning to the earlier point of BAME as a ‘broad brush’, we need to address the importance of gender as well in this discussion. There is minimal representation of these women all the way from grassroots level to C-suite. I feel women from a BAME background face the biggest hurdles. The barriers are multiple from pay gaps to general support. We can point out these issues as much as we like but if there is no systemic change that supports these women into top roles, who will be there to inspire the next generation of talent? 

In the '90s the advertising industry called to me. Agencies were buzzing, the work was cutting edge and it excited me. But I did notice the lack of people who looked like me at each stage of my career. I still do.

Hiten Bhatt is head of design at RAPP