POCAM Town Hall
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In June 2020 POCAM launched the Call For Equity(CFE), a path forward for greater equity and inclusion of Black, Indigenous, and PoC professionals in the advertising industry.
For the year anniversary of this pledge, we hosted a Town Hall Talk, where we discussed the origin of CFE, what has changed, and how we continue to move forward.
In this talk, we shared the perspectives of both the agency and clients who are leading the change. The Call for Equity Panelists included:
We have transcribed the Town Hall Talk for our audience below:
The POCAM team was brought together for three major reasons, the first being to educate people about the BIPOC population, as well as to advocate for them and lastly to elevate the community by networking.
Chino believes that being inclusive and pretending to be diverse is simply a trend for some brands. Due to the recent demand by people in the media making it apparent that they want to see brands more inclusive, brands are doing it because it is what people want, not because it is right.
It was discussed that often the reason there are more white people in the fancy downtown offices is due to socioeconomic factors. These intro positions are often low wages or even unpaid internship positions which limits the people who can fill these positions. It is often upper-class white families that can afford to support their children to work these roles and not the families that are often immigrants.
Shavonna states that “it is amazing to see how much younger generations care about supporting a cause. They are more likely to care about knowing about brands they buy from and supporting positive political movements.” She stated that her 16-year-old sister is often involved in movements such as attending Black Lives Matter rallies.
Often something that happens when hiring is tokenism. This is the act of hiring someone due to them physically looking a certain way. It is not about the skills they do or don’t have, it is simply about making the agency look good because this person is not white. Chino said tokenism is something that we need to step away from as it happens too often.
A topic that is highly discussed is, does training need to be provided earlier on to the BIPOC community, as there are too few skilled workers in this community. Or is it just that the skilled employees in the BIPOC community are not being sought out. They are not as often on platforms such as Indeed and LinkedIn, especially if the employee is a recent immigrant.
Gavin believes that change is not happening fast enough. He said some organizations are doing better in terms of hiring internally, but others are hiring diverse employees that do not even have the proper skill sets, but they make the brand look better.
The mission of POCAM is to make the marketing industry a more diverse and inclusive place and have it be a place where individuals can grow and be themselves.
Written by Zaniah Friesen