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Attitudes Towards Inclusivity in Advertising: A Twelve Country Study
Steven Millman – Global Head of Research & Data Science, Dynata
Steven Millman of Dynata shared key findings from Dynata’s global research on attitudes towards inclusivity in advertising and why that matters. The online survey was conducted across 12 countries (U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, China, Japan, Australia and Brazil) with a representative sample of 18+ adults and a total of 12,043 respondents. The survey examined attitudes and feelings of various minority groups (including LGBTQIA+, women, seniors, people with disabilities). Race was only considered for the U.S. sample, as race couldn’t be asked in certain countries or it was challenging to get sufficient diverse samples by race in non-U.S. countries. Overall, the study found that members of minority groups generally feel somewhat less authentically represented in advertising than do others. With the exception of racial minorities in the U.S., marginalized groups also tend to feel less satisfied by their portrayals in advertising. The presentation also delved into cross-country trends and differences, as well as a deeper dive into the impact of political affiliations and gender on attitudes and purchase intent in the U.S. along issues of inclusivity and diversity. Key takeaways:- Across countries, members of minority groups generally feel somewhat less authentically represented in advertising than do others. However, most people do not across the board.
- Marginalized groups, especially LGBTQ+, are also less likely to be satisfied by their portrayals in advertising. The only exception was underrepresented racial group in the U.S.
- In general, people think inclusivity in advertising is important, especially among younger groups. However, the exception was seniors, who only ranked portrayals of people over 65 as highly important.
- Portrayals of equal representation of women and men and people with disabilities ranked the highest in importance across different age demos.
- Portrayals of the LGBTQIA+ community ranked the lowest in term of importance across all age groups, and the portrayal of LGBTQIA+ was important to less than half of non-LGBTQIA+ respondents.
- The majority felt that we are going in the right direction in terms of whether things are getting better or worse with respect to inclusivity in advertising. This satisfaction was overall lower in the U.S., similarly between racial and non-racial minorities.
- In the U.S., Democratic men were much more likely than Republican or Independent men to say that they would be more likely to purchase from inclusive advertisers. There were similar differences among women along party lines, but the gaps were much closer.
- Among countries, Brazil reported the importance of the portrayals of marginalized groups as the highest.