Building a focused plan that brings priorities together to attack DEI in a holistic, comprehensive and consistent way, is critical to drive impact.
Verizon’s plan for impact came to life with the Responsible Marketing Action Plan our approach to increasing diversity throughout the entire marketing ecosystem focused on four key pillars:
Increase diversity across creative supply chain
Build an inclusive work environment and diverse teams
Fight racism, bias and stereotypes in all advertising, content and media
Create responsible content policies
Each pillar has specific, measurable goals attached to show progress and identify areas where more work needs to be done.
The following slide outlines Verizon's four areas of focus and how they are tracked.
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Read on for an outline and tools to take action across these four pillars.
Read on
Truly creating a diverse marketing ecosystem means striving for diversity across the entire creative supply chain. For Verizon, that means investing across diverse owned production companies; delivering programs to enable the long-term growth of Black owned media companies; and having diverse talent on the marketing teams.
In addition to committing to supporting these companies, it is crucial to have a process to track and evaluate the commitments to ensure you are moving in the right direction.
This template can be used to track your own progress quarterly, including talent representation and spend with diverse suppliers.
Download template
Delivering on a commitment to build a diverse team and create an inclusive work environment requires dedication from all members of a team and collaboration between internal teams and partners – and a strong resource.
Through Verizon’s work with its agencies and the quarterly readouts on talent slates, it became clear that a program dedicated to creating a diverse talent pipeline for the industry was needed.
adfellows was the answer. The eight month, all expenses paid, fellowship program immerses entry level diverse talent in rotations throughout internal brand marketing and agency teams giving a unique look at the industry and allowing individuals to decide what kind of marketer they want to be.
The program has been so successful not only because of the collaboration of the teams involved, but the collaboration of the industry as a whole. adfellows has grown in unbelievable ways since it launched in 2017 and today includes 17 agencies, including partners from the three largest holding companies in the industry - IPG, Publicis and WPP - and incredible brand partners like American Express, Anheuser-Busch, Walmart, PetSmart and Kellogg’s.
The industry is stronger together and we encourage you to join us in expanding this program that has seen such incredible impact.
The following documents provide details on the program, its impact on the participants and the industry and what it means to be a partner.
Read more
Download adfellows overview
Watch alumni testimonials
Email us
The creative process is multi-faceted, with many places where biases can enter the equation, so actively fighting against that process is an ongoing journey.
For Verizon’s, ensuring creative remains free from racism, bias and stereotypes, means giving the teams doing the work the tools to identify and eliminate biases. This comes to life through partnerships with organizations like the #SeeHer, Free The Bid and the 4A’s and the creation of our own mandatory trainings and measurement tools.
This template can be used to formalize your approach to eliminating bias in your creative.
There are also a number of incredible organizations doing great work to eliminate bias throughout the industry. The following page has a list of these resources.
Download list
Creating quality, representative work is only half the battle. You also need to ensure the creative only appears in environments that are brand safe.
Verizon’s participation with the World Federation of Advertisers’ Global Alliance for Responsible Media, led to a rework of the company’s marketing policies to strengthen prohibitions against harassment, hate speech, privacy, and misinformation, influencing current and future marketing partnerships.
These standards are upheld without exception or compromise.
Explore the policies Verizon uses to ensure investments are made only with partners who have shared values.
View guidelines and policies
