WFA offers guide for DEI-conscious media planning and buying

The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) has released a freely available guide to diversity and representation in media planning and buying.

The WFA's Diversity Task Force developed the guide, Diversity & Representation: Focus on Media Planning and Buying, with support from GARM (Global Alliance for Responsible Media).

It's a mistake for companies to think of diversity only as a task for creative and HR teams, argue the executives in charge of creating the guide, Jerry Daykin, WFA diversity ambassador, and Isabel Massey, global media director at Diageo and WFA Media Forum co-chair.

"The way a campaign is planned and bought can have a notable impact on reach and engagement across different audience groups," Daykin said in a release. "Making the right decisions can both ensure brands create more effective campaigns and, critically, play their part in funding a richer and more diverse media ecosystem. There is a delicate balance between ensuring we block hate speech but increase the funding of positive representative voices, and whilst the solutions can get technical, they all start with advertisers asking some of these simple questions in their brief."

“It is our responsibility to not only create content that is reflective of today’s society, but for it to appear in media that is diverse and inclusive too," Massey said, adding. "There’s still so much more progress to make and we need to work together with other brands, media owners, and agencies to drive industry-wide change."

Case studies in the guide come from the likes of Bayer, Diageo, GSK, Reckitt, Ebiquity, Google, Meta and Twitter.

WFA is hosting a webinar at 11pm (HK/SG) tonight (10am in New York, 3pm in London) to discuss the new framework.