Digiday research: 93% of survey respondents say they see white employees in senior leadership roles
This research is based on unique data collected from our proprietary audience of publisher, agency, brand and tech insiders. It’s available to Digiday+ members. More from the series →
As the agency world begins to face the stark racial inequities in their employee ranks, Digiday research conducted in July found that, in the eyes of their staffers, the racial gap remains wide and that agencies have a long way to go before being able to claim they are diverse and equitable places of employment.
A full 93% of respondents said they see white employees in their agency’s senior leadership team (vp and above) — 35% of respondents say their agency have at least some Black people in leadership roles, 31% say their agency has at least some Hispanic people in leadership roles, and 41% say that about Asian people.
This survey follows reports from agencies of all sizes that found their employee ranks to be woefully nondiverse. For example agency holding giant WPP reporetd in July that just 2.2% of the their U.S. executives are Black. For fellow holding company Omnicom, that number was 3% as of July.
The majority of the survey respondents are employees at either an independent agency or at an agency owned by a holding company.
Respondents identified themselves as 52% white, while 12% respondents described themselves as Black, 13% as Hispanic and 16% as Asian. Other races and multiple race respondents made up 3% and 4% of the survey respectively.
And in response to the diversity and equality gaps exposed in the months following the killing of George Floyd, respondents reported a wide variety of outreach and action on the part of their companies — the most common being internal statements in support of racial justice, with 81% of respondents reporting they’d received that type of communication. Public statements of support were the next common response with 66% of respondents reporting that effort from their companies.
More in Media
Media Briefing: Publishers who bet on events and franchises this year are reaping the rewards
Tentpole events and franchises are helping publishers lock in advertising revenue.
With Firefly Image 3, Adobe aims to integrate more AI tools for various apps
New tools let people make images in seconds, create image backgrounds, replacing parts of an image and use reference images to create with AI.
Publishers revamp their newsletter offerings to engage audiences amid threat of AI and declining referral traffic
Publishers like Axios, Eater, the Guardian, theSkimm and Snopes are either growing or revamping their newsletter offerings to engage audiences as a wave of generative AI advancements increases the need for original content and referral traffic declines push publishers to find alternative ways to reach readers.