Towards more inclusive communication - Interview with Sophie Roosen, CSR manager at Union des marques.

Armed with 12 years of experience as a marketing manager for a brand committed to natural and organic cosmetics, Sophie has developed in-depth knowledge on the subject of sustainable development, as well as an ecological and environmentally friendly awareness. Little by little, Sophie has broadened her scope of action, working on more social subjects, particularly on CSR issues. Wanting to best support companies in building more sustainable brands, she took over the CSR management of L' Union des marques last year. Today we meet her so that she can explain to us how she supports brands to help them communicate better.

Can you explain to us what the Union des Marques is and what its missions are?

The Union des Marques is an interprofessional association that has existed for about a hundred years. The objective is to support brands in their transformation challenges. Today we work mainly on two subjects: sustainable transformation and digital transformation. We have about 240 members and they are SMEs, ETIs, and large groups. There is another pillar that is important, which is that the Union des Marques is also the voice of brands. It is an association that will carry the voice of brands to external stakeholders. For example, I work with ADEME on the sustainable transformation aspect, we are currently developing a guide with them on the environmental and carbon impact of communications.

Another theme we are working on is inclusion. For example, we worked on the Charter for a mixed representation of toys , which is supported by the Ministry responsible for equality between women and men. It is a charter that promotes a more inclusive and equal representation between little girls and little boys, to help work on all sexist biases. With the Union des marques, we are trying to unite brands around these subjects.

More recently, we launched a major project: writing a guide on inclusive communication. What are the best practices, with good examples? This will allow brands to draw inspiration from these diagrams to communicate better and be inspired to make better progress on these subjects.

What is inclusive communication? How would you define it?

For me, inclusive communication is communication that seeks to represent society as it is, and not as it can be fantasized. And to achieve this, it requires us all to deconstruct a certain number of biases, because we now know that there are 25 types of discrimination . The idea of ​​inclusive communication is to look at what these discriminations are and try as much as possible, in an intelligent way, to deconstruct these stereotypes. For example, on the subject of disability, quite simply, instead of putting a disabled person in an advertisement in a heroic situation, we will instead show them in a situation of normal life. Because a person in a wheelchair, a blind or deaf person have exactly the same consumer needs as all of us. The idea is to represent people in the situations they experience. At the Union des Marques, we work with self-diagnostic grids that allow companies to look at these 25 discrimination criteria and to scrutinize their campaign: what are the subjects they address and what are the subjects they do not address, and therefore how to progress and move forward. The idea of ​​inclusive communication is to show society as it is, and as we would like to see it represented.

Do you think we are a little behind on these subjects in France?

What I feel and what I see, particularly in relation to the REPRESENTe challenge , is that we still had 4 times more files to study than the previous year and they are quality files. I see an acceleration of these issues and on all subjects: we had files on energy, transport, beauty, entrepreneurship, but also on subjects of stereotypes and inclusion with fairly strong positions. I think that there is a real acceleration that has been put in place. There is also a very strong societal trend of acceptance that forces brands to reposition themselves in their campaigns.

The REPRESENTe challenge is a challenge that was first launched on gender stereotypes and gender equality, then little by little, it opened up to all fields of inclusion. The idea is that brands submit communication campaigns that promote inclusion and diversity. It is not the brand that is rewarded but its communication campaign.

Each brand will pitch in front of a jury. This jury is composed of members of civil society and the communications sector. It is chaired by Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette, who was a member of the High Council for Equality between Women and Men. And then, the jury will deliberate and elect the two winning campaigns of the year.

Last year, we were able to observe a truly new phenomenon. The Gillette brand won the challenge with its campaign on new masculinities. The brand explained to us that it was their most polarizing campaign on social networks. They have never had so many negative and sometimes aggressive comments, especially on YouTube . But they consider that they have a role to play in society on this subject and so, they maintain this course. These are things that make people react, and which are not obvious. It still requires a lot of courage on the part of brands.

Why has it become essential today to implement inclusive communication when you are a brand?

According to the 2019 Havas report , 77% of brands could disappear into indifference in France. The brand is a very fragile entity and if its discourse today is not a real discourse, it will be plastered, seen, discovered, and it is completely counterproductive and damaging. Today, it has therefore become essential to make inclusive communication. Brands are aimed at everyone and there is still all this work of identification: how can I identify myself in this campaign? But by segmenting and representing only a part of the population, brands completely cut themselves off from the real world and can miss their target. According to the Ademe - Greenflex barometer, only 30% of consumers trust brands, which is still very low and worrying. Today, brands need to be more open to seeing what is happening in society, to prove themselves more, to be more consistent in their commitments. We must show that we are well aware that we are addressing everyone, and that we are in a society that is evolving at high speed. We see this with strong positions taken, whether it is the Black Lives Matter movement or the rise of feminism, it is thanks to these societal movements that the lines are moving. Brands can no longer avoid responding, they must be present.

What do you think is the biggest emergency that companies need to address in terms of inclusive communication, and do you have any advice or quick-wins to share with us?

For me, we need to work on the internal-external consistency of the brand. We need to work on these issues internally first. There are a number of start-ups that have had major difficulties because we have shown that their communication was quite successful, quite inclusive, but it did not at all reflect the state of mind of the start-up and what was happening in the teams. To ask the right questions and to realize that we are not showing a part of society, we still need to be able to realize it. If we live our professional life in a company that does not promote diversity, we can very easily “forget” the society in which we live. There really needs to be this internal-external consistency because it is a guarantee of trust for consumers. It will be much easier to go and convey this message externally, because we will have better understood the issues. In fact, this internal and external consistency becomes completely essential because everything becomes visible with social networks or sites like Glassdoor. We really need to represent a society as it is, instead of representing a fantasy society.