Agency Life Episode #37: LGBTQ+ Talent Mentorship & Support

Alan Brown the Founder and Chair of DNA, an LGBTQ+ and minority-owned advertising agency, highlights the Project 47 Pledge, a vehicle for advertising agency leadership to commit to mentoring LGBTQ+ talent to aid in career advancement. Alan talks about the challenges workers face in finding sympathetic mentors and provides strategies for employers and employees alike to foster a culture of inclusiveness for LGBTQ+ employees.

LGBTQ+ Talent Mentorship & Support Episode Recap

On this episode of the Two Marketing Moms Podcast, we welcome Alan Brown, the founder and chair of DNA, an LGBTQ+ and minority-owned advertising agency in Seattle, Washington. Kelly and Alan dive into the core values of DNA, discussing how “different wins” by embracing diversity and cognitive differences within the agency. They explore various initiatives that support the LGBTQ+ community and how these principles positively influence their creative work for clients across industries.

Alan sheds light on some startling employment statistics impacting the LGBTQ+ community, emphasizing the importance of creating an inclusive environment in the workplace. He shares his personal journey, describing how becoming a parent and owning his agency empowered him to be open about his identity with clients and the business world.

During the discussion, Alan shared valuable insights and initiatives aimed at supporting LGBTQ+ talent and promoting inclusivity in the workplace.

1. Come Out to Work: Celebrating LGBTQ+ Stories

As part of their commitment to Pride Month, DNA launched the “Come Out to Work” campaign. Through this powerful social media initiative, individuals were encouraged to share their coming-out stories at work in one-minute videos. The campaign aimed to create an open and accepting environment for LGBTQ+ employees, emphasizing the importance of authenticity and self-expression at the workplace. The response was overwhelming, fostering a sense of community and acceptance.

2. Project 47 Pledge: Empowering LGBTQ+ Employees

To address the lack of accurate data on LGBTQ+ representation in advertising agencies, DNA introduced the “Project 47 Pledge.” Inspired by a 4A’s study indicating a mere 0.017% of advertising employees self-identified as LGBTQ+, this pledge calls on advertising agencies to commit to mentoring one LGBTQ+ employee for an hour per month for a year. By doing so, agencies can create a more supportive and inclusive environment for their LGBTQ+ colleagues. The response has been remarkable, with over 70 agencies already joining the cause.

3. Actions for Inclusive Workplaces

Alan highlighted three essential actions employers can take to foster inclusivity:

Be Visible: Encourage employees to self-identify and adopt gender-neutral language and personal pronouns, signaling a safe and inclusive culture.

Be Equitable: Provide support tailored to LGBTQ+ employees, such as inclusive health benefits, gender-affirming care, and flexible parental leave policies.

Be Intolerant: Foster a culture of allyship, encouraging co-workers to actively support and advocate for their LGBTQ+ colleagues.

4. Driving Inclusive Advertising

Alan underscored the advertising industry’s role in shaping and impacting culture. Agencies must avoid portraying audiences as monolithic and instead focus on nuanced and authentic representation of diverse communities. To achieve this, DNA has established a DE&I advisory board comprising experts in language representation, cultural appropriation, and diversity matters. This board offers valuable insights to ensure advertising campaigns are inclusive and respectful.

5. Getting Involved

To learn more about “Come Out to Work” and “Project 47 Pledge,” visit the website Come Out to Work. There, individuals can find resources to create open and inclusive workplaces, while agencies can join the pledge to mentor and empower LGBTQ+ talent.

Alan Brown’s dedication to promoting LGBTQ+ talent and fostering inclusivity in the advertising industry serves as a powerful example. Embracing diversity and creating supportive environments will lead to a more vibrant and thriving workplace for everyone. Together, we can drive positive change and make a difference in the lives of LGBTQ+ professionals.

Episode Transcript:

Kelly

Kelly Callahan-Poe

I would like to welcome Alan Brown to the Two Marketing Moms Podcast. Alan Brown is the founder and chair of DNA, an LGBTQ+ and minority owned advertising agency based in Seattle, Washington. And today we are going to talk about LGBTQ+ talent, mentorship, and support. Alan and I are both members of ICOM, a global independent, independent marketing communications network with 65 advertising agencies around the world. Alan is the North American Regional Director of ICOM. And we have spent time together our annual meetings everywhere from Vancouver to Buffalo. So, thanks for chatting with me today, Alan.

Alan Brown

Thanks for having me, Kelly.

Kelly

I would like to start talking about some of your career highlights what led you to become the founder of DNA and learn a little bit more about kind of the core of what DNA is all about, which is shaping culture, and then talk about some of the various initiatives that support this for the LGBTQ+ community?

Alan

Sure. Well, I think my path of starting DNA was really two things. One is the agency I was working for, before I started, DNA was acquired. And I felt I don’t really want to work for anybody else anymore. And I’m not really sure I’m employable. So, I just decided to start to start my own thing. And over the years, at DNA, it’s our 25th year this year, which I’m happy to say we’ve been around for 25 years. And our rally cry at DNA is “different wins”. And what that really means is that we really believe that our differences can make the difference in advertising. And so that is all kinds of diversity, you know, its racial, ethnic, gender, and cognitive diversity, building robust teams that really look at problems in a different way.

Kelly

Oh, I love that. So how do you exemplify that culture in your work in the agency, other than the obvious things in terms of actually demonstrating diversity within your organization? But also, how does it work within your creative?

Alan

We work with clients, just like anybody else does, services, and healthcare and CPG. So, we’re not a minority or diversity focused agency. But because we are a diverse team, and we have this mindset of diversity, it really allows us to look at things from a bit of a different and holistic perspective, to consider consumer attitudes and mindsets when we are trying to sell a product or service on behalf of our clients. And some of the things that we’ve done as an agency is, I think it really it keeps us in tune to the things we want to invest in. So, for example, we’re one of the founding agencies, for with BLAC, which is an internship program for African American students. We developed an AI technology called Project Sugar Free that intercepts “sugar” (i.e., an exploitative practice where going on dates or having sex is exchanged for gifts and payments) which, you know, trafficking happens with minority, boys, and girls. So, we really kind of take that mindset and really try to apply that in places where we can make a difference in the community.

Kelly

So, let’s talk a little bit about some of the basic employment stats that impact members of the LGBTQ+ community. There are some stats that you told me in our last conversation that I think are unbelievable when you say them aloud, and I would love to hear a little bit more.

Alan

The thing about being LGBTQ+ is that most people, when you walk in the room, you would not necessarily know that they are part of the LGBTQ+ community. And getting good and accurate information is hard — it is all self-identified and self-reported. So, there is that challenge with it. However, Gallup does tracking every year, and the LGBTQ+ population in the U.S. is about 7.2%. And it’s holding steady, but that has doubled in the past 10 years. I mean, it’s made this dramatic shift. And the shifts are really happening with younger people. So currently, millennials self-identified about 11%. And Gen Z identifies at about 20%. So, there’s a big change in terms of people’s willingness and understanding in terms of being able to confidently self- identify as part of that community. But that has really been a result of the culture being more open and accepting, and just the comfort that they have in being who they are.

Kelly

That makes a lot of sense. And in terms of your own personal journey, can you talk a little bit about, your family, the birth of your son, and how that impacted how you wanted to show your face in the world, and how that actually impacted so many initiatives that you have started at DNA?

Alan

I will just start off by saying… I am not a trailblazer. I did not come out of the closet, and carrying the flag early on in my career, which I have a little bit of shame about that. But I wish it would have had been stronger in my early career. But the reason I didn’t was that 20-30 years ago, I didn’t see anybody else in our industry, or really in business, that was out. And so, if you don’t have that ability to see someone else, or see someone like yourself, it’s really challenging to feel comfortable and say, Okay, I’m going to be out too, and risk potentially risk my career. And so, I didn’t until when I started my agency, I felt well, now I own an agency, and I can be out as much as possible with my employees because I was calling the shots, and so I was a little more comfortable there. But I, but I still was not out with clients. And it wasn’t until my son was born. And I have two adopted kids. And my son’s my oldest, but when he was born, you know, we have great clients. And they’re asking, tell us about your son. And so, tell us about your wife, and, what are the circumstances here, and I just could not lie anymore, and I wasn’t lying, I was just the lying by omission, I wasn’t telling the full story. And so, I decided to tell my clients that I adopted my kids with my partner at the time, and the reception could not have been more welcoming, it could could not have been more supportive. And I think it was being at the right place at the right time. And, in a place of my own life, and with my own self confidence that I could do that. So, I really credit him for bringing me out to my clients and just in the whole in the business world.

Kelly

Wonderful. And so, there are a couple of initiatives that you have started. Some of them I believe, in the last couple of years, one of them is called Come Out to Work. And one of them is called Project 47. They are related. So, can you talk about those?

Alan

So just a little bit of backup, you asked me about some data and so Come Out to Work as a project that the agency started a year ago in response to what we wanted to do it for Pride Month. And we were looking at some of the data and we want to really wanted to kind of connect it to business. So, the data we looked at was that just a little more than half of workers in the U.S. are out at work. So, it is almost half and how people are happy people who are out and how people are not out. And it is not surprising because just a few years ago, it was legal to fire someone for being LGBTQ. So, when the Civil Rights Act was modified to include LGBTQ + workers, that changed things quite a bit. We also learned that from data that when you are out at work, people who are out of work are happier, they have more productive careers, they have better relationships with their bosses, things like that. So, we thought what can we do to try to foster a little bit more of that. And so, we created Come Out to Work, which was an Instagram social campaign to encourage people to tell their story of coming out at work. So, we collected one-minute videos, we shared a video per day during Pride Month. And it was just an awesome opportunity to share some of the data, some of the statistics and these personal stories of being out of work. I got tons of feedback from people that say, you know, I am not at work, but it is great to see people that are and it makes me feel a little more comfortable. And so that was the genesis of come out to work.

Kelly

And then Project 47 is new.

Alan

So, Project 47. So, Pride month ends. And we say that, people kind of bust out the rainbow flags for a month. And then once that’s over, the party’s over and stuff goes back in the closet sometimes. And so, we were looking at what was happening last summer. And one of the things that happened was the 4A’s did a diversity study. And they interviewed they got data from 132 agencies, including large agencies, small agencies, that representative about 40,000 people. So, it was a big study, a big quantitative study. But in that study, they asked questions about diversity. And one of the questions was your sexual orientation. And in this study, the data that was reported is that point .017% of people in advertising self-identity as LGBTQ+. So, the first response is like, something is wrong with the data. So, we talked to the 4A’s. And they said, there is nothing wrong with the data.

But we concluded is that are two things. One is that there is a potential that there are cultures don’t exist in agencies were people to be out, to feel comfortable to be out. And second of all, probably even a bigger part is that companies weren’t collecting that data, right? So, if you are not asking people, you do not have the data, you go into a bucket of being non-LGBTQ+, right. So, you’re kind of back to the number, if you look at that point .017%. And extrapolate that to the number of people working in advertising, that would mean that 46 People working in advertising agencies in the U.S. are out are LGBTQ+. So, we said, what can we do? And we wanted to do something simple, and meaningful and impactful. And so, we created the project, 47 Pledge, which we are asking agencies, advertising agencies around the country, to agree to mentor, one LGBTQ+ employee for one hour per month for one year. And our goal is to get 47 agencies that would agree to do that. And if we could do that, we would prove that there are more than 46 people who are helped.

Kelly

And so that is where the number 47 came, I did not realize.

Alan

Yeah, it is kind of a long, math equation, or longer than what everyone calls it. But anyway, that is where the 47 came into play. And it is shocking, I mean, how many people want didn’t know about that didn’t understand the problem that, if you’re not, asking people their sexual orientation, it kind of sets the tone of your agency in your company, and really deflates the data. The amazing thing is that this has been a complete, program of referral and picking up the phone and making calls and connections, and we have over 70 agencies who have signed up for to be part of the project, 47 Pledge and are mentoring people today.

Kelly

That’s wonderful hear to hear. And our agency, Williams Whittle is a part of that as well.

Alan

One of the early ones.

Kelly

Happy to support that. So, will you to change the name to increase the number now?

Alan

No, we’re not. If the 4A’s update their survey, and they have better data, we will of course, you know, share that, but we’re probably not going to change the name of it. I mean, I would like to get 100 agencies on board this year. But it’s dialing for participants at this point.

Kelly

And right now, it’s all about word of mouth, you don’t have like a paid campaign or anything promoting it.

Alan

word of mouth, we have an Instagram site was just Coming to Work. And we’re thanking agencies for joining and things like that. So that’s about what we’re doing to get people on board.

Kelly

Fantastic. We’ll continue to support that, that channel as well. So, let’s just talk a little bit about what are the actions that employers can take, in order to be more inclusive to the LGBTQ+ community?

Alan

There’s some pretty simple things employers can do. And so, we kind of bucket it into like, into three buckets. One is to be to be visible, be equitable, and to be intolerant. And I will kind of take those one at a time. So, in terms of being visible, one of the things employers can do is to provide options for employees to self-identify. And so, if you’re running a company, and you offer people that option to self-identify, it tells people in your company that you’re an open, safe, inclusive culture, right. So just the act of asking, says a lot about the kind of company you are. So that’s one thing they can do in terms of being visible. The second thing, and I know this is this can be controversial at times, but using personal pronouns, and gender-neutral language kind of helps normalize the conversation and again, signals to your entire company, again, you are safe, open, inclusive, welcoming, organization, and respectful and respectful. And then the third thing is, you know, after the incidents in 2020, and the murder of George Floyd, there was a lot of effort in DE&I and reporting DE&I statistics. And so, a lot of those statistics really haven’t move much past race, ethnicity, and gender. And so, another thing that a company can do is to start to collect and report statistics on LGBTQ+ representation in the companies. So, if of these things really set that culture of being open, safe, and inclusive. So that’s the visible, does that make sense?

Kelly

Absolutely. And then alternatively, how do you support coworkers and colleagues to demonstrate that you’re supportive.

Alan

I think the biggest thing a company can do is to have allies in an organization, people who are there to support to support their fellow co-workers. And so, some of that part of our bucket is to be equitable. And one of those things is to really not put all of this work on your LGBTQ+ employees. So really how to have allies who are there to share in to share in that journey and to help. You know, another thing in terms of being equitable and supportive within a company is to really understand and customize or not customize that, but think through how your health benefits work, and how other benefits in your company work, and being respectful of special needs that this group might have or want. So, for example, adoption, maybe one of those gender affirming care, or parental leave, it isn’t only for females, for moms, I mean, there are all kinds of families, so that, I think those are a few ways that you know, co-workers can support their LGBTQ+ co-workers.

Kelly

I’m going to go off script for a minute and ask you a little bit about advertising, which is, of course, what we do. So, one of the main things that we always struggle with, as an agency for our clients is making sure that we’re showing diversity in our advertising, right? And that’s diversity and all the ways that we’ve talked about today. So, you have a group, a board, in essence, that does this, can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think that’s really smart. And all agencies should do that. In fact, you should probably market yourselves and let other agencies be able to use your board.

Alan

Yes, it is a pretty, pretty cool thing. So, what we what we did this year is we set up a DE&I advisory board. And so, what we do, and then this is a board of experts in the area, and so they look at, they really are experts in language representation, cultural appropriation, and all the things that many of us can kind of step into naively and unintentionally, because not everybody can understand everything about every single racial, ethnic, group out there. And, there are lots of generational differences but these folks really understand this very, very well. And so, we started with one of our clients, and engaging this advisory board, to look at everything we were doing. So, from our creative brief from our scripts that we wrote from casting wardrobe, first cuts of our cuts of our ads, and TV and video. And they gave us great insight, I mean, amazing insights in terms of like, not only the watch outs, but how to build upon, because a lot of people kind of feel like DE&I things are about mitigating problems. But it’s also like, how do you really celebrate and build upon certain groups and cultures in a way that is representative and, and positive? And so, they’ve been a tremendous asset to us as an agency and to our clients that we’re engaging that board with?

Kelly

Well, I think that’s something that every agency should either have, or have an opportunity to tap into for, for advertising campaigns, because we do have that conversation a lot about how do agencies shape or does advertising shape culture, what shapes culture and is advertising a key part of that, and I know you talk about that a lot on your website, in terms of culture, anything else to note about that, and also leading your client to make sure that they’re making those decisions? To be, you don’t want to say cutting edge, because this is normal, this is normalized, and it should be normalized.

Alan

It absolutely is. I think, advertising reflects culture, in terms of like, we do reflect culture, but we do have the opportunity to, to drive into impact culture. And I think there are two things that happen in advertising that are big watch outs. One is that if we consider ourselves the target market, which I think is what happens a lot in advertising, you get young creative teams that are if they’re not very diverse, they kind of see themselves as a target market and create advertising for themselves. That is a big “watch out”.

And then the second point is, is that not all? Audiences are not monolithic. So, for example, we have the term LGBTQ+, right? That’s a big, you know, number of letters that we try to kind of lump everybody into, right? But there really could not be more a difference between a gay man, a lesbian woman, a transgender person, I mean, they are very different. And so, in thinking about marketing to communities, whatever those communities are, you really have to understand the nuances and the and the life experiences and the differences among those so you really have to have your ear to the ground and tap into an understanding who those folks really are and how to best communicate with them.

Kelly

So, if people want to learn more, can you tell talk about a couple of the resources and the web address or social media channels to learn more about these two initiatives Come out to Work and Pledge 47?

Alan

And so, it’s the same website, it’s Come Out to Work with a dash in between the words. And that’s where you’ll find information about, you know, really how companies can be more open, inclusive, safe for organizations for their employees, and also where there’s information there about the Project 47 pledge, and if you’re an advertising agency or in the space, you can actually take the pledge. And you’ll be recognized on the site and your logo can go up there and it would be a big thank you and shout out to companies who do that.

Kelly

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for your time today. Alan, I really appreciate you talking about this important subject.

Alan

Absolutely. Great seeing you, Kelly.

Resources

Come Out to Work and Project47

www.come-out-to-work.com

Come out to Work and P47 Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/comeouttowork/

Alan Brown LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-brown-4a21a0/

DNA LinkedIn: