DEI is about including multiple perspectives while building a brand: Experts

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is an important aspect of marketing and brand building, echoed industry experts as they brainstormed over the topic at the e4m Conclave 2023 on Thursday.

During a power-packed session moderated by Marketing Consultant Vani Gupta Dandia with panellists like Mukesh Ghuraiya, Chief Marketing Officer, Modi Naturals; Raj Sarthak Nigam, Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Fashion Entrepreneur Fund, and Neelima Burra, Sr VP Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer, Luminous Technology, the unanimous view was that brands should focus on inclusivity in terms of gender, departments, innovations and customers’ requirements. 

During the session on ‘Leveraging DEI for customer engagement and brand building’, the experts emphasized how DEI has many aspects and it is an evolving field.

Raj Sarthak Nigam, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Fashion Entrepreneur Fund (FEF) said in fashion, many brands are now focusing on body positivity.

“Now you have plus size clients or models campaigning for Calvin Klein or Victoria Secrets. There is body positivity now among many brands. The focus is to accept regular as beautiful,” Nigam said, while talking about the inclusion of DEI in brand marketing.

Talking about gender as a part of DEI, Luminous Technology’s Neelima Burra said that for her brand, the idea is not just to present women in advertising, but to bring them to the forefront towards technology.

“At Luminous we talk about inverters and other electrical products, people say it is a male category. DEI does not mean bringing women into advertising the product or women buyers. We have women retailers dealing with the product. That is a great thing to see as it moves towards breaking the male-dominated mindset. We also launched a ‘women in energy’ campaign where we said it is about bringing women to the forefront towards technology,” she said.

As an FMCG category, DEI is not a separate marketing strategy but it is the way of default marketing for us, said Mukesh Ghuraiya, Chief Marketing Officer, Modi Naturals who owns the oil brand Oleev.

“As an FMCG player, inclusive marketing is not a separate market strategy for us. It is how default marketing works for us. Oil is consumed in every household so representation of people has to be from a diverse set. DEI fits naturally into our brand strategy,” Ghuraiya noted.

Experts also discussed how it was important for a brand to be willing to change, innovate, change the advertising, packaging, learning and unlearning.

DEI is not about gender or geography. It is more about including multiple options and perspectives while building a brand with changing consumer needs and changing market environment, said the experts.