Inclusivity in brand leadership: "When you are young they assume you know nothing"

It feels very apt to lead with a Taylor Swift lyric. The queen of personal brand with a lifetime of experience in Reputation management (pun very much intended), she might be a billionaire TIME Person of the Year now but the challenges and relentless criticism she has faced throughout her career reflects that of many young women in business.

Before delving into these challenges and identifying some potential solutions, it’s crucial to recognise that inequalities and privileges alike of course go beyond just gender and age. But within the Venn diagram of inequality in the workplace, being a young woman sits a bit too neatly at the centre.

Traditionally, decision makers – those in high-powered, exec leadership roles that create and direct on strategy – are made up of business veterans that have built a long, competitive career in commercial functions. And let's address it, they are often older white men – in fact recent research from H&S shows just 8% of CEOs at top global companies are women.

Sure, these leaders bring a wealth of education, experience, and industry knowledge. But consumers are increasingly favouring brands that understand their identity and align with their values, and simultaneously have no chill in calling out those employer brands that fail to put their money where their mouth is (hello, Gender Pay Gap Bot).

It suggests brands should be built by a diverse group of decision makers that reflect who they are marketing to. So why don’t we hear these perspectives in the boardroom and why do the young business women who have dared to defy the patriarchy – social darlings like Grace Beverley and Molly-Mae Hague – always have to be entrepreneurial, glamorous, one-in-a-million self-starters?

I want to use my own experience as a case in point. I’m a young woman working in brand, straddling Gen Z and Millennial generational buckets (cue identity crisis), and you’d probably describe me as chronically online. It means I tend to have my finger on the western pop culture pulse, I’m an early adopter, and I have fairly boundless reserves of ambition and creative energy. My ideas are grounded in contemporary social context and my views are comparatively culturally sensitive and often progressive.

Yet I’m also self-aware and, rest assured, made to feel it all the time by others, that I don’t have the years under my belt that mean I can always make pragmatic decisions. This healthy dose of imposter syndrome enables me to anticipate these blind spots and means I know when to turn to more experienced colleagues for advice. But how often are their equivalent blind spots acknowledged? Rarely, if ever. And when my ideas are listened to, it’s often with skepticism, elevated scrutiny, and with little room for error.

Oh, how liberating it would be to fail fast and still be taken seriously – as queen Taylor put it, ‘what I was wearing, if I was rude, would all be separated from my good ideas and power moves’. Carving out a career in these conditions is exhausting. So when will those around the proverbial table recognise that diversity of perspective fosters innovation, and how can brands capitalize on the superpowers that are waiting in the wings until they’ve done their time?

Though I hate to fall into the trap of the marginalised group having to identify the problem AND be responsible for the ideas to solve it (genuinely, when was the last time you heard a man proposing a path to gender equity other than on the token International Women’s Day panel talk?), I do think there are some changes that organisations can encourage to increase diversity of perspective.

1. Bringing external strategic brand agencies into corporations who can supply the lacking mix of skills and perspectives from their arsenal of incredible people
   

2. Fostering an organisational culture that collaborates to innovate, calls out entrenched sexism and ageism, and guarantees fair and equitable opportunities for people to progress based on merit and ideas, not years (sidenote: can we stop already with the job specs that demand minimum 5-10 years of experience managing in the nichest industry you’ve ever heard of?)
   

3. Trusting in freelance brand consultants from a variety of backgrounds, beyond the semi-retired ex-colleague capitalizing on their network because they aren’t ready to put the work down just yet
   

4. Crucially, ensuring that Brand, Communications, and Marketing have a legitimate seat at the table and whose approach has the same weighting as those in ‘commercial’ functions
   

Brands can only truly reflect the world we live in when built beyond the confines of the traditional patriarchal echo chamber. But it’s clear that to accelerate progress, businesses need to go out of their way to afford opportunities to a new, more diverse generation of leaders – it’s not just going to happen by accident.

Let’s show decision makers that diversity of perspective fosters innovation. Let’s celebrate diversity of identity in all forms, let’s welcome fresh ideas into the boardroom, and question businesses on whether the right conditions for innovation can be created without it. Personally, like Taylor, ‘I’m so sick of running as fast as I can, wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man’ – so let’s all work to improve inclusivity together, because you only need to look at the women-led brands that are thriving to know that it’s overdue.