{"id":137260,"date":"2021-12-02T15:38:47","date_gmt":"2021-12-02T14:38:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=137260"},"modified":"2021-12-02T15:44:05","modified_gmt":"2021-12-02T14:44:05","slug":"how-do-we-get-this-right-accessmatters-with-the-unmistakables-asad-dhunna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/how-do-we-get-this-right-accessmatters-with-the-unmistakables-asad-dhunna\/","title":{"rendered":"‘How do we get this right?’ – accessmatters with The Unmistakables\u2019 Asad Dhunna"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018How do you introduce yourself? Listing jobs and experiences, what that does is put a mask up over who I am as a person\u2019 \u2013 for our latest accessmatters<\/a> session, The Unmistakables\u2019 Asad Dhunna talked how \u2018not fitting in\u2019 was a spark for him create space where everyone can.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018Throughout my life, I recognised I didn\u2019t really fit in. Right from Primary School. At home, my family pronounces my name in the Hindi way, so who I am in the world and who I am at home is different, automatically.<\/p>\n

\u2018I did languages and people were like, \u201cShouldn\u2019t you be doing Sciences or Maths?\u201d It\u2019s what people expected me to do. When I got to university, I had people say \u201cObviously, you\u2019ll do accountancy\u201d or \u201cYou\u2019ll do law \u2013 something that\u2019s expected of someone like you\u201d. I realised by that they meant \u201cAsian\u201d or \u201cof Indian heritage\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2018That feeling of not fitting in carried on \u2013 I lived in Germany for a year and people would ask \u201cWhere are you really from?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018I went to work in marketing and comms. I had a push and pull \u2013 push of family saying \u201cReally, you could get a job in a bank\u201d. And I was thinking, do people like me belong in this industry; should I be here? In the early days of my career, I was trying to use \u201cnot fitting in\u201d as a value rather than as a bad thing. Then I started to realise, as I became a leader, that people didn\u2019t look like me, or have my experiences.\u2019<\/p>\n

The Past<\/span><\/strong>
\nThe way the communications and media industries have tried to welcome people from communities and backgrounds other than the predominantly white, middle-class, university-educated and heterosexual mould has often been very well-intentioned, but not quite right.<\/p>\n

\u2018Back then, people were starting to use \u201cERG\u201d, \u201cLGBTQ\u201d, \u201cBAME\u201d and set up networks. I had this funny moment of people asking if I wanted to be part of the BAME or LGBTQ network – I thought I didn\u2019t quite fit into either of these. And then someone told me about the word \u201cintersectional\u201d…<\/p>\n

\u2018How do we make the industry more inclusive? People that look like me are more likely to set up a shop on the high street than set up an agency \u2013 I set up The Unmistakables.\u2019<\/p>\n

The Present<\/span><\/strong>
\nThe world has had to change since the pandemic, forcing conversations that have previously been avoided or given short-shrift \u2013 businesses are having to do the work.<\/p>\n

\u2018Having conversations with clients now: \u201chow do we get this right?\u201d \u2013 inclusivity is treated really differently today. The pandemic and George Floyd\u2019s murder made us all sit up and engage with the conversation. Partly because we were stuck at home and we were all going through the same experience. The brutality towards marginalised communities and the systems in place made us confront that privilege is in how we live. Society has been structured in ways that doesn\u2019t benefit all.<\/p>\n

\u2018We realised the only way we could help with inclusion was an \u201cinside-out\u201d approach – campaigns backed by more inclusive cultures. Marketing and comms is what we see in the world, how we are communicated to and how culture evolves. And within businesses, how do employees feel with their inclusion levels? You might be really good at your job, but you might not feel included. We spent a lot of time trying to work that out.’<\/p>\n

The Future<\/span><\/strong>
\nThe Diversity & Confusion Report<\/a>, released by The Unmistakables this year, found that people are more comfortable taking about death than topics like race and sexuality at work.<\/p>\n

\u2018Language is always changing – people don\u2019t know how to talk about this. 40% of professionals in our industry are afraid to use the word \u201cblack\u201d. Why? There are political nuances with that term, so some people don\u2019t feel comfortable using it. People are also afraid to use the terms \u201cgay\u201d or \u201cdisabled\u201d. One-in-six fear that they could lose their job if they use the wrong terms. If you\u2019re in marketing and comms, fear is the biggest thing that stops creativity.<\/p>\n

\u2018We also found that people would rather use the wrong term than say what they mean. We hear \u201cdiversity\u201d a lot \u2013 our question to those we work with is, what do you mean by \u201cdiverse\u201d? Is it background and class, sexuality, race? I always like to encourage people to see what\u2019s inside of that word.<\/p>\n

\u2018We\u2019re at a time where we\u2019re rethinking a lot and we don\u2019t want to go backwards. There\u2019s a curve of change, and not everyone is going to be on top tomorrow, but we\u2019ve got an opportunity to think how we want to do things differently.\u2019<\/p>\n

For more from our accessmatters sessions with The Unmistakables\u2019 Asad Dhunna, read his five tips for creating inclusive campaigns<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Find influencers and media professionals to work with on your upcoming campaigns with the Vuelio Media Database<\/a> and keep track of your stakeholder relationships with our Stakeholder Management services \u2013 find out more here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We spoke to The Unmistakables’ founder and CEO Asad Dhunna about inclusion in PR and comms and why you should say what you mean when using the word ‘diversity’ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":137263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7365,7401,7272,3725],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137260"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/423"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137260"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137266,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137260\/revisions\/137266"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}