WHAT IT IS

The IPA iList, in partnership with Unilever and Campaign, is a recognition and celebration of all those who are truly promoting and championing diversity and inclusion within the advertising industry, through unstereotyped, representative creative work or game changing inclusivity programmes within their organisations. The ‘I’ stands for Inclusion and Inspiration. 

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT

Most of adland has moved on from simply acknowledging the problem of lack of diversity to a phase of earnest implementation. Passionate individuals are actively and successfully shifting the culture within advertising and marketing, as demonstrated by the 30 individuals who make up our inaugural 2020 IPA iList. 

The IPA is committed to improving diversity and inclusion within adland, as demonstrated by various pioneering initiatives including Advertising Unlocked, Creative Pioneers apprenticeship programme, the Stepping into the Spotlight series and our annual IPA industry Census.

The 2020 diversity targets, which the IPA set the industry back in 2016 and will be reported on in 2021, were set to be ambitious – an aspiration that proved the IPA is serious about making the future different from the past. And that’s why through the iList, we are aiming to demonstrate the power of inclusive leadership as that is the way we will remain relevant to our talent, audiences and clients.

THE AIM

Our aim is to acknowledge and showcase these positive, intersectional role models, and create a community of likeminded inclusive leaders by giving them a platform to share best practice and thought leadership in the hope that others can be inspired to find solutions to their own diversity and inclusion concerns.

Through creating a year round iList movement that encompasses round table discussions, webinars, articles and playbooks we trust that this inaugural list paves the way for many others to take up the baton and inspire further transformation and inclusivity in our industry.

WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW

The iList finalists were revealed on Tuesday, 26th May with a dedicated iList online hub on Campaign’s website, our media partner. Campaign also designed a special digital magazine to showcase the winners. Our #iList social campaign has been incredibly successful with over 1,233,262 impressions from 419,420 accounts on Twitter. 

Some of the most exciting parts of our programme include

• The iList comprises of individuals at all stages and levels in their career; from juniors to C-suite. We have also discovered some brand new heroes and role models that the industry wasn’t aware of before.
• The main judging criteria was what they have done to actively promote diversity and inclusion in a tangible way over the last year. As a result, we have discovered a wealth of tried and tested, successful and fully intersectional inclusion strategies and programmes that are now getting the limelight they deserve and available for others to copy, borrow and tweak as per their requirements. 
• Our community encompasses our fantastic judges from progressive brands and agencies, chaired by Karen Blackett OBE UK CEO, Group M; UK country manager, WPP. The judges themselves represent the full spectrum of diversity.

WHAT'S COMING UP

The programme is designed to keep the conversation going all year round. Do look out for the IPA iList toolkit in the autumn that will provide agencies with tangible material on how to develop and nurture leaders from minority groups, including case studies, advice and learnings from our iList 30. 

Our first iList webinar with Unilever, LinkedIn and Stylist is available to view here. We held our second webinar with three of our winners on 27th May on successful inclusion strategies which you can view here. There is lots more to come in our webinar series. 

We also look forward to sharing specific examples from individuals on the list, especially those who are positively reinforcing the inclusion agenda in a way that is relevant during the COVID-19 crisis. During this time of crisis, inclusion is more important than ever. We believe it is critical for business recovery and reimagination. 

Leila Siddiqi, Associate Director Diversity, IPA

The iList is founded by the IPA and is an IPA Talent Leadership Group (TLG) initiative. Unilever is our Associate Partner and Campaign is our Media Partner