“We have to work harder to get the minimum amount of respect.” These are the words of Black British comedian, Nabil Abdulrashid, spoken during an hour-long conversation with The Octopus Group’s Head of Talent, Kavita Shergill, and Account Director, Ella Darlington. The conversation was live-streamed as part of ‘IN’, a virtual event D&I series created by The Croc, The Marketing Practice, Octopus Group, Transmission and Harvard.

The idea for IN came about after ​​I wrote a blog post last year calling out the lack of diversity on the speaker panel at a high-profile industry event. I’d submitted a proposal to speak at the event about the need for a greater understanding of D&I in B2B marketing. My synopsis was that diversity is the new normal and B2B brands that fail to reflect the diversity of their customers in an authentic, relatable way, risk becoming obsolete.

I laid out the benefits, focusing on how a more inclusive approach can help deliver better customer and brand experiences, improve engagement levels and build brand relevance and trust.

I even had a case study up my sleeve about how one of our clients – a global tech company – achieved 54% higher CTRs in MEA and an 11x increase in leads in Japan when more representative and inclusive imagery was introduced into campaigns.

On the face of it, the perfect marriage of commercialism and progressive, relevant ideals.

Ironically, my submission got rejected on the same day that the rest of the industry was signing up to the Adland Commits pledge in support of Black Lives Matter.

My blog post attracted a lot of engagement, not all positive, but it sparked a conversation on Linkedin that resulted in a number of B2B agency leaders getting together to share experiences and ideas about how to increase awareness and understanding of diversity and inclusion.

As a group, we had a frank and open discussion about cultural change efforts and D&I policy setting within our individual businesses. We came to the conclusion that working together might be a better way to fast track progress within our industry, through joint accountability and initiatives.

The B2B industry needs more engaging outlets for these discussions, and here the IN series was born - a series of virtual conversations on inclusion, live streamed to a community of over 500 agency side B2B practitioners.

Guests so far have included Saatchi & Saatchi MD Sarah Jenkins and Ali Hanan, CEO and founder of Creative Equals talking about gender equality, comedian Catherine Bohart talking about LGBTQ+ inclusion and Nabil talking about Black Lives Matter.

Nabil’s talk with Kavita and Ella Darlington was intimate, compelling and eye opening. They each spoke with unreserved honesty with Nabil revealing the many ways the mainstream comedy circuit marginalises black acts and how his inbox is full of people asking him to teach them how not to be racist.

“Being a black person who speaks out is exhausting. When you're not teaching people about racism and talking about it, you're being a victim of it or fighting it and it helps if once in a while bystanders jump in and help.”

The conversation highlighted yet how far we have to go in educating people in and out of the workplace about systemic racism and the responsibility for doing that cannot lie solely on people of colour. As an industry we need to take responsibility with the onus being on the non-black people in the room to realise that in the world we live in today, not being racist is not enough.