Brands need to be aware of the power and impact of featuring members of under-represented communities in their marketing, according to Matt Story, senior director/global innovation marketing at Visa.

Story discussed the payments company’s response to the push to end racial inequality during a webinar held by the Female Quotient.

Visa’s overall goals, he reported, include being transparent, listening to people from under-represented communities to understand their priorities, and setting tangible goals.

“At Visa, we've actually started a number of initiatives on all three of those [fronts],” Story said. (For more, read WARC’s in-depth report: How Visa is helping tackle racial injustice with marketing, transparency and powerful conversations.)

One objective established by the brand was to introduce marketing initiatives “aimed at highlighting Visa” to Black and Latinx professionals and students.

Another was to continue bringing under-represented communities to the foreground in its marketing campaigns, sponsorship initiatives, and events.

Such efforts, Story argued, are invaluable in showing different audiences the many possible directions in life that are open to them.

This is an important aim, he continued, as seeing “someone in a position that they didn’t know they could achieve” often serves as a critical point of encouragement.

“When we think about, as marketers, that we’re putting people in media, we’re putting people in content, we should be very thoughtful about [the fact] we’re actually helping future generations map out what they want to be, what they can be, what they can achieve,” Story said.

Brand custodians, he added, must not underestimate the impression and impact their work can make “simply by making that decision.

“For us, it may feel like, ‘Oh, you know, we can go this way, we can go that way.’ But it can actually change the trajectory of someone's life.

“So, I just want to make sure that everyone knows that’s a very important power that many of us hold that we should not take lightly.”

Sourced from WARC