Here and now, we declare Preston Kelly’s commitment to stand with – and become part of – equal justice and anti-racism efforts in America. The second O in our agency CO-OP values is Openness (openness to diverse backgrounds, thinking and ideas), we will live this value first by shutting up and listening, examining our own biased and racist behaviors, then acting from our hearts. The following are the first steps we are taking, upon what we believe is good advice, to open our minds, support the immediate needs of our BIPOC communities, and start doing some good in the world:
As a key step toward improving our diversity for good, and living our Openness value, we are following #CommitToChange and The BrandLab suggestions and posting our current annual race/ethnicity/gender employment statistics. We will also post them to our social media channels. We do this so that we can accurately measure our improvement and hold ourselves and our industry publicly accountable in the years to come.
We recognize these are only first steps, not solutions. But our outsized voice as a creative communications company inspires us with the optimistic belief we can begin to overcome our own biases, change our practices, and even help evolve our community’s racist behaviors. If we listen to and join those who have been actively and passionately fighting this fight for years, we can do our part in helping to accelerate this change … for good.