POCAM’s Launches the First-Ever Inclusion Progress Tracker

People of Colour in Advertising and Marketing, also known as POCAM, announced today that it has officially released a tool that tracks the progress made towards creating a more equitable Canadian advertising and marketing industry.

The “Call for Equity Progress Tracker” is a means to share and celebrate progress while providing support, encouraging, or challenging those yet to make any. The announcement lands alongside the first anniversary when POCAM published their open letter to the advertising industry calling for change. Titled The Call for Equity, it includes 15 demands to create justice, equity and inclusion in the industry for Black, Indigenous and PoC professionals.

The operating group of POCAM

“Signing a commitment like The Call for Equity, can easily be used as a form of virtue signalling,” says Joshua Richards (he/him), Tech Director at Klick Health and project lead on the Call for Equity Progress Tracker. “We wanted to develop a tool to help the industry self-report and hold itself accountable for the actions they committed to.”

Recognizing the influence and financial power concentrated in their hands, clients were asked to commit to all the demands, while industry organizations who weren’t clients were asked to commit to 12. Since then, over 600 BIPOC advertising and marketing professionals and allies signed on to support the demands with 100 industry organizations signing their commitment.

“When I first saw The Call for Equity I was excited, hopeful,” says Ishma Alexander-Huet (she/her), VP Client Advice and Management, Head of Learning and Culture at Initiative Media Canada. “For our voices and The Call to even be acknowledged in Canada felt like such a huge milestone. But there was also an underlying fear. As a community we were demanding equal treatment and opportunity, saying that a statement and black square in social media wasn't enough. As a Black woman in the industry for 20 years certain experiences had conditioned me to feel like we were asking for too much and things could get harder. I quickly realized what I felt was oppression, and that is exactly why The Call for Equity is so necessary. I am so proud to be working with POCAM as part of the solution.”

POCAM Co-Founding member Gavin Barrett (he/him) from Barrett and Welsh, led the work on The Call for Equity to create transparency and accountability in the industry and to combat systemic racism in the wake of worldwide protests.

“Our industry writes fancy articles but has never worked to actually dismantle systemic racism. BIPOC professionals had to define and demand the change. POCAM’s Call for Equity asked the industry to respect BIPOC self-advocacy as a primary commitment, and then to commit to the demands in the Call.” says Barrett. “Now, The Call for Equity Progress Tracker does the same by placing measurement and validation in the hands of BIPOC professionals — not a disconnected, disinterested 3rd party.”

Measurement and validation will be in focus when POCAM hosts leading brands on its town hall meeting panel in mid-July. With the release of this latest tool, each of the leaders from those 100 signatory agencies now has a dedicated and transparent platform where they can choose to share their stories and contribute insight to those lagging. Industry leadership can simply log in to the Call for Equity Progress Tracker and provide self-reported updates to their progress 24 hours a day.

To access the Call for Equity Progress Tracker, go to www.wearepocam.ca/update-status.

POCAM is a Canadian not-for-profit organization that exists to ensure that the voice, vision and talent of BIPOC professionals are fully and fairly present in Canadian advertising and marketing.