A few days ago a leading group of Brazilian advertisers and creatives called out Cannes Lions for assembling a largely white jury for the Brazilian panel. Just one of the 25 Brazilian jurors at this year’s International Festival of Creativity is black.

In their letter to Cannes Lions, the Brazilian group rightly said: “We want space for the bright Black people who exist in the Brazilian market – and also outside Brazil – to have a real chance.”

And in fairness, the industry is making great efforts to address D&I issues within the industry and to give diverse groups that “real chance”. At the same time as Cannes Lions was being rebuked, the trade press was also reporting that ISBA has launched an updated version of its marketing code of conduct for influencers, with a focus D&I and representation, and that the IPA has just unveiled its 2011 iList of 30 game-changers, who are committed to driving D&I in the industry.

However, the simple fact is that despite our best efforts, we are still not adequately addressing the broader issues of D&I and representation in the creative industries and the work that we do.

So much of the advertising and content that the industry produces still does not represent a truly diverse world. Yes, we are tackling diversity and representation in our teams and the people we are employing, but we are not going far enough. We need to address how the industry is working and approaching creative assignments in order to be truly diverse and inclusive.

I started running the Outvertising Awards five years ago as I wanted to drive LGBTQ+ representation. Part of my mission was to showcase brands that are doing it well, to inspire and show the way for others. One of the critical learnings that has come out of the awards, is that to have diverse and inclusive representation on screen, you have to have true representation behind the camera. This means diverse teams right from the planning stage, through to creative, production and distribution.

If you do not have diverse teams, then you can't make diverse work that is authentic and truly representative of the audiences you are trying to portray and engage. And despite the great advances we are making as an industry, we have to recognise that most creative agencies and studios will not have the right level of diversity for all projects.

This is not a failing, it’s a reality that we have to address positively. Partnering with organisations like Outvertising and the Diversity Standards Collective is a good way to get the right representation for all creative briefs. They can help agencies and studio to have the checks and balances in place. This could mean having a director from one community, but then having different representation in the casting and the filming and so on.

Working with outside, expert organisations and individuals really helps you to get the storytelling right. Even if you think you have expert knowledge of a community, if you are not part of that community, your approach to storytelling may not be an accurate or authentic representation of that community. In order to avoid unconscious bias, you have to actively involve the community you are looking to portray. And, you need to avoid unintentional discrimination. Removing names and gender when selecting creative talent is a way of avoiding this.

And it’s not about just putting people from a community in a film or an ad in order to target that community. Too often we’ve seen brands associating themselves with communities and causes in order to make their products more attractive. Embracing diverse creative talent and creative diverse work is about alignment of values. And it may sound obvious, but more and more consumers are looking for brands that align with their values.

Aligning with values and accurate representation is therefore a ‘must have’ for brands. It’s a key business benefit. D&I improves creative content, it makes that content work harder, it drives longer term relationships with audiences and ultimately helps to drive business growth.

Since the launch of the Outvertising Awards, we have seen a step change in the creative work, with more brands getting D&I right. They are featuring the LGBTQ+ community and lifestyles in their advertising and avoiding the mistakes of the past – the tokenistic nods to the LGBTQ+ community or over-sexualisation

For me, a great example of this authentic LGBTQ+ is Mastercard’s ‘True Name’, which we showed at Advertising Week Europe this month, as part of Distillery’s seminar The Power of Queer. The ad tells the story of a service that empowers people and changes lives with a seemingly simple switch. At the heart of this work is being able to use your own name and identity, highlighting Mastercard’s commitment to equality and inclusion. The company’s True Name service enables trans and non-binary individuals to display their chosen name on their cards.

This spot demonstrates how it’s possible for a big corporate to tell a powerful, authentic story that really speaks to the LGBTQ+ community. This type of creative can really only be made with proper engagement with representatives from the trans and non-binary community. But crucially this type of creative goes beyond the LGBTQ+ community.

Getting D&I right drives brand recall and engagement, not just with specific diverse audiences, but across the board. It’s about telling powerful stories with interesting characters that truly reflect our modern world. This is why it’s so important to get D&I right. It’s important to have the right diversity across the creative process. And it’s important to engage and involve diverse communities in creative storytelling. Yes, we must have diverse and inclusive juries at festivals, but there is much bigger picture that all of us need to address.