True Diversity feat. Purple Goat

This is our chat with Dom Hyams, Global Client Director at Purple Goat Agency, to delve into the critical importance of diversity and inclusion in today’s society. From the agency’s ground-breaking mission to its impactful projects, Dom shares valuable insights into the power of authentic representation in marketing.

Purple Goat is an international marketing agency like no other. They pride themselves on exceptional creative, content, and campaigns while also confidently representing and communicating a narrative in and around disability in everything they do.

Tony: Hi Dom. Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with me today. If we start with the need for diversity inclusion, why is it so important?

Dom: I think when we think about diversity and inclusion, ultimately what we’re trying to achieve is a fair, representative and equitable society. And opportunity and representation in society that is reflective of that.

We would obviously love to be in a world where we don’t even need the discussion of inclusion or diversity, but the reality is that right now we don’t, and so making sure that we are educating, upskilling and building confidence in people around these topics is fundamentally important to make sure that we give all communities and all minority groups the opportunity to thrive in work, in society, in their personal lives, and everything else in between.

Tony: Can you share more about your role at Purple Goat, the agency’s purpose and mission?

Dom: Sure. I’m Dom Hyams and I’m Global Client Director at Purple Goat Agency. Purple Goat is the world’s first and only social-first, inclusive marketing agency that has a 50% plus lived experience of disability within our team of professional marketeers.

Our ultimate ambition and aim is to improve the authentic representation of disability and inclusion in media and advertising. We have helped hand hold brands through the experience of creating the most progressive, forward thinking, nuanced campaigns and marketing activity that hopefully the world’s ever seen. This, generally, is lumped into three pillars of activity:

1. One is insight. So really understanding the communities that we’re trying to talk to, or talk on behalf of, or engage in our comms. Being authentic in what we talk about, and who we talk to, in our advertising.
2. Second is consultative handholding and creating a safe space for clients, meaning that they can ask us anything. We can embark on complementary activities, making sure that what we’re doing isn’t tokenistic and is truly baked into what an organisation is doing behind the scenes, as well as what they’re portraying in their adverts.
3. Thirdly, is what I’ll call social activation, working with the community in terms of what we see on our screens, on our socials. Activating disabled creators is our bread and butter. We lean on their own lived experiences to create more nuanced narratives which is fundamentally important.

We also do high-end video production, again with representation both in front of and behind the camera to make sure that we’re not leaning on tropes or stereotypes.  We’re very much creating authentic representation to society through the lens of disability and inclusion.

Tony: Is there a particular project that sticks in your mind as being really impactful, or your best work to date?

Dom: Yeah, the one that I’m most proud of on every front is our ongoing relationship with Strongbow. We started speaking to Strongbow in 2022 and it was just a chance LinkedIn message where I said “Hey, you’ve got purple goats in your adverts, we should probably do something together!”. It just so happened that were looking at how they could be more inclusive as a brand. It was right time, right place and we were met with open arms.

Often, brands have their way of doing things and they want us sing to them. When you’re looking through the lens of inclusion we have to become the experts and explain to them why certain things have to be the certain way, or why we need to make an adjustment, or say to them “you should think about this first before we do this”. Strongbow wanted us to throw the kitchen sink at the brand and were very amenable to working in a way that was authentic. It was an iterative process that started at the right place and then built out from there. It’s been a really positive, proactive and exciting thing to be a part of.

We started with offering consultancy on a commercial that they already had in development, then we created an insights panel, then a survey so we could get some actual understanding from the community as to how they engage with the Strongbow brand and wider drinking culture.

Then we aligned their media plans and did inclusive activations, aligning with their existing brand, rather than reinventing the wheel and doing something completely different. We upskilled them internally by giving them playbooks of best practice and delivered training.

Then finally we documented the whole process so that behind the scenes we could celebrate inclusion together.

We also consulted on some of their events. They were headline sponsors of Pride Brighton this year and we trained all the staff, got BSL performers on all of the stages, signage and ramps in their headline space and it created a really inclusive environment.

We’re now building on all that work into 2024 looking at how we do more, asking questions like how do we work with pubs? How do we create more accessible experiences for people and remove those barriers to socialise.

It makes perfect sense to approach things in this iterative way. We can create something even more powerful when we’ve got that strong foundation in place first.

Tony: Amazing. That’s really cool! What do you consider the potential consequences of a lack of diversity inclusion and what do you see as being the main benefits of an inclusive workforce?

Dom: It’s a good question. If we’re lacking in diversity and inclusion, we’re creating a more one dimensional perspective on whatever lens we’re looking through. Whether that’s our adverts, whether that’s our workforce, we know that the more diverse perspectives, more diverse narratives, create better the outcomes.

We know in advertising that the general population receive brands more positively the more diverse they are showing representation, and that goes for internally and externally in the comms that they portray. There’s overarching positivity and benefit to being inclusive and diverse in every sense of the word.

“There’s overarching positivity and benefit to being inclusive and diverse in every sense of the word.”

There is also the business growth opportunity and we often talk to brands around the fact that 24% of the population are disabled, but how often do these organisations think of that community as the potential customer base that they’re not tapping into? That is the reality. If you are more open to everyone being your customer, that just makes business sense as well. It doesn’t have to be the stick of “well that’s what you should do”, it should also be the carrot as well, because these are customers worth four billion pounds a year in the UK. It’s what we call the ‘Purple Pound’, the spending power of the disabled community.

Tony: What advice would you give a business that wants to begin its EDI Journey so that they’ve got the right intentions, but maybe they don’t know where to begin with it?

Dom: I think the main one is not to have perfectionist paralysis because nobody is perfect. Be open to doing something today. Taking a step in the right direction is much better than waiting for this miraculous overnight complete transformation to happen, because then it will never happen. So we often just ask brands to start on the journey and be trusting of that journey. I mean where to start, there’s a million places depending on who they are. The most simplistic place to start is to just educate yourself in and around inclusion. Follow disabled creators, look up so basic accessibility considerations, so you’re starting to look through the lens of accessibility and inclusion with more open eyes and with more confidence.

We often talk about the disability confidence of people and if we can make everyone better educated and more comfortable around inclusive narratives, we going to see naturally more inclusive outcomes as well.

Fundamentally, you want to bring the community in from the outset, work with the community themselves to create more inclusive outcomes, because you can’t possibly think that you can speak on behalf of those communities. You want to work with those communities. Being open to having those conversations by becoming more educated on them is a really important, fundamental first step.

Tony: Thank you. And finally, what’s the best way for businesses to get in touch with Puprle Goat Agency?

Dom: You can find us at www.purplegoatagency.com, or you can find me, Dom Hyams on socials, email at dom@purplegoatagency.com and yeah, we want to create a safe space. We want brands to be open to be in vulnerable and asking us anything they want under the sun and knowing that we’re going to be receptive in that conversation and help them along their journey.

You can find out more about work Purple Goat Agency has done for their clients, here.

If you are a brand or company that proactively champions diversity and would like to be featured as part of the “True Diversity” series please get in touch with Tony.

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