"Diversity in the workplace brings great ideas and often a WOW effect," sums up Tomáš Varga, CEO of a multinational communications group
Communication and advertising campaigns can be "used" in different ways and for different purposes. Multinational companies often work with LGBT themes - precisely with a view to bringing diversity closer to the majority population. Is this practice your own? And have you encountered any related complications in the markets in Hungary or Slovakia, for example?
I admit that I do not have a detailed overview of specific campaigns, but in general I can say that a large number of our clients support LGBT issues. In Hungary, for example, we rebranded the Saatchi & Saatchi agency with a rainbow flag during pride month. In general we do very visible campaigns and as part of our own corporate social responsibility we try to raise equality issues in individual markets ourselves. But the truth is that we work with many large multinational brands that have their own ESG strategy(ESG strategy refers to the impact of a company's operations on the environment, society and the way it is run, ed.), which usually includes promoting inclusion and diversity. So I don't know of anything specific that we have to change for individual markets, but that is certainly related to the international clientele.
On the other hand, even when I think about the smaller clients, I haven't seen any problems. Actually, I think one thing is the political situation in each individual country and the other is reflecting the target group. For a lot of companies that target people aged 18+, it's Generation Z, millennials. And they're all very LGBT friendly.
On the expansion into Slovakia, you told the media that you're going to provoke the market. What would this "provocation" look like? And were you referring to anything in particular?
In this case, the provocation mentioned was purely commercial. We have quite sophisticated products based on very detailed data and analyses of target groups. So I think we have a big advantage over our competitors. We can deliver a higher return on advertising investment and guarantee higher sales than the competition. In addition, while in the Czech Republic we are one of the largest agencies on the market, in Slovakia we are smaller, so we can afford to come up with innovative solutions that the competition does not offer and, finally, the provocation.
In the LUI BUSINESS special, we map out how the trend of promoting equal opportunities, diversity and inclusiveness is mirrored in the business sphere. So I wonder how Publicis Groupe has set up its corporate culture in this respect...
We generally believe that diversity in a team is a definite asset - and it doesn't have to be just diversity in terms of sexual orientation. The more you have a diverse team, the more it brings new stimuli, new perspectives. And also diverse solutions to problems. Personally, I've also been saying to myself that I want to promote diversity in the workplace more - not just because I'm gay myself, but mainly because it kicks our business up a notch. We have more than 30 nationalities working for us, and the whole team is very diverse. And our experience is clear - a person who comes from a different background, however "different", always looks at things differently. And when everyone interacts together, the result is something new, unique. The solutions that emerge from such collaborations usually have a certain WOW effect for the client. Which is precisely because of diversity.
But if I were to be specific directly with regard to the support of LGBT employees, we have, for example, integrated the same benefits into our internal guidelines as for straight couples and gay/les couples, which until now Czech legislation did not impose on employers due to the lack of legalized same-sex marriage. We are also part of the Pride Business Forum, which we joined in its early days - so equality in the workplace is really important to us.
In the context of promoting diversity and inclusivity, the visibility, and therefore the visibility of LGBT people, is also widely discussed. According to a recent survey conducted across the EU, many LGBT people still hide their orientation in the workplace. Have you encountered this practice in any of your workplaces?
I've been at Publicis for a number of years now, and a lot of things have changed at Publicis, but I don't have any personal experience of anything like this. But I think it always depends a lot on the company culture - because as they say, the fish stinks from the head. Company culture basically determines what is tolerated by management. So the key is who the manager is. The ownership structure of companies is also important. Companies with foreign capital tend to be more open and the level of tolerance is higher.
We live in a bubble in Prague, so there is more acceptance of differences in companies. And management often has to change its positions in the direction of openness - simply because the employees demand it. Generation Z and millennials in particular do not have such a relationship with authority and I believe that due to low unemployment - if they felt any pressure or rejection - they would go elsewhere.
So maybe the younger generations will eventually change the job market for the better themselves...
It's already happening. When I turn on the TV in the evening and see what is happening on the political scene and how some issues are being raised in a purely populist way, I wonder where I was these previous eight hours. And that I must be living in a completely different world. Problems are artificially raised on television that I don't see in business. Businesses know that if they don't adapt to trends, and that goes for diversity advocacy as well, they're going to be up against each other. It's ultimately a rational decision because I can rationally say that diversity brings great ideas, wins tenders and generates money. Every successful company has figured this out long ago, and therefore applies all the associated changes to their corporate culture and internal systems. But that's what successful companies do - and they're not the majority...
Publicis Groupe has quite a broad scope; for example, you have conducted an opinion poll on marriage for all with Nielsen in the Czech Republic. And you used the data you gathered in a related campaign for We Are Fair. Are you regularly involved in this human rights area?
We mainly try to choose strong topics. So in the spring we focused on consent to sex in one of our campaigns - together with Amnesty International. We like to choose topics that resonate with society - or, alternatively, we focus on those that we think deserve attention but don't have it yet. This is because we feel that we have a very strong team of experts that can be used effectively to "lift up" overlooked but important issues. So at the same time, we feel that social responsibility. And that is to stimulate, perhaps even non-commercially, an important societal discussion.
You have a fairly comprehensive focus on communication activities. Particularly in recent times, it seems that communication between people in society has become quite difficult. In your opinion, is there any way to bring the opposing camps closer together - perhaps through targeted actions and campaigns?
This is a very systemic problem... I would say that one of its sources is the online environment. While face-to-face contact leads to listening and forming opinions, the monitor can take anything. The person behind it is much more aggressive. The social networking algorithm, which basically offers everyone only what they want to see, must also be taken into account. So everyone is just reinforcing their opinions. The result is that in society - and certainly not only in the Czech society - there are two huge, hostile camps that stop talking to each other.
How can we get out of this "stuck" situation?
I'm very liberal and I love the open market and business, but I'm afraid that in the long run it won't work without specific regulations of online media. After all, history shows that, all media have evolved since their inception, had their boom and then came regulation. The media has enormous power. To keep it from getting out of control, it has to be regulated. So what we are going through at the moment is actually very natural, we have to first orient ourselves in the new situation and then learn to function in it. But I am optimistic, humanity has always dealt with such challenges. We just need to figure out how the new media should work in a way that helps more than it hurts.
