Acknowledging surging global immigration and concurrent xenophobia (see Key Stats), two brands make a stand for respecting immigrants and their cultures. Avoiding preachiness, campaigns from Italian pasta brand Barilla and WhatsApp speak to the (often subtle) ways in which ethnic minorities can be marginalised. WhatsApp additionally explores the rich complexities of diaspora communities, including marginalisation from within.

Acknowledging key barriers to success for women of colour – financial literacy and workplace discrimination – two personal care brands (P&G-owned Secret and Unilever’s Dove) launched US-based initiatives offering practical tools to help fuel economic and professional advancement.

Celebrating hip-hop’s centrality to contemporary Black culture, and honouring its massive global influence, several brands have been early to the 50th anniversary for hip-hop, whose origin story dates to an August 1973 party in the Bronx, NY. These include Amazon, Google and American footwear brand Timberland, which all foreground women in their initial comms.

Brands have wide-ranging opportunities to demonstrate allyship by addressing sociocultural health inequities – as discussed in The Black Health Imperative, part of our Connecting with Black Consumers Macro series. Important recent initiatives focus on Black maternal health and women with multiple sclerosis (MS), a condition traditionally misperceived as mostly affecting white women.