Nationwide is a financial organisation with a social purpose – to build society.

Their long running advertising platform, Voices, features people from all walks of life, representing UK society in all its diversity.

But in 2020, prompted by the Black Lives Matter protests around the world, Nationwide considered for the first time the role that media plays in upholding systemic bias.

They challenged their media agency Wavemaker whether they were ‘truly speaking to all of UK society, nationwide?’. This set client and agency on a journey that they are still on now. They interrogated every area of their media planning approach, and looked with fresh eyes at the processes, tools and systems they use daily to inform media decisions.

They faced into the uncomfortable truth that diverse audiences are too often overlooked, excluded, or underrepresented within media planning, and embarked on a complete overhaul of every aspect of their approach to put inclusivity at the heart.

But they didn’t stop there, they wanted to drive change within the wider industry too.

Agency: Wavemaker &...