How 2020 Shifted C-Suite Conversations About Supplier Diversity
By: Cloe Guidry-Reed
Tags: Supplier Diversity, Supply Chain, BlackLivesMatter, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship

We’re going to remember 2020 for many reasons, some of which we would much rather forget. For those of us at the forefront of supplier diversity, our field has changed significantly. Hidden from plain view is a myriad of seemingly small processes, policies, and practices that either set companies on a path toward achieving a more equitable and optimal supply chain or cutting off meaningful diversity and inclusion efforts at the root. From my vantage point, we will feel the impact of this year for many months and years to come. Here are three significant shifts that occurred over the past year and what I believe will be the most enduring implications for supplier diversity going forward.

The racial justice movement moved DEI to the top of the list for CEOs.

Whether or not companies will keep the momentum and continue to make bold commitments remains to be seen. Even so, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion moved up on the list of CEO priorities in 2020, and I believe that it will be there to stay. As with any shock to a system, eventually, it is absorbed and things go back to stasis. Americans remain more divided, essentially split down the middle, on many social justice issues. According to a report by sparks & honey, an NYC-based culture intelligence agency, distrust of institutions is higher than it’s been in decades. Being perceived as or proven to be an organization with exclusionary policies is a risk to brand reputation, and by extension, the bottom line. CEOs can no longer afford to overlook or underinvest in their efforts to meaningfully expand how they do business and with whom. One way they can make a real difference is by examining their supply chain and looking for ways to engage more deeply with people of color, women, and LGBTQ suppliers. Some companies were already doing the work and must continue to expand. For those who have been lagging far behind, the rest of this decade must be about catching up. Either that or risk becoming obsolete.

Big consumer brands made big promises, and now they must keep them.

In the wake of the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and in response to the weeks of protest that followed, global consumer brands selling everything from candy bars to computers pledged $1.7 Billion dollars toward fighting systemic racism in 2020. Both the number of commitments and companies has continued to grow. This is important for many reasons, not least of which is that this empowers consumers to hold them accountable. Whether or not brands like Coca-Cola, Lego, Netflix, and Target make good on these promises will depend in large part upon the sustained public scrutiny and pressure. We the people may get the chance to vote in an election every two-four years, but we have daily opportunities to vote with our dollars. In some ways, this is even more critical. The sheer volume of public statements and on-the-record commitments provides an unprecedented opportunity for consumers to hold accountable the brands they keep in business. This is an opening for diverse suppliers to make the case for the value they bring to companies, not just as innovators, but as brokers to their consumers and a gateway to increased profitability. This brings me to the final way that supplier diversity will be forever changed by the events of 2020.

This year demonstrated the competitive advantage of knowing and valuing your customers.

We see evidence that marketing is shifting from centralized messages blaring out from a megaphone to a distributed strategy that relies on many micro-influencers all having conversations with their own communities. A brand’s success now depends upon its ability to build trust through brokers, like Roy Broderick Jr & Enovia Bedford, who speak clearly and directly to the customers. All of this makes visible the power of creatives of color to create early mass adoption, decide what’s popular, and shift culture and consumer behavior. It’s never been a smart strategy to leave out diverse suppliers, but it’s quickly becoming impossible to do so. Marketing teams that lack diversity miss critical bankable opportunities because of their lack of proximity to communities and connectors. Black culture driving popular culture is not a new trend. 2020 just made it unmissable. As technology and user-driven content heighten visibility into Latinx, Indigenous, and East and South Asian communities and other previously underrepresented groups, we can only imagine that people of color will continue to drive consumer trends. Only groups who know and are known to the culture brokers will survive.