Inclusive tech advertising isn’t just a moral imperative—it’s a business necessity. With the majority appreciating and supporting inclusive brands, tech companies are finally listening. Because, today’s tech consumers are diverse in gender, ethnicity, ability, and orientation. And they expect the brands they support to reflect that.
In this article, you’ll explore what inclusive tech advertising looks like today, why it matters, and how brands are getting it right or very wrong. Let’s dive in.
What Is Inclusive Tech Advertising?
To understand how inclusive tech advertising has evolved, it’s essential to explore its definition and the understanding of widely used terms, such as equity, diversity, and inclusion. And how these ideas have evolved within the rapidly changing tech industry.
Definition and Evolution of Inclusive Advertising in the Tech Industry
Inclusive tech advertising is about crafting marketing messages that show the real diversity of people who use and build technology. In the tech world, portraying a person of color on a billboard or in a promo pic isn’t enough; you have to think beyond it.
Therefore, your marketing campaigns should be designed by considering race, gender identity, disabilities, socioeconomic backgrounds, and more. If you study tech ads back in the early 2000s, you will discover that ads were all about white men in suits typing on keyboards.
However, now things have drastically changed. Brands are realizing that they have diverse customers who expect to see diversity represented in their products and marketing materials. Hence, inclusive advertising is no longer niche; it’s becoming the standard.
Learn more: What is Gender Marketing and How to Adopt a Gender Marketing Strategy?
The Difference Between Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Advertising
Gender diversity, gender equity, and gender inclusion are the three terms that are treated similarly. However, they aren’t!
Diversity is about who’s represented in the ad, their race, gender, age, etc.
Equity is a bit more structural. It is focused on everyone getting a fair shot at how stories are told or products are shown.
Inclusion is the vibe check. It’s whether people can feel related when they see the ad for a product.
Advertising teams can have a diverse cast in an ad and still miss the inclusion mark if every character fits a cliché. A simple example can be a woman in a tech ad who is just standing, smiling, and nodding while the guys are coding or doing the real stuff.
This depiction is not inclusive. But it portrays stereotypical thoughts that are on their own, a whole new topic to write on.
The Business Case for Inclusive Marketing Strategies
Inclusive tech marketing is basically about including all the segments of society in the advertising campaign. By doing inclusive marketing, businesses can make more money.
A 2016 study published by Google showed that 64% of people took some action after seeing an ad they considered inclusive. Whereas, Gen Z will straight up boycott brands that don’t walk the talk, in other words, that don’t support inclusion and diversity.
So, inclusive ads expand your audience reach. If your campaign speaks to more types of people, you’re naturally gonna get more engagement. It takes time, effort, and a mindset shift, but the ROI on trust, brand loyalty, and cold hard sales is totally worth it.
Why Inclusive Tech Advertising Matters More
The evolution of technology is not only helping us in our daily lives, but it’s also making people more sensible. Below, you will learn the importance of inclusive tech advertising for your digital products.
1. Consumer Demand for Representation in Brand Messaging
In today’s digital world, where everything is online and an ordinary person has the ability to reach millions, being invisible sucks. So people want recognition and can’t live their lives being invisible.
Customers expect to see themselves reflected in the tech ads they’re served. It’s not just about identity, but it’s about respect and recognition. Customers want brands to recognize their real lives.
Whether that’s through using gender-neutral language, showing interracial families, or highlighting disabled users in real roles.
And it’s not just something that can be overlooked or fade with time. Today, Gen Z and Millennials hold a huge chunk of purchasing power. Brands have to work in ways where they can build trust with their consumers.
2. Impact of Exclusionary Advertising on Brand Loyalty and Trust
Exclusion in today’s world is simply not acceptable. The frequent talk of gender equality and non-binary people is forcing brands to work on inclusive solutions, products, and marketing strategies.
Exclusion doesn’t just hurt feelings, it hurts loyalty. A company or brand may lose people when a campaign feels out of touch. The power of social media and the happenings of going viral may have serious consequences. One lazy ad can spark a backlash, and in the age of receipts and reposts, reputations can be destroyed in hours.
For example, the VR headsets earlier launched were for men’s sizes. Those were also advertised, showing male gamers. It was like women and BIPOC gamers didn’t exist at all. Hence, they received criticism.
Such examples show us that Tech brands can’t afford to operate in a bubble anymore. If their ads exclude people, your customers remember that and they don’t forgive easily.
3. Inclusive Ad Campaigns and Improved ROI
Studies show that inclusive marketing campaigns deliver a stronger return on investment (ROI), across the board. For instance, a study by Microsoft Advertising showed that inclusive ads increase purchase intent by up to 23%.
The McKinsey report, “Diversity Wins”, also states that companies with gender diversity on executive teams were 25% more likely to experience above-average profitability. The effect was even stronger for companies with ethnic and cultural diversity.
These margins are not small at all, and they are game-changing in the long run.
4. Ethical Branding and Corporate Social Responsibility
Performative allyship is past. Real ethical branding means integrating inclusive values and not just tossing up an equality or rainbow logo every year. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) isn’t about showing support, but it’s about actual actions and accountability.
With this mindset set, tech brands are being called out for what they support and what they ignore. Customers and even the general public care if your ad team is diverse and adopts an inclusive strategy. They care if your app or software is accessible.
Therefore, ethical branding is no longer an add-on, but it’s a baseline. Inclusive advertising is one of the loudest ways for tech companies to prove that they’re doing the work, not just talking a good game.
Key Elements of Inclusive Tech Advertising
Despite the importance of inclusive tech advertising that you have just learned for your digital products, you should also understand its key elements, which are discussed below.
1. Gender Diverse Representation
Electronic and digital media have educated common people. This is the reason that people can now sniff out inauthenticity from a mile away. Celebrating International Women’s Day, Pride Month, or just showing people of color in one ad doesn’t speak for your products.
The first element is a genuine representation of gender diversity, which means showing the original side of people as complex humans. This way, an ordinary person would lead meetings, use products, and integrate products in real-life ways.
It also means including people who are often left out. For instance, neurodivergent users, wheelchair users, elderly people, and more. When tech companies build advertising campaigns around their lived experiences, not just their labels, that’s when they win.
2. Accessible Design in Digital and Video Ads
One important element of inclusive tech advertising is developing excellent marketing campaigns without considering the challenges of physically disabled people.
As a viewer, you might have noticed tech promo videos with great visuals but no captions. This means zero accessibility for hearing-disabled people. Similarly, sometimes marketing teams unconsciously use color schemes that might limit their reach for color-blind people.
Captions, alt text, color schemes, and screen-reader compatibility should be baked into the creative process, not tacked on last minute. These are the minor things that exclude a segment of society from advertising campaigns.
If your digital ads aren’t accessible, you’re telling a whole chunk of your audience they don’t matter. And that’s just bad business and bad ethics.
3. Tokenism and Stereotypical Portrayals
Tokenism is the practice of symbolically making an effort to support a cause or an ideology. Many brands try to show inclusion through their ads, but in reality, their products say otherwise.
On the contrary, brands unconsciously design campaigns that are stereotyped. For instance, including a visibly Muslim woman in an ad and still getting it wrong if she’s just there for show but no voice, no story, no substance. That’s tokenism, and you can find many similar examples in your daily life.
Another example of supporting stereotypes is showing Asian people as the coder, or LGBTQ+ people as the “quirky friend.” Hence, an important element of adopting inclusive tech advertising is when your team shows normal people doing everyday jobs. This can be shown by using your app, building a prototype, and cracking jokes, etc.
4. Inclusive Language and Gender-Neutral Messaging
When designing a marketing campaign, words and tone matter a lot. Another element is using gender-neutral language with words like “they,” “partner,” or “team member” are recommended. It is better to avoid assuming pronouns or gender roles that put a label on a person and make everyone feel seen.
Moreover, conversations that contain words like “guys” in every UX message should also be avoided. Instead, focus on language that says “Hey everyone”, as it works just fine. Inclusive messaging isn’t about being politically correct, but it’s about being respectful, thoughtful, and, honestly, just a little more human.
Common Pitfalls and Biases in Tech Advertising
Many of the pitfalls in tech advertising stem from deeper issues that advertising teams mostly overlook. Below, I have discussed some to give you an idea.
1. Unconscious Bias in Creative Teams and Algorithms
Gender bias doesn’t always show up in a neon sign. Most of the time, it’s unseen and unconscious. Imagine what it would look like if a tech campaign’s entire team is comprised of one gender, belonging to almost the same age group, and ethnicity.
In such teams, every brainstorming session answers the question “what we would want,” ignoring huge segments of users. Such an approach is based on unconscious bias, and it’s a sneaky one.
Similarly, even algorithms aren’t immune. For instance, a recruitment ad can pop up more on a white man’s feed. These are not just coincidences, but it’s the output of biased input. If your data and team aren’t diverse, your ideas won’t be either.
2. Reliance on AI tools That Reflect Historical Bias
These days, everyone wants a shortcut, and with plenty of AI tools around, everyone is using them to get quick results. However, most of us are treating AI like it’s neutral. But the fact is, it’s not.
Most of the generative AI tools are trained on available datasets, datasets that are biased. This means that they are reinforcing stereotypes. The decisions these tools are making and the information they are giving to their users are all biased.
For instance, ad copy tools suggest male pronouns for engineers and female ones for caregivers. Relying too heavily on AI in tech advertising, without human review, can actually amplify exclusion instead of fixing it.
3. Stereotyping in Tech Product Marketing
Another common problem with inclusive tech advertising is that it has been hijacked by the whole “pink it and shrink it” approach. There are plethora of tech products that aren’t designed for women, instead, they are just given a shade of pink.
Such an approach by the product development and marketing teams is an insult to all the other genders out there. Despite that, marketing teams often adopt a stereotypical approach with ads showing men as the tech wizards and women as casual users. Or, women are overcompensated as experts just to tick a box. That appears so scripted.
4. Lack of Diverse Voices in Campaign Planning
Diversity in planning and marketing teams is something that most businesses acknowledge, but few brands actually have. The practice of inviting people from diverse backgrounds and taking their input before the concepts are finalized doesn’t happen frequently.
If your planning table looks like a monoculture, then your product and campaigns will too. Diverse voices are the foundation if you want your tech product to reach different segments of society.
Concluding Remarks
Inclusive tech advertising isn’t just a trend, but it’s the new normal approach. As you have read, it offers not only ethical and social value but also business impact. Brands that embrace authentic, accessible, and equitable campaigns are winning the hearts (and wallets) of modern consumers.
So, if you’re in tech marketing, now’s the time to ask if your message is reaching everyone, or just targeting a few? It’s important to build ads that invite everyone to the party and ask them to dance.
Do you have anything to add? Please write in the comments below!
