Bourbon marketing doesn't typically include black women, but Black Bourbon Society founder Samara Rivers is out to change that and brands are listening. "For our brands to be sustained in the future, we have to absolutely start with a multicultural lens," says Diageo's Ryan Robertson.

Southern California Edison's new safety campaign from IW Alliance, made up of Dailey, IWGroup and GP Generate, features a fast-talking, computer-generated squirrel that warns people about the dangers of using gardening tools close to power lines or errant metallic balloons. The campaign is running across TV, out of home, social and digital, and features spots in five languages widely spoken in Southern California -- English, Spanish, Korean, Mandarin and Vietnamese.

A new campaign from Gap called "Love All Ways" is one of the first from Chief Marketing Officer Alegra O'Hare, who aims to solidify the company's diversity values. "The Pride campaign is the kickoff to the new brand platform strategy and strategic direction targeting a new generation of consumers," she says, adding that Gap "will continue to keep inclusivity and diversity at the forefront of our communications."

Despite the fact that the last season of "Game of Thrones" begins with two female rulers of the realm, women only spoke 22% of the time while lines were being delivered--lending more screen time for Tyrion's lengthy mansplanations. In analyses of the show's representation of gender, men were also much more likely to use masculine-coded words like king, lord, man and men, where women were more likely to discuss other characters by name, husbands, faith, children and love.

While these are likely quick analyses of a popular show, it's worth noting that current academic research suggest that women get an average of 30% of the total speaking time in films--a number that sadly no season of "Game of Thrones" meets. At sparks & honey, we'd call this an example of our Element of Culture Quantified Life, or the ability to increasingly apply measurement to all aspects of our lives.

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Kathy Button Bell, chief marketing officer at Emerson, talks in this podcast about the importance of maintaining a positive company culture in both good times and bad, and how feedback from employees led to a website overhaul and a Values Initiative. She discusses the company's purposeful marketing, saying, "It's a promise to go forward" with messaging linked to "our five 'Noble Causes,' one for each of our businesses."

Discussions about inclusion and diversity require different vocabulary, writes Pamela Abalu. She writes that the word "diversity" represents "a memory of what we've met" and should be replaced with "symphony," which describes "a vision of what we are building."

It shouldn't be up to the marketer to determine and communicate a brand purpose, but it should rather be determined by the "highest levels of the corporation and stand above commercial considerations," writes Helen Edwards. Most marketers are "custodians of brands owned by corporations with a statement of vision or purpose somewhere in the archives," Edwards writes, while also noting they should ask "how it might serve as deep inspiration for their approach to innovating for, and engaging with, today's consumers."

Havas Creative Group's Tracey Barber shares her experience of volunteering at refugee camps in Greece and how the talent, determination and entrepreneurial spirit shown by individuals despite their terrible circumstances should be an inspiration to tackle diversity once and for all. "There are pools of creativity and inspiration and ideas and difference in all sorts of places, which we are failing miserably to access," she writes.