Lego marked UN's International Day of the Girl Child on Monday by encouraging inclusive play with a 60-second spot that features girls who already are reshaping the world with creativity. The "Let's get the world ready for girls" spot is part of the brand's "Rebuild the World" campaign.

Last year, Johnson & Johnson rallied its top agencies and digital platforms to promote diversity, equity and inclusion, said Manoj Raghunandanan, J&J's global president of self care. Efforts are paying off as evidenced by the "Care Without Limits" Tylenol ads from Doner, whose team was 75% diverse, while the campaign helped J&J yield a higher dollar return with Hispanic advertising than efforts targeting the general population.

Bacardi, with music producer Boi-1da, is auctioning nonfungible token Caribbean-inspired "mixtapes" from three female music artists, Denise De'ion, Bambii and Perfxn, as part of its Music Liberates Music program to promote aspiring musicians. A 60-second spot touts the initiative, highlights the gender disparity in music production and urges fans to invest in the emerging talent as each NFT will pay buyers a percentage of streaming royalties.

Red & Co. created a "Here's to Perfectly Imperfect Parenting" campaign for Babyganics that features an anthem spot starring a diverse mix of real parents and shows scenes reflecting the realities of parenting, set to a version of "Wheels on the Bus" with new lyrics. The push was developed based on agency and brand research that revealed two out of three parents don't think ads show a realistic portrayal of parenthood.

PepsiCo understands strong civic-minded messages regarding social issues require action to be relevant to consumers, so the #AmplifyBlackVoices campaign for its Doritos brand included donating more than $5 million to Black creators, said Steven Williams, CEO of PepsiCo Foods North America. "The brand purpose came through; it was about our brands doing the hard work and doing good in the community vs. just us out there with another message," Williams said.

Social movements such as Stop Asian Hate and Black Lives Matter significantly affected decisions about content for 63% of global marketers during the past year, Shutterstock reports, and 65% concur that diversity plays an important role in audience targeting. Visual diversity is a difficult goal for 44% of respondents and 76% think there's still room for growth in terms of representation.

The genocide of European Jews during World War II murdered millions of citizens and divided the world through discrimination and antisemitism. Vividly impacting many to this day, the Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism forum in Sweden focused on marking the 20th anniversary of a conference, which aimed to remember those individuals who lost their lives throughout the genocide. Although these lives were embraced and highlighted, the focus of the conference emphasized the importance of dismantling hate speech, disinformation and fake news pertaining to the vicious genocide. With heavy blame on social media platforms for contributing to the global rise of antisemitism, the trust between them and consumers has declined. Though many platforms have pledged to support the condemning of antisemitism, it has been proved that actions speak louder than words. Rather than continuously releasing statements and reports, those within governments who have attempted to ensure security for those within the Jewish community do so by supporting Holocaust education and fighting against hate speech.

Through implementing programs based on the needs of those within the Jewish community, there lies hope for a more respectful world where their ancestors' history only receives praises for being strong and resilient. With the help of varying well-recognized brands, these antisemitic regulations and actions can reach more audiences. As social media continues to play a huge role in the information we process and digest, we can tie in our Element of Culture, Distributed Trust. As people are increasingly turning to each other as the quintessential trusted sources in a connected world, there continues to be a sense of distrust between businesses, governments NGOs and media.

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John Gallegos, founder and CEO of United Collective, talks about his experience of being Hispanic in advertising, what's working and what needs to change. "The advertising industry is still behind when it comes to a collective and consistent commitment towards [diversity, equity and inclusion] as it relates to multicultural audiences," Gallegos says.

Creating an inclusive industry and developing the next generation of advertising leaders for the industry has been a top priority of the American Advertising Federation by way of its Mosaic Center for more than two decades. The Mosaic Center serves as a resource and advocate for the value of diversity, equity and inclusion and is committed to helping advertising, marketing and media reflect our nation's evolving cultural makeup.

In an effort to expand, enhance and evolve the organization's current solid foundation of world class, industry-leading, diversity, equity & inclusion efforts -- the AAF is embarking on the largest expansion of Mosaic Center efforts in the history of the organization. 2020 was the busiest year for the AAF's Mosaic Center! Support of the Mosaic Center Expansion Fund will ensure that the AAF can continue to provide programming, content, technology and human resources for the advertising, media and marketing industries.

Learn more about the Expansion Fund and how your organization can commit its support of cultivating a more inclusive industry.