Ed Timke, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations, has co-produced a series of three podcasts focusing on themes of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
Timke took on the project through the American Academy of Advertising, where he serves as its Diversity & Inclusion Committee chair. The academy wanted to address current industry issues and provide a forum for discussion. Timke says they agreed on three podcast topics.
“Gender is something that keeps coming up, disability is not talked about enough…and then there’s the unknowns around artificial intelligence,” Timke said. “So, we pulled from the industry folks that we knew, met in Zoom meetings, and extracted the audio for the podcast. That’s a long way of saying it was a lot of cooks in the kitchen, but it was good cooks, and we all got along.”
The AI podcast featured renowned data and analytics practitioner Cecilia Dones. She spoke of the need for advertising professionals to use AI responsibly to drive innovation. Timke said Dones also addressed some fears and concerns about the prevalence of AI in business.
“She was talking about how a lot of people think AI is going to eliminate jobs,” Timke said. “She emphasizes that it’s not going to get rid of jobs; it’s going to change jobs. Maybe some roles might get folded into something else, or a lot of repetitive tasks will be avoided through AI. She said that AI – at least as of right now – is not the Holy Grail. It makes mistakes, and you need humans behind the prompting.”
The podcast focusing on disability featured KR Liu, Global Head of Disability Innovation Brand Studio at Google, and Dr. Josh Loebner, Global Head of Inclusive Design at VML.
Timke said this episode addressed the underrepresentation of persons with disabilities in advertising.
“The two practitioners said, ‘we’re here,’” said Timke. “They want to convey that disability is not a bad word. We need to get it out there that there’s nothing wrong with disabilities, and we should embrace disabilities in advertising representations and workplaces.”
The podcast about gender featured Christine Guilfoyle, President of SeeHer, the Association of National Advertisers’ gender equality initiative.
“In terms of gender, it's been a brave new world,” Timke said. “Gender is a spectrum. So, there were discussions about recognizing the diversity of that.”
Timke says the American Academy of Advertising will likely produce more podcasts in the coming year. He believes it’s a great medium for making connections with the advertising industry.
“This allows us to bring academics and industry together,” Timke said. “We can have a conversation that’s relaxed and interesting in the sense that we can go back and forth and explore what are the big issues and what we should do about them.”
The podcasts are available to listen to on the American Academy of Advertising website and are free to download until January 30, 2025. Listen to them here.
By Kevin Lavery