We are amid Covid-19 and it’s VE Day. Outside it’s 26 degrees and Zoom has become the trend for communicating and socialising.
Junior Linden dials in on a call with creative leaders, Christopher Kenna and Jason Jarvis, who share their experiences of diversity and how they champion it in their careers.
The connection is slow and glitchy and needs time to pick up momentum. In the left box is Chris, the 37-year-old founder, entrepreneur, and CEO at Brand Advance, whilst over in the right box is Clear Channel’s Creative Partner Manager, Jason Jarvis, who’s also 37.
Taking a sip from a Heineken bottle, Chris speaks from a self-made desk he has set up from his kitchen table, until coronavirus passes and the lockdown is lifted.
He believes that the word “diversity” sums up people who do not identify as being white and straight. “Really I wish we could take away the word diversity and call it, ‘extra reach’ or ‘incremental reach’,” he says.
With determination and persistence to become more than the average Black man, these men go beyond the stereotypical status quo of Black-British who are achieving. Living their truths, this story explores acceptance by communities by championing diversity in the workplace as a result of historical racism, colourism and prejudices.
Taking it back to grassroots
Chris is mixed-race and was born in 1983 on the Isle of Man, where he was put into a children’s care home. “I was the first Black kid ever to be born on the Isle of Man, I know this because when I left care, I was given a file containing a certificate saying, ‘first Black kid born at Noble Hospital’,” he says, pointing out there is only one hospital on the island.
When Chris left care at age 16, he had nowhere to go. So he joined the British Army, which at the time was recruiting soldiers from deprived and ethnic backgrounds. “A shout out to positive discrimination!” he says jovially. “The reason I got into the Army within one week of applying was that I was Black and from care.”
Chris spent eight years with the Army, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan as an Ammunition Technion before becoming a PTI. It all came to an abrupt halt in 2007, when he was caught off guard in Iraq by an IED bomb that exploded and flipped the tank he was driving on its head. As a result, he sustained a head injury and was in a coma for eight weeks.
More than just Black and gay
Chris knew he was gay – or at very least bisexual – from the age of 13. “I remember watching “Queer as Folk” and identifying with it but remember feeling like I was the only gay mixed-race person in the world,” he recalls.
He had his son around the time he was joining the Army. “Being a Black and gay wasn’t an option, I felt people around me had just accepted the colour of my skin and that was in 1999.” It is common knowledge that being openly gay in the Army could have a negative impact, as wide perceptions of gay men is that they’re flamboyant and incapable of being soldiers.
“I remember having a lucid dream that I’d come out as being gay to my wife and kids, then woke up after eight weeks and realised I hadn’t – so needed to do it all over again,” he says.
Striving for diversity
Leaving his family, the father of two set off for the Big Smoke (London) to fulfil his dreams, where he founded and started Brand Advance. It’s a specialist agency that he says “helps brands reach diversity at scale” by connecting big brands with diverse groups in society.
Moving to London was the best choice for him, Chris says. London is renowned for being a diverse city, so he was able to feel comfortable in his own skin and live his own truth without being judged or ridiculed.
In London he met his first partner, who had moved from the Highlands in Scotland. The two of them got together and started to shape the future of Brand Advance.
Creative partners
The attention moves to Jason as his window on the screen illuminates green, giving him the go-ahead to speak. He’s sitting in his living room at a coffee table, and strewn over the walls behind him are pieces of Banksy’s artwork.
“I work at Clear Channel, one of the largest outdoor advertising companies in the world. I work on the creative team, I do a lot of work in championing diversity and equality across the business by designing and supporting creative ideas and using our platform to share them across the globe,” he says.
Jason is Black and gay. He grew up in Stratford East London in a single-parent household with his mum and two sisters. “My mother was a senior social worker, I saw her push her career forward in a time when it was harder for Black women to succeed. The elder generation had it a lot harder but was able to push past the systemic racism and grow.”
Sharing goals and pushing forward
In 2010, the Government introduced diversity and inclusion strategies as part of the Equality Act, to focus on equal treatment and equal opportunities for everyone in the workplace.
“This is why Brand Advance exists,” says Chris. “Although on the surface, there are policies deferring people from systemic racism, brands and companies can use loopholes in the name of brand safety to exclude diverse groups by blocking keywords such as Interracial, Gay, Muslim, Asian, Lesbian and Black.”
Brand Advance has been working hard to encourage companies to change this so that groups are not segregated and so that important issues portraying race, religion and LGBTQ are seen.
“The issue has been like this for a long time. BAME people haven’t had the opportunities to be noticed by big media companies but that is changing as organisations try harder to work on strategies to increase diversity and representation,” says Jason
When Jason came across Chris’s company, he identified an opportunity and picked up that novel invention called the telephone and invited Chris into the Clear Channel main offices in Soho to discuss how the two companies could join forces to connect brands with diverse audiences.
Both smiling and in agreement, Jason, who is sipping on an Aperol spritz from an oversized cocktail glass says: “The only way you can make a change is to give underrepresented people a voice so that they can lead the organisation in the right direction.”
Jason had noticed that his company had several advertising screens throughout local venues across the country. “I noticed those screens were not speaking to the demographic makeup of people socialising in those bars. Brand Advance is known in the industry as leaders of diversity conversation, it was a natural and creative fit.”
After both working hard to impress the heads at Clear Channel with their London Queer Fashion week campaign, it was agreed that the two creative leaders would continue to utilise the screens to reach out to diverse members of the community, making a positive change towards diversity and representation towards diverse groups in the media.
“We still have a long way to go with what is going on in the world today which is showing us that true equality is still a long way off. But, we will get there. Some people hold small-minded views and will not let go of them, but the more brands take a stand against prejudices and racism the more change we will make in this world,” says Jason.
Leave a Reply