“The Nomad” is a fortnightly published series where I talk to expat PR and Comms professionals, then delve into the insights which inform and help other people to live or to do business in an intercultural world. If you or someone you know would be happy to share their perspective, please get in touch! I’d love to hear from you.
As part of my series about how we can learn from different cultures to embed them into PR and comms practices, which helps create positive social impact and overcome cultural communication barriers, I spoke to Julian Obubo, Partner at Manifest Group. Having recently celebrated his decade-long anniversary at the agency, Julian is heading its diversity and inclusion programme and is a key figure in driving positive change in the industry. This year, he was included in PR Week Power Book – the definitive guide to the brightest and most influential PR professionals in Britain.
How have you been? What are you up to recently?
I’m good. I’m a few weeks back from holiday and have come back to quite a lot. I’ve had very good meetings this week – positive meetings that have set us up for success, which puts you in a good mood. The sun is shining.
How did you get into PR?
I’m not trying to be facetious here. Honestly, I got into PR because I did not like maths. When it came time to pick universities, I was looking for courses that did not have mathematics. Strangely, in high school, I was very good at economics, but I just knew that if I did economics at university, sooner or later, some complex maths would be thrown in there. At the time, my granddad had some books about PR from the 70s – which was very different – but they were still useful to me. That’s how I got into it. I did PR as my undergrad and PR media as my master’s. In my master’s, the media part of it got me interested. My master’s thesis was not in PR at all but gender studies. I wrote about the representation of Black women in contemporary hip-hop music.
How do you describe PR to your parents?
My dad just sort of knew what it was to be a press officer. He worked in places that had press officer roles but I don’t think he has the full concept of what it’s like to be an agency that does PR along with other disciplines. The experiences he had growing up meant that my dad was very particular about not interfering with my choice of what to study.
How have the intercultural competence and insights helped you throughout your career so far?
I’m sure in very many ways, but the most important thing for me is realising that there are many ways of looking at the world. I was talking earlier today about this. I was reading a story about Americans working in Mexico City since the pandemic which has had an impact on some neighbourhoods: rents going up, residents unable to speak Spanish; and there was a particular piece around an African American woman talking about the fact that when she’s in Mexico City, the racism is different. That’s true for her. But it illustrated to me at least, a lack of understanding of what Afro-Mexicans have gone through and are going through. A lot of how we see the world has come through the American cultural lens. We know so much about America to such bizarre detail and Americans aren’t aware of this. So cultural competence is being aware that there are many ways of looking at the world.
I give this example a lot of the time about a British beer brand that featured the Japanese imperial flag on a beer they were selling in South Korea. The fact is the folks who designed that label in the UK probably had no idea about how deeply offensive that flag is in Korea and across large parts of Asia. A lot of us in the west do not learn the detail of Japanese Imperialism. To be an effective communicator today, you have to be aware of cultural nuances especially when the work involves imagery.
You talked about visuals and representation, could you please elaborate on that?
Someone at work DM’ed me today about a statement that included the term ”BIPOC”. I told them to make sure that it’s an American company to which we are referring, because who’s indigenous here [London]? So it’s those nuances you have to be aware of.
Another complication in working on diversity in the UK is how unrepresentative London is in terms of ethnic makeup, to the rest of the country. People might be surprised about this, but Black people only make up three percent of the UK’s population. So what does representation mean when you have the statistic? If representation simply means reflecting the national makeup, then an office of 35 with only one black person is representative of the UK, but is that right? So it’s these kinds of nuances and complexities that excite me. There’s never, ever, ever going to be a clear-cut answer to these things.
If brands come to you and say they want to enter the UK market, what should they be mindful of?
It would depend on where the brand is coming from. One thing that is very interesting about the UK is – and I’m just contrasting that with the US – the UK does have national media. The papers are read across the country by a wide swathe of people. The US doesn’t necessarily have those; yes, they have the Washington Post, and the New York Times as the sort of “legacy papers”, but the kinds of stories that are making waves in Oregon are not necessarily making waves in other states. I will also say that a lot of brands should resist the stereotypes of the UK as a cricket-playing, afternoon tea-drinking country, and all that stuff, which is true, but it’s not the whole story.
Another thing that is very different from at least other European countries to my knowledge is London is very different from the rest of the UK. London is extremely different demographically. Sometimes brands have strategies that work in London, but may not necessarily work out in other cities, towns, and small places. I would always advise brands to go outside London, to research and reach a more nuanced and richer idea of contemporary Britain.
You’ve worked at Manifest for ten years now – both you and Manifest are well-known in the industry for your work in diversity and inclusion. What is the most important thing when it comes to D&I?
I think one of the most important things for D&I as an agency is sharing knowledge. There seems to be an obsession with hoarding knowledge and trying to be “the first” or “the only”. I don’t understand the need for selfishness when collectivism will help us all.
How important is the role of recruitment to drive D&I?
Creating a diverse institution is fundamentally about recruitment, of course. Some agencies have achieved a diverse team by accident and not design, and this can be precarious: a few people leaving could shift the makeup dramatically. In an ideal world maybe we can fix diversity through methods like quotas. I think the fundamental issue is that agencies do not control all the variables when recruiting (e.g the pipeline of candidates can be a reflection of structural racism within an industry)
To your point on that, people often talk about companies not looking hard enough for talents from diverse backgrounds, what are your thoughts on it?
There’s truth to that absolutely but I also think it also tells an incomplete story. There are also nuances when it comes to different industries as well. There are some industries where there’s an over-representation demographically of certain ethnicities, right? If you look at Tech in the US, you can say, Chinese and Indian Americans are proportionally over-represented in Silicon Valley, that’s just a fact. How did that come to be? Perhaps looking at case studies like this can yield interesting insights into addressing long-term issues around D&I in other industries. What I will say though is that we need to develop a more nuanced take on talking about representation.
People talk about culture fit when hiring, what is your take on this?
That’s a mistake because it shows a lack of imagination – both in terms of what a person could bring to the agency, but also a lack of imagination as to who could be a friend or a colleague. Just because that person’s first language is not English and you did not grow up in the same way doesn’t mean that there are no points of confluence and points of similarity. That’s why I advocate for looking at new hires through the lens of ‘culture add’. We should be striving as much as possible to build heterogeneous teams.
I strongly believe that food connects us all. What is your favourite restaurant that makes you feel most at home?
100% I’ll go to Chishuru. It’s a Nigerian restaurant in Brixton market that Eater named the best restaurant in London. I don’t think there’s enough experimentation generally with Nigerian food here, that’s why what Chishuru is doing is so fascinating. They are making us look at familiar flavours and ingredients in a new light. I always encourage anyone visiting London to go.
