It’s time for marketers, advertisers, and communicators to step up and make a real difference in the fight against bias, prejudice, and discrimination. Even if you don’t feel that you’re a marketer, you ARE a communicator, and you have the power to be an influencer. Too many marketers claim that they're “unbiased” or “not racist” or “not sexist” or “not ageist” or that they don’t harbor any blanket negativity toward a certain group (whether based on the color of their skin, or their gender, or their age, or religion, or beliefs, etc.), but their actions suggest otherwise because they have NOT taken the time to connect their actions to their value systems.

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None of us “see” the same picture the same way. None of us experience an event the same way, which means that none of us experience life the same way. We can never truly know how another person feels or thinks. But we can get closer to that knowledge through the two great advantages that we as humans have: the ability for deep communication and the capacity for empathy.

We can recognize that we each are individually different and although marketers of products might categorize us into various “buyer segments” or “target markets,” we, as communicators of caring and love and justice and opportunity and equality and peace should not be judged based on how someone else categorizes us into a particular group. Because no one group defines us. Every person should be considered for who they are without blanket statements regarding what group someone belongs to, particularly if someone else determined in their worldview which group each of us is assigned to.

It's good to care about other people. But you cannot care until you empathize. And you cannot empathize until you have some degree of understanding. And you cannot have understanding until you learn about someone else’s perspectives and hopes and fears and experiences. And you cannot learn about someone else until you have open communication. And for anyone who says that caring and empathy and understanding are not enough, they’re right. But we need caring and empathy and understanding in order to motivate and encourage and inspire people to act in a way that will overcome biases and prejudices and discrimination. The goal is to reach a true mutual understanding where we can cultivate mutual communication and cultivate a desire to be there for each other and consistently uphold the freedoms that have been promised to us.

We can use the tools of communication and empathy if not to eliminate, at least to reduce, bias and prejudice and discrimination.

First, we can recognize that each individual has a different set of biases or a different worldview than others. Second, we can put maximum effort into understanding other individual human beings. Third, we can learn to listen compassionately and communicate openly, to tell the world that we are against the biases and prejudices and acts of discrimination that have been so commonplace in our world.

So join me and others in using our human abilities to deeply communicate and our human capacities for empathy so that we can come together and build a better and more peaceful world.

Peace comes only with true respect, not fear. And true respect comes only with empathy and understanding.

We’re all communicators. We all have the power to influence. Let’s use it for something positive.

See the full transcript on LinkedIn at: [ Ссылка ]


Closing music: "Piano Journey" by Esther Abrami (YouTube Music Library)

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