Award-winning experiential agency The Park has today announced a new initiative to prevent its efforts to improve diversity and inclusion in the marketing industry from being affected by excessive amounts of free work for clients.  

The agency believes free pitch work is impossible to deliver without harming D&I across three key areas: time; longer hours inevitably discriminating against people with life / family commitments, opportunity; senior teams taking the load to protect junior members from the former, and depriving them of development opportunities, and investment; the inequality in truly diverse teams’ backgrounds means investing in people that need more support to reach their potential.

The Park will therefore give clients two options; one is a reduced amount of work that we think is reasonable for free, and the second is a small fee to cover the work which will be invested solely into the agency’s continued D&I initiatives including; paid internships, mentoring, donations, training, and mental health support.

Will Worsdell, co-founder and global strategy director at The Park said: “Most clients in the pitch process require agencies to prove their commitment to Diversity & Inclusion, but often, at the same time, ask the agency to produce huge amounts of work for free as part of the same process.  What needs to be made clear is the negative effect the latter has on the former.”

“At The Park, we feel the time has come for us to take this into our own hands, to take a stand, to protect D&I from free work. This feels the most equitable solution to the current impractical situation. Clients get the work they need, agencies can nurture an inclusive culture, and both sides are true to their stated commitments to D&I.”