Moments of pride, profoundness and perspective. For those of us celebrating the turn of a new year on December 31st, we experience these flashbacks vividly as everyone around us is looking back and looking ahead at the same time. I do this too, and often. And while 2024 offered up some amazing career and life highlights for me, every year since 2018 I always find myself thinking back on one specific thing I was part of that year which still fills me with immense pride, profoundness and perspective.

But for the sake of making this educational for you reader (and less of a trip down memory lane for me) I will share with you how you can effectively communicate and showcase the strength and diversity of your employees and company through a carefully crafted content and communication strategy. As an example, I will refer back to what continues to be a major highlight of my career: When I got to work with the Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade committee on behalf of Palo Alto Networks as the company showed its support for diversity and inclusion by participating in the Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade 2018.

As global organisations and companies small to large around the world are grappling with how to comfortably communicate and exemplify diversity in a digital world where ‘this vs that’ dictates the narrative more than ‘both/and’ (we are mostly both this and that), I find the simple answer to effective communication to be;

a) Find the human common nominator in your story-line
b) Show the direct alignment with your mission and value statements c) Do it BIG. Leave no room for ambiguity or half told stories. Own your story, define your narrative and make it known.

How To Effectively Communicate And Showcase The Strength And Diversity Of Your Company

My role in Palo Alto Networks’ 2018 Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade committee was to create, plan and execute the communications around it, with a social media first approach. This included preparing employees , participants and partners on how to share on social media, when and how to engage, and when not to. As I write this, I am leaning on my spotty memory from a time that seems so long ago but feels very near in combination with lessons learned since – what you will read are examples of then mixed with knowledge of now.

Getting started: How to get your employees excited and involved

When a company decides to show up for and show off the unique strengths of their employees, it is important to live out the example of what it means to be diverse and inclusive. Let everyone in. Let them take part and gain a sense of ownership and pride of what you are about to do. One way of doing that is by asking your employees to come up with taglines, hashtags, and memeable pictures in small brainstorming sessions. I find that these brainstorming sessions are the most fun when done in smaller groups at a time, for example around the lunch table, during a team meeting as a fun creative activity, or through scheduled 15 min ‘drop-in’ sessions spanning several time zones, allowing both remote and in-office employees from around the world to participate. 

Now, to get the most out of this inclusivity, you need a few – very few – guardrails to set the tone and alignment of the activity. For example, the theme of the Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade in 2018 was Heroes. One of the key strategic GTM motions for Palo Alto Networks is Cloud Security. The event is Pride. Those are your creative guardrails: Heroes, Cloud Security, Pride.

What fun can you have with this? Oh, so much! At the time, I remember buzzing rooms, rapid texts at all hours with new ideas, and so much creativity and fun – even from the most unexpected places. That’s what diversity and inclusion gives you, once you let it breathe.

Here’s an example of what came out of the creativity at the time:

#WeHireHeroes #CountUsIn #PrideAmsterdam #PreventionIsPossible #SecureTheCloud #GetYourHeadInTheCloud #LoudProudAndInTheCloud #GetYourCareerInTheCloud

These creative tags include representation of the employer branding strategy at Palo Alto Networks at the time, the official event tag, several GTM campaign taglines, LGBTQIA+ employee network ethos, and so many humans. This is also an effective way to activate your company values and fully build them into your DNA. And it is so much fun!

Preparing to go live: Choosing your digital platforms, content strategy and messaging

I find there are two defining aspects to crafting a successful communication strategy evolving around inclusion and diversity: you have your controlled company narrative, and you have the narrative of the people that live it every day.

You can sort-of succeed with just a controlled company narrative activation but you will only ever be really successful when you include the narrative of the people that live it every day. I find that too often the latter is overlooked or dismissed – either because it is considered too hard to do, too much to do, or simply (and sadly) not considered in the first place.

It is when you combine the powers of the two you get to move minds and make an impact. If you ask me, it will always be worth the investment!

For the Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade in 2018, I built a content and communications strategy on the basis of what typically is an objective for organisations in this context: elevating the employer brand in the market, attracting top talent, boosting company culture, growing brand recognition and expanding market awareness. It was also a no-nonsense strategy, meaning nothing would be vague, the much known and well-documented lack of diversity and inclusion in the technology industry had to be addressed head on, it would appear as a reporting of the events on the day and a reiteration of the mission and value statements behind the company.

With this in mind, the decision was made to make this a social media first communications strategy where everything would go live as the events unfolded, with pre-scripted messaging and a predefined plan on what and how much would go on what platform.

Depending on where your target audience lives, you will choose social media platform priorities differently. For B2B tech audiences and employee branding, for an event such as this, the choices would probably mimic something along these lines: the primary social media platform is Instagram. In addition, all video content can be posted to Facebook, there is an opportunity for live tweeting/X-ing/Bluesky-ing while having larger content and messaging posts go live on LinkedIn throughout the event.

Here’s a few examples of how that turned out:

Sources: Image 1, Image 2, Image 3, Image 4, Image 5, Image 6, Image 7

Now, 2018 was a few years ago so not all of the content from that day is still available. So, if you too understand the value of no-nonsense messaging that leaves no room for ambiguity, here are a few other social captions you are more than welcome to use:

A diverse and inclusive workforce allows everyone to be their authentic self, belong, connect, realize individual potential, and thrive as part of a team. Prioritizing inclusion and diversity is simply the right thing to do. #InsertYourCreativeHashtagHere

Current and future employees and customers should know that [Your Company Name] strives to be a company where everyone is welcomed and respected, and all voices are heard and valued. #InsertYourCreativeHashtagHere

It is no secret that there is a visible lack of diversity across the [Name] industry, and this reality is even more pronounced in [Industry Sector]. It is clear from the data that, as a company and as an industry, we must do better to reflect the world in which we live. #InsertYourCreativeHashtagHere

Anticipating the worst: How to protect your brand, your people, and your company

Because we live in a digital world where ‘this vs that’ is allowed to dictate the narrative, you sadly have to have plans in place that focus entirely on the small part of the internet based world in which the trolls come out swinging for your company and your employees.

Not anticipating and planning for this can have detrimental consequences for your brand and company, mostly short-lived as the trolls move on to their next victim, but sometimes it can linger for an annoyingly long time.

We want to address this, understand how to protect the brand, people and company against it – and avoid the trolls stealing the attention away from your intentions.

In an event such as the Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade, you need an actionable communications plan that will anticipate the internet trolls trying to intervene. Your plan can be shaped around priorities such as these:

1. Expect trolling to happen on all company branded channels. Put in place social alerts and monitoring pre, during, and post the event on all channels and event related posts to get ahead of it. 
   
   
2. Be ready to take action on your social media platforms. All troll comments should be reported, the user behind should be bot-checked and reported accordingly, and when possible, delete hateful, harmful and hurtful comments. Never feed a troll.
   
   
3. Protect your employees and give them an emergency exit. In the case your employee is personally targeted due to the event participation, give them an emergency exit by being able to offload that on to the event monitor (usually the communications person) and HR. If the hateful targeting continues, support your employee with ways they can take protective and/or legal action against the aggressor.
   
   
4. Diversity and inclusion accusations against the company can happen. There may be dormant cases of current or former employees feeling they have been mistreated at your company and now feel the need to speak up about it. Just like a troll can feel the need to stir the drama potion up a notch. Anticipate this and have an appropriate response ready. This is where you will need your crisis communications team and understand how to triage and treat the accusations. At all times, continue to monitor the situation and know how to escalate upwards for fast decision-making, if or when needed.

I see way too often how anticipating the worst leads directly to companies deterring away from doing diversity events, publicly showing support for their employees, or any kind of communication on this topic at all. You are missing out, big time! On all accounts, on all metrics – from revenue to retention – you are missing out.

If this scares you, frightens you, or in any other way makes you feel this is too big of a risk to take for your company, let me tell you one thing – it is only because you do not know how to plan for it. You are missing the skills needed to protect your brand, your people, and your company in any kind of situation, not only this. You can hire your way out of this. Easy! So why don’t you?

The greatest value booster you can build internally for your company externally is to leverage the narrative of the people that live it every day. And when you let diversity and inclusion breathe, you unleash potential you could never even imagine.

For example, I always emphasize that you should never focus on one part of the here-and-now execution without seeing what opportunity and value it can bring in the long run.

Let’s look at an event such as Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade and how this can be leveraged to build out employee testimonials and employer branding video content during the event of the day – not to mention the huge amount of UGC (user-generated content) you can capture, re-purpose and integrate into your long-term company branding strategy.

This is how you unlock momentum for your company, for your employees, and for your growth. This is how you go BIG and leave no room for ambiguity or half told stories. You define your own story, let the narrative live and through a magnitude of momentum built by every human representing your company, you make it known to your current and future customers who they get to work with. This truly matters.

With that in mind, please take a moment to enjoy this wonderful example of an employer branding video that continues to live on and inspire people to make a choice about who they want to work for and with:

What Difference Does Communicating About Diversity And Inclusion Even Make In The Long Run?

Here’s how Palo Alto Networks remembers it. And here’s how I recall the impact of participating in the Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade in 2018 and how it continues to impact people today.

First of all, I recall how the social media follower growth went through the roof and broke records the week we did the Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade. I recall how an EMEA recruiter told me that just a few days after the event, they had received more than 5 applications directly referring to the Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade event participation as a reason why the applicant wanted to work there. I remember how the business and technology partners across EMEA and the world supported the company publicly and joined in the joy. I remember the feeling of how the company culture changed, how people became more open and how there suddenly was so much unity in diversity. I remember how people who earlier had not spoken up started to – with brilliant ideas we otherwise would have missed out on! I remember having to tell Glen they had glitter on their face again as they walked into the board room.

I will always remember that very special day. It was and continues to be the most important thing I have ever done in my entire career.

I told everyone then that there was one guiding rule for that day and now I will tell you, reader, the same thing: Go for the colors, the fun, the joy and the love. If you go for that, you can’t go wrong. 

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Thank you for reading my blog. If you need help with crafting a compelling content and communications strategy, let’s talk. I can advise, consult or create for you. Contact me here and let’s have a conversation about how I can help you build your momentum.