Our Mission

It’s time we turned the talk to matters of diversity…

In the last year many events in the performance marketing industry have received criticism for their lack of diversity, shortfall of new voices on the stage or general failure to showcase a representative view of the people in the industry.

This issue has often diverted attention from the quality of content and insight being presented. However, people are tired of seeing the same faces on the stage or writing the headlines.

This initiative isn’t about disparaging those familiar faces who have important roles to play to drive the industry forward, it’s about broadening opinions and contributors.

The Mission

The initiative aims to raise industry awareness to ensure that its properly representative of the people that work in it. This awareness is vital to broaden the talent that we can attract and retain in the industry.

People from all parts of the industry are calling, sometimes quite vocally and publicly, for change. Turn the Talk is an initiative created to support this call for change, empowering more diverse and wider ranging access to speaker opportunities.

Its mission is to empower individuals and broaden voices in Performance Marketing.

How will Turn the Talk drive change?

The performance industry is failing to showcase the different voices that exist because many of those voices are struggling with one specific area - getting on a stage and speaking up. Turn the Talk plans to address this in three ways:

Empowering People

As an industry we need to empower more people to nominate themselves to speak up. This starts at an individual level by encouraging people to overcome whatever obstacles they may face.

Raising Awareness

Collaborating with businesses to change how they nominate their staff to speak at events, making opportunities more widely available and nurturing those that wish to take on those opportunities, by providing time, resource and support.  

Supporting Events

Helping event organisers in the industry to ensure they offer their audience a broad range of speakers, challenge the way they approach speaking opportunities and create stage formats that appeal to different voices.

Collaboration is the way forward

Turn the Talk is led by Acceleration Partners and Connected Path.

However, this initiative isn’t just about two companies, it needs to be a collaborative effort by the industry and we invite partners and companies who believe in the same mission to get in touch. It’s time that we called out the lack of diversity, pushed for change and helped people of all experience levels feel included.

Whilst speaking at events is the first hurdle, the initiative is a wide-reaching movement, with goals to ‘turn the talk’ to other areas as the project develops, including accessibility to senior positions in the performance marketing industry, coaching and career progression.