When Medical Marketing and Media (MM+M) titled their July/August 2021 magazine The Diversity Issue: The medical marketing biz confronts its DE&I shortcomings, I was intrigued and decided to take a look. What I found was a refreshing array of soul-searching ensconced within a predictable framework of puffery and spin. Of course, it's a trade publication and so some "synergies" between ad and editorial are to be expected. But this particular issue of MM+M provides a revealing case of what happens when DEI initiatives are uncritically promoted as PR without any publicly reported standards of what outcomes count, how they are measured, and what constitutes success and failure.
When DEI Initiatives are Uncritically Promoted As PR
