When inclusion starts killing good ideas
Something I’ve noticed more and more in creative projects is that the fear of not being inclusive enough often ends up making work less inclusive.
A conversation I’ve had more times than I can count goes something like this:
“We can’t show a teacher, an office worker, a hairdresser and a shop assistant… because what if a financial assistant watches it and doesn’t feel represented?”
Or:
“We can’t use these people because they don’t represent every race, ethnicity, age, ability or background our customers might have.”
The intention is usually good. Nobody wants people to feel excluded. But here’s the problem: if you insist on representing absolutely everyone, you eventually end up representing… no one.
Real people understand that a teacher on screen isn’t literally saying, “This product is only for teachers.” They recognise examples as examples. They don’t expect a 60-second animation to become a census of humanity.
Ironically, this obsession with perfect representation often strips away personality and storytelling. Instead of creating relatable characters, we replace them with abstract icons, generic graphics, or no people at all. The result is often less engaging and, in my opinion, less human.
Inclusion matters. Representation matters. But there’s a difference between being thoughtfully inclusive and being paralysed by the impossible task of including every conceivable person in every single piece of content.
Sometimes a teacher is just a teacher. And that’s okay.
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