The Fine Line

“Embracing cultural difference and the value that different perspectives can bring, is intrinsic to building a positive, inclusive society that ultimately brings people together."

Jessie Soohyun Park, Head of CSR at Samsung UK

As a part of Samsung UK’s Pioneers programme  – that spotlights accessibility, gender and culture bias through purpose-led PR campaigns that drive and communicate its commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) – we worked together to launch a campaign that focused on the significance of name bias. We wanted to highlight how individuals  – particularly those with culturally sounding names  – navigate the workplace with their names.

Our story was inspired by the insight that non-Western sounding names can evoke curiosity, racial and cultural identity, pride, discomfort, confusion, perception, judgment and acceptance.

The campaign was underpinned with extensive research, to unpick anecdotal stories. We asked a diverse range of participants questions focused on the challenges of name bias and the reactions that it can bring from colleagues.

To propel the findings, we also created a thought-provoking social experiment video called ‘The Fine Line’ featuring six individuals taking a stand on their experiences of name bias.

The Fine Line campaign resulted in 382 pieces of earned media coverage and sparked intelligent, compelling debate on social media when launched. To date, the content video has been viewed over 14,000 times, the campaign has an ROI of +131% and it has been recognised by Samsung Global as one of the top three best-practice DE&I campaigns over the last year from a Samsung subsidiary.