There’s a new question rippling through Australia’s advertising corridors – and it’s not about creative budgets or media inflation.
It’s about whether people in the industry still feel safe to speak up.
Innocean Australia has launched a new research initiative called the Cost of Quiet Audit, designed to investigate whether progress on diversity and inclusion across the sector is stalling – or even reversing.
The pilot study, created in partnership with FckTheCupcakes, launches this month to coincide with International Women’s Day and the latest data release from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. It will focus initially on Australia’s advertising and marketing workforce.
At the centre of the project is a simple but uncomfortable hypothesis: that professionals – particularly women and minority groups – may now feel less confident raising concerns about workplace culture or social issues than they did only a few years ago.
Innocean Australia CEO Jasmin Bedir. Source: Supplied
A “reality check” for the industry
Innocean Australia CEO Jasmin Bedir said the idea emerged from growing anecdotal feedback across the sector.
“We started FckTheCupcakes five years ago, and there was a feeling of slow but real progress in the industry on the topic of inclusion and diversity,” Bedir said.
“DE&I was a big agenda item. But all of a sudden, there is anecdotal feedback that the industry is returning very quickly to where we were 20 years ago and that we’re now entering a ‘post-woke’ period.
“I’ve noticed that it has gone really quiet and women are saying behind closed doors that it’s too risky to speak up anymore.”
The study will gather responses from professionals across agencies, brands and marketing teams to test whether this perception reflects a broader industry shift.
According to Bedir, the results are intended to act as a “reality check” for leadership teams.
“If our industry’s public-facing values are diverging from the lived experience of our talent, what are we doing to resolve the risk of progressive retention and overall reputational risk?” she said.
The ‘silence tax’
The research architecture will examine what organisers describe as a possible “silence tax” – the personal and professional cost individuals may pay for staying quiet about workplace issues.
While the survey is open to all genders, the analysis will examine whether certain groups feel less psychologically safe speaking out.
Innocean chief strategy officer Giorgia Butler said the findings could help determine whether concerns circulating across the industry reflect reality.
“We do hope that the study proves us wrong,” Butler said.
“But if not, we will be working to do something about it. So this is the start of a bigger conversation.”
Innocean chief strategy officer Giorgia Butler. Source: Supplied
A broader industry test
The study is currently open to participants across Australia’s marketing and advertising community throughout March.
If the results point to deeper structural issues, organisers say the research could expand in the coming years to explore how workplace silence intersects with race, religion and sexual orientation.
For now, the aim is straightforward: to measure whether the industry that prides itself on shaping culture is quietly changing its own.
The study can be accessed here, and it’s open for March.