M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment has announced a strategic partnership with Digital Talent & Entertainment PR Agency VAMP, a UK agency that focuses solely on the representation of Black digital talent and black audiences. The announcement follows M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment’s ongoing commitment to enabling brands to step up and make passions more inclusive. For their first joint project, VAMP and M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment, have announced a pledge titled ‘Beyond Black History Month’, an actionable commitment to helping brands promote Black history and culture in meaningful ways throughout the year. Launching in Black History Month, the pledge invites brands to join M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment and VAMP to celebrate and authentically incorporate Black culture into their internal cultures and external comms year-round and long-term.

The pledge will provide brands with resources across five key pillars to ensure authentic representation of Black culture sits at the heart of brands’ activity beyond the traditional month celebrating Black History in October. These pillars include influencers and talent, cultural moments, community and the celebration of Black history and stories. Together the agencies will create a series of complementary assets to help brands in their journey to inclusion, such as a black culture calendar, ‘most influential talent’ list from the inaugural Black Influencer Awards and informative events with key black cultural figures.

Jodie Fullagar, CO-MD at M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment leads the agency’s DE&I strategy and Step Up expertise. She comments, “We believe collaboration and partnership is the key to making truly representative work, so we’re extremely excited to be working with the brilliant team at VAMP in this joint venture. They really are at the forefront of black culture and more importantly, they understand what authenticity looks like for brands within this space. The combination of our big brand, passion platform and creative storytelling expertise, their deep-rooted knowledge of black culture, and our shared commitment to improving representation, means we can drive real change through the work we do for our clients, and beyond.” “As a specialist agency, the last five years has allowed us to be regarded as the go-to agency for various aspects of black culture. We focus on this space all year round and it’s seen through our work in authentic, creative and amplified ways. Whilst that has been amazing and our work and growth speaks volumes for itself, we believe that being able to partner up with a formidable entity like M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment on this pledge will further our mission to highlight more underrepresented voices in the advertising and marketing sector. Together, we believe this commitment will be the start of long-term change and further representation without fear or boundaries across the industry.”