Jeremy Weisz 5:15
What was a big lesson, a favorite story from the book. I know you have the book, Authentically Inclusive Marketing.
Matthew Tsang 5:26
Absolutely. I think there are many things that I really like from the book, but I probably take, I’ll probably take my sister’s story, who my sister is, my co-founder, in terms of this, she talks a lot about how growing up, she didn’t fit in into any of the predefined categories that media or the media sphere kind of showcased. And that’s Tammy Tsang right there, thanks for sharing it. But essentially, she didn’t really feel like she fit in into the categories that belonged in being a second generation Chinese Canadian settler. She was ethnically Chinese, and looked that way. However, a lot of her values in the way she was brought up being in Canada, specifically on the West Coast, she was often told, well, you’re not quite Chinese enough to be Chinese, but you’re also not quite white enough to be white. So she kind of didn’t fit into any specific category. And she talks about how that lack of representation, especially on screen, on camera, through Hollywood and movies, it really affected her psychologically. And I have a similar story with that, but that is highlighted a lot in the book. And these types of stories are actually very, you can say, common and very common place for anyone with lived experience that comes from a different or underrepresented community that happened to be born in North America or somewhere where people don’t look like them. So, yeah, that’s definitely one that resonated with me and continues to resonate to this day.
Jeremy Weisz 7:08
So we’re looking at your website here. Okay, this is a favorite part. My favorite part about your website, actually. So people are looking at this. Yeah, there is a video portion of this, if you’re listening. But I think this is you and your sister. I’m imagining it’s you and so when you were younger, not this young, but obviously I always hear the stories of accidental agency owners. But what did you want to be when you grew up, maybe in college, and right around that time?
Matthew Tsang 7:41
Yeah, as you can see from this photo, when I was around four, I wanted to be Batman. I was, like, upset, that’s a job career. Yeah, I want to be Batman, any superhero, I was kind of fine with, but I would say I graduated with an English Lit degree. At one point I wanted to be a journalist, and I did for a little bit. But where that passion sort of came from, was that I just loved reading and I loved writing, but I love reading more. So you can’t see, but I have a bookshelf next to me, and I’m not as voracious as a reader I used to be, but that was the kind of, the only thing I enjoyed. You could say out of school work, like I happened to be, you know, I like to say, like, book smart. I don’t agree with all of the education system now, but I was book smart. I was good at memorizing things and absorbing things, but applying it to real life was a struggle for me. So I felt that as I grew older, an English Lit degree just happened to be kind of the thing I was most comfortable with. I went into journalism. From then, I worked for a magazine on online publication that was all about Asian representation in the media. And all this stems from that photo that you see on the site. And the idea behind that photo and why I showcased it on the site is my story was around me, not seeing myself represented on screen.
I love Batman, Superman, etc. But when I was around eight or nine years old, I was wearing a Superman costume. I went to the washroom to kind of check out how it looked. And I realized my hair, my eyes, my cheekbones, everything didn’t look my skin color. I looked nothing like Clark Kent and I was shocked. I was actually surprised. I was like, that was the real point that I realized I wasn’t white, which is surprising to think, but at the time when you’re surrounded by everyone, that is white like, you just assume you are right. And at that young age, too, I didn’t have the self-awareness, so that kind of propelled me into this whole career of journalism, like in terms of writing for publication that was all about underrepresented folks, like people that looked like me, belonging on screen or on camera. But even before that, I had started a comedy troupe that was all Asian cast and crew. I had started a short film production company all Asian cast and crew. So the psychological trauma from me not looking like Clark Kent just permeated throughout my entire life and just became my whole vocation and yeah, that’s kind of why we show that photo.
And I’ve heard from so many different people that while I thought it was somewhat unique, but not at all, there are so many people that are like, oh, yeah. I wish growing up I had the content that I see today, which is a little bit more diverse. Obviously, there’s work to do, but a lot more diverse. And it builds your confidence growing up. Like, even watching Shang Chi, which was that Marvel movie, I wasn’t a huge fan of it, objectively, but as, like, I got emotional seeing someone that looked like me, that was a superhero, and it was just a weird feeling. It was like, why am I actually feeling this way? It’s because, yeah, you just didn’t see that growing up.
Jeremy Weisz 11:02
The film. I’ve heard you talk about it before in other interviews, Crazy Rich Asians, the film. So one of my friends, who’s Asian, I had never heard of the movie at the time, and he’s like, I’m going to see my Crazy Rich Asians. And I’m like, that’s kind of derogatory. Like, he’s like, no, it’s a movie Jeremy. Oh, not heard of it so, but yeah, it is something about it, seeing people like you or with the same culture on screen and represented is a big deal. What made you start your company then?
Matthew Tsang 11:41
Yeah, absolutely. So my sister, like I said, my sister and I are co-founders of AndHumanity, but we had actually been working together many years prior to even the idea of AndHumanity. So this going back maybe almost 20 years, maybe 17, 18, years. That’s when my loud speaker, which was our original, traditional generalist agency, started, and the idea behind that agency was, we work primarily with small businesses, nonprofits, charities, and we work locally, here in Vancouver, primarily, almost exclusively. And we did that for a long time, almost a decade, we grew to a team about 20. You mentioned about accidental agency ownership in that way. That was a story about that. Really, how my loud speaker started was my sister was a brand ambassador. So if you don’t know what brand ambassador is, she had a megaphone, and would hand out pamphlets on campus when she was at University of Toronto, and I, with my English Lit degree, and being three years younger, had no job prospects coming out of university. I didn’t get into journalism right away or anything. So we had this kind of, she, I think, felt sorry for me, and she’s like, why don’t we start something together that’s related to brand ambassadorship, or marketing, etc. And she had come back home from Toronto.
Jeremy Weisz 13:14
Who are type of clients, like, from a brand ambassador perspective?
Matthew Tsang 13:17
Yeah, it was like CBC Television, like people that wanted to, you can say, focus on audiences on campus. So a lot of like, you might get like I said, CBC television were promoting like a show. I think it was called a program called like ztv, they would do things like that, other clubs and you might get like, alcohol brands, you know, the typical things that you’re trying to promote on campus and things like that. I’m sure there are other things, but I wasn’t there. So when she came back here, I was like, let’s start that. Let’s build on that business. She’s like, I don’t have clients here. So our mom, who was a single mom, who raised us to be quite prudent, was saying, like, I don’t want you to really start this business, but I understand you need to, but we’ll give you she’ll, she said, I’ll give you one year. I’ll give you one year you can work out of our basement, but if you don’t take off or do something, or you’re not out of here in one year, you have to go find what she called real jobs.
And coming from an entrepreneur herself, that was ironic. She was an importer and exporter of women’s hand by women’s handbags and shoes. Her job, kind of, as a middle man, doesn’t exist anymore, so she’s retired now, but that’s kind of what she did, and she had a bunch of businesses before that started and failed while my father was alive, but that last one kind of finally found some success. But point is, she gave us that basement, that small room, closet size room, basically to try to launch something. And luckily, we were out in six months because we found a government contract that would, allow us to promote and host a conference and everything like that.
Jeremy Weisz 15:06
How did you get that, the companies and clients?
Matthew Tsang 15:10
I think we applied through a grant, and we had an important topic, I say, think, because it was so long ago, but that was kind of like the beginning of a lot like four years of not really making any money. We did move into another office, but we didn’t really make any money for four years. I ate so many ham and cheese sandwiches could not imagine. And so when we finally grew, like fast forwarding, when we finally grew my loud speaker and eventually got to a team of 20 were both quite content. But how AndHumanity started was about six years ago. Tammy came to me with this idea of an inclusive Marketing Communications Agency.
This is because she was pregnant with her first child. She has two now, and she was like, hey, I want to do something that has more lasting and meaningful change. What do you think about an inclusive marketing agency? It’s not a multicultural marketing agency. Blah, blah. She pitched it to me. I love the idea. And that’s kind of how it all started. There’s a whole kind of story behind how we got from there to now. But, yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 16:16
Talk about the evolution of services a bit at My Loud Speaker. So it starts off at Brand Ambassador. Did that continue on? Or were there other things that you added in when you started to grow?
Matthew Tsang 16:29
Yeah, absolutely, it was not even brand ambassador work at the beginning, because that was just kind of like the work that she had back then. We had no clients, no reputation here on the West Coast, in Vancouver. So honestly, we did a lot of what were called at the time. We called it at the time. They were called performance installation ads. So these were what we call PIAs. We shorthanded it, but really the official term now, or even back then, was experiential advertising. We did a lot of experiential advertising. We do stunts that got a lot of PR and things like that.
Jeremy Weisz 17:07
Give me some examples, what are some of the favorite stunts?
Matthew Tsang 17:11
So one of our first ones was probably one of my favorites. So we worked with a local university here, and one of their pains was a lot of students were really enjoying the university life, but they weren’t moving on to they weren’t finding that next step, being able to find that next step, not because, obviously the quality of the education, but the mentality behind students was like, I can live here. I enjoy the life here. They were taking maybe extra years that they need to fulfill their education. And there was this kind of resistance towards growing up, which I totally understand.
Jeremy Weisz 17:56
Reminds me of Tommy Boy were, Dave is basically, well, I went to school for seven years. Yeah, Tommy, they’re called doctors.
Matthew Tsang 18:03
Yeah, exactly. Or what’s the goal at vent? God, the Ryan Reynolds was that one? Van something?
Jeremy Weisz 18:13
Oh, I know what you’re talking about. Yeah, Van Wilder.
Matthew Tsang 18:16
That’s it. Van Wilder. So yeah, there was that kind of mentality going on. So what we did was we kind of, like, took this space of a major hallway, and we built it a dorm or and we roped it off, right? We roped it off and we had someone sitting in there. They wore a mask so no one could see them, but they were just, it was a messy dorm. There was a TV, blankets everywhere, and pizza, you know, whatever. It was, just kind of like set design so that it looked like someone’s dorm, obviously. And then the person would sit there literally all day, all day. I think it was like eight hours.
Jeremy Weisz 18:22
Was it in a dorm? Like, where was it?
Matthew Tsang 18:55
No, this was in the building, like in the hallway. That’s why it was like that. And then it said the sign said you can’t live here forever, and it kind of talked about the services they offered to help you transition. So that person, it got so much. I remember the person that hired us to do it was so nervous the day before because it was so unique and also not like for universities. Bold considerably as speaking, so they’re like, oh, I don’t know if we should do this, but it ended up being a huge success. Was written about a lot, and a lot of people were taking photos, because it’s like, there’s this person in there. They would try to talk to the person there. But we gave them master that. And you know, we rotate in and out. And I was one of those people in mass. I had to do a shift. We all had to do a shift.
Jeremy Weisz 19:40
It’s like, Blue Man Group, like blue so you can swap out people.
Matthew Tsang 19:44
Yeah. But the point was that, you know, you can’t live here forever, and it kind of hit home. And talk about the services they had to help you transition out of that, yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 19:54
So you’d have a company, Matthew, be like, okay, we want to get a bunch of PR, and then you’d come out. Up with these creative ideas to have this experiential piece, and then it would get written up in a bunch of publications. And basically it’s just a very creative way of getting, obviously awareness, but also written up in all these places.
Matthew Tsang 20:19
Yeah, and that’s what we started with. And for that particular client, it was more internal, an internal pain point. It wasn’t about mass awareness externally. It was about obviously the students that went to that university. But yeah, as we grew, we started expanding our services to do the digital age. So a lot of website work, SEO, but also branding. We did a lot of traditional work, above the line work, like TV ads, radio ads, etc. So we did a variety of stuff, and became more fully integrated over time as we grew to that team of 20. But it started out with PS. It started out with experiential. We needed to do something that was unique and creative to stand out, because we had way less experience and way less context than a lot of our competitors at the time.
Jeremy Weisz 21:04
So then, you and your sister are talking like, listen, what can we do that’s kind of more leaving a legacy and things aligned with our values. And so you start AndHumanity at that point, does the team from My Loud Speaker come along with it, or do you still operate them as separate entities?
Matthew Tsang 21:29
Yeah, so that was the purpose originally. So when we were transitioning to AndHumanity, we had kind of let the whole team know that, hey, this is the focus. Remember this six years ago, when the transition took maybe two, three years too. So six years ago, we started mentioning to the team at the time, hey, we’re doing this. If you don’t want to be a part of it, that’s fine. We will still run both agencies, but eventually, over time, it’s going to ship to all clients AndHumanity. But it will take some time. We actually did have one person who said, it’s not something, not that they were against it, it’s just not something they’re passionate about. And, you know, wish us luck. And they left, but what happened was that I laugh about it now, but it was very traumatic then. But COVID hit, right? So as we were going through that transition in that planning for this launch in January 2020, COVID hit, and we were losing clients every day, from My Loud Speaker like it was devastating. So in order to actually launch AndHumanity, it was kind of a silver lining.
Some good news from that was that we had time to actually focus on, okay, we’re losing clients every day from My Loud Speaker. Our team is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. They still want to see AndHumanity launch. But we were laying people off because of it. So we ended up, Tammy and I spending time and more aggressively some of the core team members launching AndHumanity. So when it did launch, eventually, in March of 2020, our team was a fraction of what it used to be. I think we’re maybe like six, seven people or something like that, maybe even less. I can’t remember, but luckily. You can say luckily or not luckily, but I’d say luckily there was a momentum that happened from that time and we started, and COVID, although devastated us at the same time, it allowed for more remote work. And, you know, our office at least, was expiring at the time. So there were a lot of expenses that were saved at that time as well that came from COVID, even though we’re losing clients. So yeah, that transition kind of yeah, kind of came from there. Yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 23:45
So at that point, Matthew, were you then still offering similar services, but then you were focused on specific types of companies?
Matthew Tsang 23:56
I would say our services adjusted a little based on what the market was asking for, I wouldn’t say a little, a lot, our services actually adjusted a lot, and the companies that we’re looking to work with might have shifted, not necessarily values wise, because I would like to say a lot of companies have similar values, but more to mid and larger size companies and businesses rather than small ones. And I would say the services shifted because, although we right now to the states, do a lot of campaign work and creative work and branding work, etc, because we work with mid and larger size agencies that either have agencies ready or that have established brands, etc, whatever it may be, and they’re looking to integrate inclusion into the work. It’s become a lot of consultation, training, assessments, research, community engagement, that sort of work, which is still very rewarding, just a shift in kind of what we used to do.
Jeremy Weisz 25:03
What have you been? What kind of work can you talk about that you’ve been proud of with AndHumanity?
Matthew Tsang 25:11
There’s a lot I would say I’ll maybe categorize maybe 1 or 2, but I’d say some of the work that like our one liner in terms of how what I believe separates us from others is that we specialize specifically in engaging with understanding and appealing to underrepresented communities. And this idea of underrepresented communities means, people with different lower socioeconomic statuses, race, ethnicity, the LGBTQIA+ community, people with disabilities, invisible, invisible, all these different underrepresented communities that are traditionally not factored in or not prioritized in advertising and marketing, etc.. So that’s our specialty. We understand them and engage them. So some of the projects we’ve done that I’m really proud of is that and it’s kind of shown through our research.
But when we do community engagement or even employee engagement project projects, because we follow our motto, nothing about us without us, which is essentially when it comes to research, if we’re doing a focus group with people from the LGBTQIA+ community, we guarantee that the moderator comes from that same community, has that same lived experience.
They created the strategy. They created questions like it’s following this. Nothing about us without us makes it so that it’s a psychologically safer space for these participants. And in line with that, and as a result of that, we have shown that the psychologically safer space has created better insight that comes from that because people are more open to sharing, they don’t feel like they need to code switch, whatever it may be. And I think that I’m really proud of that. Nothing about us without us guideline that we followed through with that. And now when we do community engagement or employee engagement projects, we tend to get really unique insight, some brands quote unquote, say, you know, I never knew about this. We’ve done a lot of research, but I’ve never heard our employee or, you know, our audiences say something like that before because they didn’t feel like it mattered or feel like safe.
So a lot of the work we do is prefacing how, hey, what we’re doing in terms of this engagement is going to actually change things. We’re not just, you know, extracting your time or whatever, like you do have power and influence. And of course, that means working with aligned brands. And I think other things we’re proud of more towards the, you could say, external work.
We have projects. I’ll focus on one specifically, but where they didn’t have the biggest media buy budget or advertising budget. But because we are process worked on heavily engaging underrepresented communities and promoting it, it was a docu series promoting this docu series and the content and its importance, which related to telling stories that were often untold about underrepresented communities. Because we really leaned into that, and because we work with our network of relationships that we had strong relationships with, taking a shoestring media by budget and being able to make it one of the most popular docu series from this network. All because of inclusive processes and all because of relationships and meaningful relationship building with underrepresented communities. Etc.
Because I feel like a lot of times, underrepresented communities feel like, especially when it comes to advertising media, they’re secondary. They’re not prioritized in this work. So when there’s an opportunity where a brand is really leaning into it and hoping that, you know, and prioritizing them, they want to support it. I want to support it because brands don’t often do that. It’s kind of like the underdog story.
Jeremy Weisz 29:10
Talk about every company, I think about employee engagement and how they can improve employee engagement. What have you seen that has worked well with some of these employee engagement campaigns that maybe other companies like, hey, you should think about Implementing some of this stuff?
Matthew Tsang 29:31
Yeah, definitely. I think when it comes to employee engagement, what works is congruence brand congruent. What’s the most important or one of the most important things is brand congruence. There’s nothing there’s very few things employees despise more when a brand is outwardly especially. I work in marketing communications.
So outwardly communicating that, hey, we’re this inclusive, we’re doing these things, but inwardly they know that, you know, they’re spinning it or it’s not totally true or it’s an outright lie, right?
So I think that congruence is so important. We always say that when we work, because we work with marketing communications departments, often, as well as DEI teams, etc, there’s often that battle from the marketing communications team to communicate something that’s maybe a more positive spin. But I always say acknowledging history, acknowledging truth and acknowledging your faults is not an un-inclusive in fact, that is necessary to build trust with your employees so that they know that you’re not trying to be performative in that sort of work. So I think congruence is, is one of the most important things when it comes to employee engagement.
Jeremy Weisz 30:38
Yeah, yeah. I love that. I remember interviewing. I don’t know if he came up with it, Matthew, one of the top direct response marketers, copywriters. I had Joe Sugarman on. He started Blue Blockers. I don’t remember there are those old infomercials, but he talked about one of the things he talks about in was such good, so good about his copy, that it was like you said, built trust is because he would include damaging omissions, like he would include things fall to the product or fault, like something that’s wrong and just outwardly talk about it, which built trust in the copy, right?
Matthew Tsang 31:16
Yeah. Vulnerability is not weakness. It’s strength, which is maybe not what we were conditioned to think or thought growing up, at least in my age and era, yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 31:30
Talk about working with your sister a bit, and people have, maybe experiencing they’re working with family members, and how you’ve navigated that, because it’s, it’s definitely a different dynamic than if it’s not a family member, right? I mean, you’re running into her at holidays or birthday parties or whatever, and how about the, maybe the, some of the good stuff and challenging stuff with working with family.
Matthew Tsang 32:02
It’s probably been probably 20 years now working together with her. So I have a lot of experience. I think my answer probably changes every year. But no, I would say one of the staying the most important things, and why I do recommend it, is that the personal relationship always takes precedent. We will always have the foundation of love. And I know this doesn’t happen, but when we go into business, and when we have our annual planning meetings, and when we talk about the business we like our kids and our family, and that side of things is always takes precedent and is more important. And if we don’t have that, then it struggles. It can struggle a lot, because I think that one thing I’m confident about is that I know that she’ll never screw me over, right? And vice versa when it comes to the business, right? It would never cross our mind. I have that privilege and that luxury because of that personal relationship, and you may not have that even with your best friend, because they have their own family that they have to take care of, or their own motivations and things like that. It’s not like Tammy doesn’t, but we still are brother and sister at the end of the day, and that’s the strongest bond.
But in terms of that, what comes to the bad is that, because we have a strong personal relationship too, you can help but let personal relationships and problems and like it becomes muddled sometimes. And there’s definitely been instances over the times that we’ve fought in an unprofessional manner, in a public setting that you wouldn’t with a typical colleague and people would know, and we don’t hide that with brother or sister. Obviously everybody knows. But like, it’s something that we’ve gotten better with over time. There was one time in the early years where we physically fought and our mom had to break us up, and that was almost the end of what was like, infancy stage of My Loud Speaker. So we talk about that fight a lot, and, yeah, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of that over the years, less physical, obviously, over time, but I would still recommend it because of that core, like, I’ve heard so many nightmare cases of people being screwed over by the business partners, etc. And I have the privilege, and I’m super lucky that I know that that will never happen. There’s not a scenario in my mind that, yeah, that’s how much trust we have in each other in terms of that So, and that’s something that’s invaluable.
Jeremy Weisz 34:36
So, talk about some of the backlash you’ve seen in the DEI arena.
Matthew Tsang 34:43
Absolutely. Yeah. So I actually just talked about this very recently in another interview, but what we’ve concluded together, in terms of as a team and with other folks I’ve talked to, is that there was a turning point. There was a lot of momentum that was happening post George Floyd’s murder of DEI and people understanding, because a lot of the is just having empathy for people you’ve worked with and others that don’t have your lived experience, and trying to create equity for them. And there was this, all this momentum that was going up. And of course, there was a loud minority that didn’t like it throughout the whole happening, but the trend and all the big brands were kind of supporting it. Then two things happened. The economy started struggling, right? I would say, a year or two ago, the economy started kind of on a little bit of a decline, and we went into a maybe like a mini recession, and Bud Light had that controversy with Dylan Mulvaney, which I’m sure you know about, or maybe you have or haven’t heard about.
Jeremy Weisz 35:45
I mean, I don’t know really, the, honestly, the specifics, but I did see it in the news.
Matthew Tsang 35:50
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah. So what happened was that the new cm of Bud Light was, like, we want to partner with this trans influencer, Dylan Mulvaney. They did. And what happened was there was a huge backlash from their audience saying, obviously there’s a lot of transphobic hate out there. I won’t repeat it, but the idea behind it was Bud Light, in that instance, made a crucial decision that kind of impacted what’s happened since then, because, as being such an influential company in such a major company and major brand, they backpedal. They went, oh yeah, you know what, our CMO is now the scapegoat. It was her idea. And these are not our values or whatever, and we’re gonna end this partnership and everything like that. That backpedaling was everything, because during that same time, there were coordinated attacks from the right wing on Lego and other brands that were like, Hey, we don’t like that. You’re supporting the LGBTQIA+ community, especially the trans community, and Lego kind of just went well, too bad, like it wasn’t newsworthy, right? They just didn’t back. They just went too bad. And this is the way we’re going. But because Bud Light backpedals, then also Target, then a lot of this loud minority realized, “hey, we have power.”
We have the ability to change what corporations with 10,000 plus employees do like their whole strategic direction. So since then, there’s been coordinated attacks with all these other major brands, and a lot of major brands are now kind of uninvesting, or kind of going back on what they were doing. And as much as this is very, in my opinion, tragic for these brands who I think are going to regret it in the long run. I’m a little biased, obviously, but I do truly believe that these coordinated attacks are kind of making these brands think very shortsightedly. They’re going, oh my god, maybe we should kind of uninvest in this, because now these other brands and it’s kind of creating this decline. And you have economy as that backdrop too, with the economy struggling a little bit. And elections upcoming with Trump’s rhetoric around how anti-woke, red rhetoric and everything like that. So there’s a lot of this that’s happening at the same time in the backdrop that is making brands not want to invest in this. So it’s very much prudent or they think it’s like a prudent sort of decision. But what I was turned to is the facts, right? The facts are that diversity is increasing year over year, right? And I’ll speak to kind of the complications, the nuance around that. But diversity is increasing year over year, meaning the two slgk plus population ready, doubled. It went from 10% to 20% over the past decade or so.
People with disabilities, hold 14 trillion in spending power, people age 60 or over, hold I think 25% in spending power people from all, almost all, North American major cities are now a majority minority, meeting the underrepresented or racially underrepresented groups now outnumber the white population. These are all based on census stats. These are all statistics. So as a brand, if you’re not prioritizing these underrepresented communities in your branding in your promotions, then you will and inevitably fall behind. That’s why I say it’s short sighted. And if you look at the younger generation, Gen Z, Gen alpha, which will end up being the primary wallet holders. I called our primary decision makers and spending over time, they are naturally more globalized. They grew up in a fully digital world. Fully globalized, their work space was very like when they went to work. It was already hybrid or ready remote, right? These are fully globalized folks that their cultural competency has already been heightened and developed just by how they grew up. And they see it the way my generation, as the older million you’ll solve the digital age. They go, why are brands doing this performing? Why are they not investing in underrepresented communities? It doesn’t make sense, like, just even strategically. Because when I was growing up in the marketing world, I was invested.
I was investing in the digital world. Because I was like, hey, this is where all my friends and myself were investing in. Why don’t you have a website? Why haven’t you invest in your website? It’s like, it’s like, oh, we’ll focus on TV, radio. And it didn’t make sense to me. Just like Gen Z and Gen alpha are going to be like, it doesn’t make sense that brands are investing in diverse communities. And herein lies the nuance and the issue with that too is that it’s a fact that diversity is rising. But what is the problem with that? Is that there is a lot of misunderstanding of equity and misunderstanding of how, I think you mentioned Coleman use before, but how people with lived experience don’t understand that inclusion works on a scale. So I’ll give you an example you mentioned or we had talked about previously. Should I dive into Coleman?
Jeremy Weisz 41:30
Go ahead. Yeah, we were chatting before we hit record, and I was asking if you had seen that, where there was this whole kind of viral thing, what happened and when he was on The View, and I was curious your take on it. So that’s the context. We haven’t talked about on this in the actual recording yet, but we were talking about before.
Matthew Tsang 41:53
Yeah, yeah. And I realized that as I was talking about, sorry about that. Yeah. No, that’s fine, yeah. So about Colvin Hughes and his belief, he’s a black man conservative background, but he believes that in color blindness, or the idea that the more we give an edge or give priority to people from underrepresented communities, that’s also an unfair balance. And therein lies the issue with that it’s all about equity, right? And all the facts show that under-representing communities, whether it be in the workforce, whether it be in the media sphere, etc, we are underrepresented and often overworked in the workforce, underpaid, etc. These are all facts in terms of it, especially when it comes to women in the workforce, right? So the problem with and the purpose of these programs that give equity to underrepresented groups is not to create a new imbalance. That’s not the point of it. The point of it is to right the ship, and the ship has been going this way for centuries and centuries, all we’re doing is trying to write the ship back this way.
And I’ll go back to my example of the media sphere, right? How many stories have there been told in Hollywood or even in advertising, etc, about a second-generation Chinese Canadian like myself that’s grown up in Canada, and there are millions of us, or grown up in North America, you can say, versus other types of movies where it’s focused on, and the reason why I explain this is that we have so little to hold on to with this work, and the reason why brands and organizations need to invest is because of equity, not equality. Equity is very different than equality. So what we’re doing is writing the ship and the dangers with color blindness. And you can look up Dr. Malcolm Bennett’s developmental model of intercultural sensitivity. He has a scale, inclusion scale and minimization, which is color blindness, is right in the middle. And people that are in that middle, like Coleman Hughes, in terms of his beliefs, believe in, I don’t see color. Why don’t we focus on our similarities? Love is love. We’re all the same, like, why are we trying to give equity, I mean, give equity to other people? And he is doing a disservice to history and not acknowledging that history has gone the opposite way and has been inequitable for so long.
And with that is not just, oh, slavery and murdered and missing indigenous woman. It’s the systemic structures that were built based on those beliefs that still exist today, right? That still exists today in terms of our structures. So, a lot of my experiences in film and that intersection with adjusted equity, diversity, inclusion for so long, films like Crazy Rich Asians never shows like, Never Have I Ever all these shows heart stopper that focus on underrepresented communities were not funded by studios at all. They were like, that’s two niche Tyler Perry movies. Those are just for the black community, Crazy Rich Asians, just for the Asian communities, nobody’s going to care about that. Let’s not fund them really. Let’s not really give them a lot of support. But when Crazy Rich Asians came out, and it was a box office hit, that’s where certain things changed. It’s like, oh, maybe there is some opportunity here that we’re not seeing, and that will only continue to increase as diversity increases as well. But yeah, anyways, sorry, I know I have talked.
Jeremy Weisz 42:04
I have one last question before I ask, it just reminds me of this conversation. I don’t know if you ever seen The Documentary Lynn Sanity, oh yeah, with Jeremy Lin, but he talks about that actually, yeah, when he was a superstar in college and trying to get to the NBA and that bias. So it was very if you’re into basketball and into what Matthew’s talking about, I strongly encourage checking out that documentary. It’s fantastic. So first of all, thanks for sharing your journey, your lessons and stories, Matthew. My last question is, I know you said you’re an avid reader. I always love getting book recommendations. I know the audience does too. What are some of your favorite business books, personal development books? I mean, I have some audible credits here, so I’m interested to hear some of your favorites. I mean, you could look at the I can’t see the bookshelf behind you, but some of your favorites throughout the years.
Matthew Tsang 45:46
You’re not going to like my answer. I read to escape. So I personally do not like reading nonfiction books. My sister, you can ask her, she loves it, but I read, I have it here. I read fiction because it takes me away. It’s like watching a movie to me, if you want a nonfiction book, our book authentically exclusive marketing, little slug, that’s probably the last not nonfiction book I wrote. I do have Jay on rights number two book, because I’m really into sports. You know Jay on right Sports Center. I have that. I’m trying to look at, if there’s any nonfiction books that I have here that are.
Jeremy Weisz 47:27
It could be some of your favorite fiction books, too.
Matthew Tsang 47:30
Oh, some of my favorite fiction books. The Bullet Point, that’s good one, The Gold Finch is one. I know there’s a nonfiction one here. Hold on. I want to not disappoint you, too.
Jeremy Weisz 47:46
If you are into fiction, share some of your favorite fiction. So The Bullet Point, Gold Finch. What else?
Matthew Tsang 47:53
Gold Finch is one. And I would say, oh yeah. Kazu shiburu, I really like this. The Remains of the Day. The Remains of the Day is one of my favorites. I have, oh, this classic, do Android Stream, Electric Sheep. I really like this. I haven’t read this one yet, Quiet, but somebody told me to read Quiet I think it’s because non picture. Yeah, there’s nonfiction When The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. I haven’t read that one yet because it’s nonfiction, but yeah, I named a couple there in terms of it, but yeah, like that is one thing that I may be needing to adjust over time is to read more nonfiction. But I don’t know.
Jeremy Weisz 48:27
Maybe I need to adjust in more fiction. So I appreciate your suggestions. But Matthew the first, I want to thank you. Everyone could check out andhumanity.co to learn more and more episodes of the podcast, and we’ll see everyone next time. Matthew, thanks so much.
Matthew Tsang 48:48
Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
