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We are very excited to announce that we have extended The Unmistakables team with three new hires from Freuds (Ben Brooks-Dutton), Girl Effect (Ruth Hoyal) and Chameleon (Sara Chandran).
As a cultural consultancy made up of minorities, we promise to help clients reach previously unreachable audiences. Our company makes organisations and campaigns more representative of modern society both inside and out, and our new consultant recruits build upon our diverse and inclusive approach to business.
Ben Brooks-Dutton, Planning & Campaigns Consultant
A former Freuds partner, author and campaigner, Ben collaborates with The Unmistakables as a part-time consultant (while continuing to pursue other freelance work on behalf of his other clients). Having worked in the big London agency scene for nearly two decades, Ben joins the team with a bit between his teeth: his mission is to try to make the brand and agency world more inclusive and diverse for the next generation.
After leaving his position as a partner at Freuds in summer 2018, Ben and founder of The Unmistakables, Asad Dhunna, first began collaborating in early 2019. This partnership saw Ben and Asad launch Wokeshop, a service that helps brands and senior marketers avoid the reputation damage of products and campaigns that might be perceived as misjudged or insensitive by certain minorities. Ben joins the team as a planner and campaigns consultant.
Ben comments on the partnership: “The marketing industry pretty much tells me I don’t exist. I’m a single father through widowhood and so in target audience terms, I’m not a man - I’m ‘a mum’. I also have a mixed race son of British-Jamaican heritage, which pushes us both into a corner of cultural confusion and isolation. I’m partnering with The Unmistakables to help grow the business and address these challenges on behalf of forward-thinking brands, organisations and people both like and unlike my son and me.”
Ruth Hoyal, Insight & Strategy Consultant
Ruth joins The Unmistakables with over thirteen years of global marketing experience in audience insight, behaviour, brand, communications and innovation, working with a range of commercial, charitable and cultural organisations including John Lewis, Microsoft, MTV, Southbank Centre and Unilever.
Most recently, Ruth worked at Girl Effect building brand and technology platforms to empower girls to change their lives. In her role, Ruth designed human-centred research with vulnerable and marginalised audiences to understand their needs and translate them to strategies, developed and launched first-to-market digital products, and developed content frameworks and messaging to drive behaviour change with internal and external audiences.
Ruth comments: “As a woman, I’ve grown up being spoken over and for by men my whole life. As a mother of two young mixed-race children, I already see my son and daughter receiving and absorbing limiting messages about identity, gender and race from multiple touch points: books; clothing companies, cartoons, food and toy manufacturers.
“At the same time, I see my partner get asked if ‘Daddy’s babysitting today’ when he’s looking after his own children - something he quit his full-time job to do so he could dedicate time to family life.
“I want to use my agency and experience to push organisations to become more strategically inclusive and diverse in everything they do from the inside-out. I am proud to join The Unmistakables as a part-time insight and strategy consultant to help create a more just world.”
Sara Chandran, Consultant
A former account manager at communications consultancy Chameleon, Sara brings her experience of working with technology brands including Hootsuite and Optimizely to The Unmistakables.
With a passion for improving diversity and inclusion within UK businesses, Sara introduced unconscious bias training during her time at Chameleon. This changed internal processes within the company to create a more diverse recruitment policy. Before her tenure at Chameleon, Sara worked at Reading University Students' Union as an education officer, launching the first campaign of its kind focused on tackling the BAME attainment gap within the organisation.
Sara comments: “I was born and raised a Londoner with a heritage that is Irish and Malaysian-Indian - this has meant I’ve always been made to feel different. When I say I’m from London, the question that regularly comes up is, ‘Where are you really from, though?’ Having experienced this my entire life, I’ve realised the impact that a company’s culture and language can have on people, internally and externally.
“As my next career step - having driven cultural change in my previous roles - I wanted to join a company where diversity and inclusion is already at the heart of everything it does. As a new member of the team at The Unmistakables, I’m looking forward to helping organisations make important changes to make them more representative of the world we live in today.”