The One Club for Creativity extends its decades-long commitment to diversity and inclusion with the launch of The One Show Fusion Pencil and ADC Fusion Cube, the advertising and design industry’s first global initiatives to recognize great work that best incorporates underrepresented groups in both creative content and the team that made it.With the goal of promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in both agency/production company staffing and creative work, the new Fusion awards will identify and celebrate great work which also demonstrates how underrepresented groups and DEI issues are utilized both “behind the scenes” — hiring diverse staff, ensuring equal opportunity, pay and treatment — and in the creative work itself, as expressed through casting, language, script and narrative.The Fusion awards have three criteria:The work must first meet The One Show standards for excellence in creativity of ideas and quality of execution, or the ADC Annual Awards focus on brilliance in craft, design and innovation.Entrants must disclose what percentage of the agency and production company teams directly involved in this work are part of underrepresented groups — including women, racial or ethnic groups, LGBTQ+, and people with cognitive or physical disabilities — and how they implement DEI principles when putting the team together; How the work itself addresses factors including racial and ethnic diversity, gender diversity, ageism, cognitive or physical abilities, positive body image and sexual orientation through casting, language, script and narrative. “Advertising that features racial diversity in front of the camera but not behind the camera is neither cool nor creative,” said Jimmy Smith, chairman/CEO/CCO at Amusement Park Entertainment, Los Angeles and One Club Board member. “The Fusion Pencil and Cube hope to point the way to a better and brighter future. Let’s get it!”“As a woman of color, I recognize the dramatic impact lack of representation has on individuals and communities,” added One Club Board member Sherina Florence, group creative director, 72andSunny, Los Angeles. “Representation influences how people see themselves, how they translate the opportunities that exist, or in some cases, the opportunities that don’t. The Fusion awards will encourage a more equitable industry and are a step towards redefining standards that have gone unchallenged for much too long.”One Club Board member Keith Cartwright, president, chief creative officer at Cartwright, Los Angeles said “I’m Incredibly excited that we’re creating awards that recognize not just the work advancing diversity and inclusion, but also the diverse people who make it.”The name Fusion was selected because it represents the act of blending two or more distinct voices, cultures or perspectives to create a unified message, and a stronger new element resulting from the combination.