Black Lives Matter to Fujifilm

Fujifilm has outlined its plans to broaden its diversity, and be transparent about this process with consumers, in the wake of the ongoing Black Lives Matter campaign.

The manufacturer has published a statement, 'A Commitment to Inclusiveness and Diversity', which includes a "New Collaboration Process for Creators in Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Communities". 

This is the first step in an ongoing "process of reinvention", with Fujifilm promising that further updates will be shared by 01 July. 

"Diversity is where we find our strength, and this is especially true for creators," notes the statement. "We’ve engaged with and listened to our communities, scrutinized our marketing programs, and now it is time for us to do more.

"To impart meaningful change, words are not enough; we’ve promised transparency, and we plan to share our efforts to be more inclusive and representative of our community."

As part of this process, the company has established a diverse internal team that will add five new people of color to its network of collaborators starting this week. It will also update its ambassador program, form a new team to steer its US marketing and advertising initiatives, and "increase our support of diverse photographic organizations". 

Fujifilm is the first major camera manufacturer to outline, in such a public and transparent fashion, how it intends to redress the imbalance of representation throughout its North American organization. It will be interesting to see if other camera companies follow suit. 

The full statement from Fujifilm is included below. 

Our Commitment to Inclusiveness and Diversity

A Message from Us to Our Community

Diversity is where we find our strength, and this is especially true for creators. We’ve engaged with and listened to our communities, scrutinized our marketing programs, and now it is time for us to do more.

To impart meaningful change, words are not enough; we’ve promised transparency, and we plan to share our efforts to be more inclusive and representative of our community.

What We’ve Done So Far

Added opportunities for all of our fans to directly engage with us.

Social Media: Call for our fans to submit stories for our review and potential sharing.  Check out our social feeds and you will already see a diverse selection of submissions shared throughout our channels. Our platforms will be the go-to place to see stories from every part of our community.

New Collaboration Process for Creators in Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Communities: We want to add new faces to our team of collaborators! To facilitate this, we’ve assembled a new diverse team internally to review the requests for collaboration that were submitted to us over the past 10 days. Since our call for new collaborators, we’ve received almost 75 proposals. We are expecting more!

While we wish we could work with everyone, we will select five individuals to begin a process of collaboration and work with us on a joint project. We expect to notify the selected individuals by June 24, 2020 and will provide further details about how we plan to collaborate with them. We are deeply grateful for all submissions. We will acknowledge the individuals who submitted a request for collaboration on our website and on our social media channels.

To keep our content fresh and offer more opportunities for up-and-coming creators, we will revisit these collaboration submissions on a regular basis — every six months. We are committed to keeping our efforts to expand the diversity within our photographer collaborations transparent.

Additional Commitments We Are Making

The entire Fujifilm Electronic Imaging Division (EID) marketing team is committed to this change and growth. Thank you for taking this journey with us.

Sincerely,

Victor Q. Ha | Sr. Director of Marketing and Product Management – EID | FUJIFILM North America Corporation

Read more:

Letter from the Digital Camera World editor: Black Lives Matter
Photographing the frontline: Covering a Black Lives Matter protest