The why of WAI: reflecting on one year of Whataboutisms
There are often things you attribute to hard work and others, undoubtedly, to good fortune. Whataboutisms was founded on the thinnest miracle—Elizabeth Bannuka, founder of BME PR Pros, would deliver a DEI workshop at my employer, CCGroup, and I would hijack her after the session to talk about this idea I’d had. The idea itself wasn’t revolutionary; it was a debate of comms people, by comms people, for comms people. But the name? I outdid myself, I thought at the time. For context, Whataboutism is the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue. Apart from a self-proclaimed (now confirmed by some others) single-use genius on this issue, I had no other direction. Elizabeth asked me to put a call in her diary. Led by her, we ended the call with a clear idea of what Whataboutisms would be—a platform focused on young (now ‘emerging’ as newness is sometimes divisible from age) communication pros. The concept of senior agency leadership arguing about anything would either be good comedy or an economic disaster, or both; in any case, it offers the least altruistic value.
CCGroup, a Hoffman Agency was the natural home for our first event, having co-opted fellow CCGroupies Richard Fogg, then CEO (who has assumed a co-MD title post-acquisition), as an advisory board member, and Amber Ellis (events/partnerships) and Patrick Cooney (marketing) as team members. It was titled WhataboutAI. I’m just as proud of the ‘Whatabout’ naming system as I am of the name itself. We discussed AI and its implications for comms people, especially ‘young’ comms professionals. On the debate panel: Khairat Shaaban and Benjamin Burwell, both very early in their careers. Then, Saint Adams and Yasir Guerziz, who were still university students. The audience came to support young people and left with arguments, counter-arguments, passion and brilliance, as I said at the time. Our first judges (although we would now call them ‘mentors’) were journalists, Chikamso Chukwuenyem and Habiba Katsha. Then, Burson Creative’s Greg Double and, of course, fellow CCGrouppie and Head of Telecoms Anaïs Merlin (who’s now enjoying a career break). The line-up was ridiculous for a first event. Joy Anike Ilenreh, our final team member (at the time), responsible for social media, single-handedly brought in the journalist judges and university debaters. This is important information because we had over thirty responses to our latest speaker submissions call-out. For our first event, we had zero.
Within the past year, we’ve hosted several events with IABC UK&I, Milltown Partners, and Golin. We’ve platformed a (very) senior comms director at Zalando and an account executive at Hope and Glory PR on the same stage. In the same way, we’ve discussed DEI with the director of comms at Oracle and a junior account executive at CCGroup, sharing a stage. The idea is that your ideas (as a junior comms or media professional) matter just as much as anyone else who has been in the industry for however long. This is our mantra. Our anniversary event, hosted by BT Group on July 24, featured our largest speaker lineup ever: eight speakers, two sessions, one evening. Although there is no precedent for a failed event, we can still say, as the kids do, that we cooked with this one.
Some months ago, I asked former Whataboutisms panellists for a testimonial. One of them said:
Whataboutisms gave me an opportunity that I truly never thought I’d have so early on in my career. Being asked to be a part of the debate at the IABC Turbocharge conference not only boosted my confidence but also made me realise that opportunities that I thought were only for more seasoned professionals were available to me too. Since speaking at the conference, I’ve been able to grow my professional network and my profile as a whole, which has allowed me to access further opportunities like chairing the International Women’s Day panel at Cirkle.
On some days, when I have to juggle work with other personal projects, and frankly, just life itself, I think about quitting. But words like these keep me going, and are the only reason I still lead Whataboutisms (now a team of five; Tofunmi Akinde being the newest and most energetic of us). If, one day, I find out its vision serves no one, I will have to stop. But of course, there’s an eternal supply of emerging professionals who haven’t discovered WAI, and I want them to, for all our sakes.
