Jeffrey L. Bowman, CEO of Reframe AI Technologies and Reframe Consulting Services, explains how AI helps media and advertising leaders operationalize large-scale inclusive change and growth.
Inclusion in media and advertising has long been an aspirational goal, but what if it could be embedded into business strategy from the ground up?
Jeffrey L. Bowman, CEO of Reframe AI Technologies and Reframe Consulting Services, has spent years helping brands move from performative DEI efforts to measurable business growth. With a background in cultural transformation at Ogilvy, Bowman now leads a company that fuses AI with consulting services to help businesses scale inclusive change.
In this conversation, we dig into the role of AI in transforming workplace and marketplace inclusion, the evolution of inclusive experience design, and what media leaders need to know to stay ahead.
The Inclusion Gap: From Awareness to Action
Lynne d Johnson: Many companies acknowledge the importance of inclusion, but there’s often a gap between awareness and execution. Where do you see brands falling short?
Jeffrey L. Bowman: The biggest issue brands face is that they talk about inclusion of the data but don’t embed it in their financials. They might invest in multicultural marketing but haven’t accounted for these audiences in their long-term growth plans.
That’s where AI changes the game. Instead of relying on assumptions or traditional segmentation models, AI allows us to quantify the opportunity, assess their level of change readiness, and integrate inclusive growth into the financial strategy. Brands that don’t do this are leaving money on the table.
From Guesswork to Strategy: The Role of AI in Inclusive Growth
LdJ: You talk about the total addressable market (TAM) through an inclusive lens. What does that look like in practice?
JLB: Historically, brands have operated in silos—general market versus multicultural, without understanding their full audience potential. We take a different approach. Using AI, we assess their level of change readiness and organization alignment, then segment audiences in a way that reflects their actual behaviors and economic impact.
This isn’t about checking a DEI box but understanding growth opportunities. For instance, Black, Hispanic, and Asian consumers are often high-growth segments, yet brands don’t financially attribute their value. AI helps us move beyond traditional segmentation to a data-driven, more predictable, measurable, and financially integrated model.
Why Media and Advertising Are Missing the Mark
LdJ: What’s the biggest mistake media and advertising leaders make when it comes to inclusion?
JLB: They rely on external agencies or media partners to define their audiences instead of owning that data themselves. Too often, brands use outdated segmentation models or assume agencies have it covered.
AI enables brands to analyze their audience composition in a way that directly ties to revenue rather than relying on third-party interpretations. If publishers want to make a stronger business case to advertisers, they must push for audience insights beyond the superficial.
From Advertising to Organizational Change: The Bigger Picture
LdJ: You’ve said that inclusion can’t just be a marketing or advertising initiative—it has to be embedded into a company’s entire structure. Can you talk about what that shift looks like?
The biggest shift is moving from outside-in change—where companies react to external pressures—to inside-out transformation, where inclusion is part of the company’s DNA. That’s the only way to make it sustainable.
JLB: Too often, companies try to solve for inclusion by focusing on external messaging—how they market and advertise—without addressing their internal structures. That’s a short-term fix. We start with organizational change, aligning financial planning, market segmentation, and leadership buy-in before ever getting to audience engagement.
AI is a tool that helps businesses operationalize inclusion at scale—not just in their campaigns but also in how they define market opportunities, measure performance, and allocate resources. It allows brands to quantify audience value, track behavioral insights over time, and ensure that inclusion isn’t just a one-off initiative but a repeatable, measurable business function.
The biggest shift is moving from outside-in change—where companies react to external pressures—to inside-out transformation, where inclusion is part of the company’s DNA. That’s the only way to make it sustainable.
What This Means for Ad Tech and the Sell Side
LdJ: Ad tech and publishers are scrambling to redefine audience targeting for a post-cookie world. How does your work intersect with that shift?
AI helps brands take ownership of their first-party data, but that process starts with primary research—defining audience value at a financial level before layering in attitudinal and behavioral insights.
JLB: The problem is that brands historically let media agencies dictate who their audience is. But brands should be leading that process by using their own research and feeding those insights into ad tech and media strategies—not vice versa. When publishers rely too much on intermediaries, they lose direct insight into their audience and what drives engagement.
AI helps brands take ownership of their first-party data. Still, that process starts with primary research—defining audience value at a financial level before layering in attitudinal and behavioral insights. Many brands skip that foundational step, leading to ad tech and media strategy inefficiencies.
Once brands establish that foundation, AI enables them to refine, segment, and optimize their audience strategies based on real engagement and response patterns rather than assumptions. The shift here is crucial—when brands define their audiences upfront using AI-driven modeling and direct research, media agencies and ad tech platforms become enablers of those strategies rather than the ones determining them.
Fixing the Programmatic Inefficiencies Caused by Poor Audience Insights
LdJ: Many struggle to demonstrate their audiences’ full value as the sell side begins leaning into first-party data strategies. How does your approach help?
JLB: We work directly with brands to help them quantify and segment their audiences in a way that aligns with their financial strategy. But the impact of that work extends beyond the brands themselves—it influences the entire ad tech and media ecosystem. When brands have better-defined, data-driven audience strategies, it affects how they allocate budgets, how they approach media buying, and what they demand from their publisher and ad tech partners.
So, while we’re not working directly with publishers, our work helps brands refine their approach, which in turn pressures publishers to have more sophisticated first-party data strategies and audience insights. The more brands take ownership of defining their audiences, the less they rely on third parties to do it for them—shifting the dynamics of how media is bought and sold.
Operationalizing Inclusion for the Future of Media
After years of talking about inclusion, the industry now has an opportunity to operationalize it with addressable data. Inclusion isn’t just a corporate value statement—it’s a measurable and scalable business strategy. AI-driven solutions like Reframe AI Technologies enable the integration of inclusive experience design into every part of an organization, from audience segmentation to financial planning.
Brands, publishers, and ad tech leaders must embed inclusive practices into business processes that drive long-term impact. Those operationalizing these strategies today will shape tomorrow’s media and advertising ecosystem.
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Jeffrey L. Bowman is the CEO and founder of Reframe Incorporated, co-founder of Reframe AI Technologies and founder of Reframe Consulting Services. He is an inventor and pioneer of a change operating system and inclusive experience design approach that helps leaders accelerate inclusive change and growth at scale.
Bowman is a two-time award-winning Wiley published author and Campaign US 40 Over 40. A former senior partner and managing director at Ogilvy & Mather in New York City, one of the world’s largest advertising and communications agencies. It was there Bowman pioneered the industry’s first cross-cultural practice that modernized the marketing and communications industry.
His work has been featured in The New York Times, Campaign, The Economist, Fast Company, NBC (Today Show), Fortune to name a few and he speaks frequently at industry and trade events across the United States, Europe, and South America.