The business challenge  

NTT DATA had already made a bold commitment to inclusion – elevating it to board-level with the appointment of a new VP of Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI).  

The ambition was clear: make inclusion a core part of the employee experience and a driver of cultural and commercial growth.  

But to get there, belief alone wouldn’t be enough. They needed a plan. One that didn’t just live in HR but reached across the business. One that helped every person – at every level – understand what inclusion really looks like in their day-to-day. 

And they knew that an off-the-shelf playbook wouldn’t cut it. For a business as large and complex as NTT DATA – with multiple regions, roles and perspectives – this had to be robust, rooted in insight, and grounded in the realities of the organisation. 

The strategic insight 

NTT DATA partnered with Rooster Punk to help turn belief into behaviour. 

We started with a deep listening process: interviews, workshops and conversations with voices from every corner of the organisation, from the boardroom to the break room.  

Our job was to take those diverse inputs and build a strategic platform that balanced cultural attitudes, commercial priorities, legal obligations and behavioural science. 

We identified a consistent challenge: people believed in inclusion, but didn’t always know what it looked like in practice. There was a gap between intention and impact. 

So we built a roadmap that would change that: one that clarified expectations, embedded shared language, educated people at every level of the business and made it easy for teams to take action. 

At its heart was a clear, ownable proposition: 

Creating Inclusion Together. 

A shared call to action: flexible enough to fit the business, but strong enough to unify it. 

The campaign avoided HR jargon and focused on simplicity, humanity, and authenticity. At its heart was a belief: while we may all be different, we share more than we think. 

The activation 

With the strategy in place, we created the tools to make it actionable: 

• An inclusion roadmap with an annual schedule of priorities and activities across employee personas and groups
• A hero brand film that celebrated individuality while reinforcing a shared experience.
• A unified messaging platform and story to align leadership and teams around a shared vision
• Adcepts for social and print, showing pairs of people with contrasting but equally valuable skills (e.g. “Fluent in Spanish” / “Fluent in people”)
• A campaign playbook outlining tone of voice, design guidance, and examples in action
• A strategic playbook combining messaging with deployment tactics and templates 

Together, these tools made it easy for NTT DATA’s teams to activate the campaign with consistency and confidence across global markets. 

The impact 

The result wasn’t just a campaign. It gave NTT DATA a practical, measurable way to embed DEI in daily culture – from recruitment and internal communications to partnerships and performance reviews. 

Key outcomes included: 

• Joined-up ERG initiatives across Neurodiversity, Parents, Women’s and Wellbeing networks
• Inclusive recruitment updates, including role requirements, tone of voice, hybrid access and gender-inclusive language
• External partnerships with Neuropool, myGwork, and Women in Data
• Visibility campaigns like AIG Women’s Open to reinforce inclusion beyond the organisation 

Most importantly, the roadmap gave NTT DATA confidence in the path forward—translating ambition into everyday action.