Multicultural.com is the home of Multicultural Marketing Resources (founded by Lisa Skriloff in 1994) and is a marketplace for companies and agencies to find resources, make connections, promote their programs and services and interact with each other and us.

Newsletters

Share

Outlook for Multicultural Marketing and Diversity in 2020 – Your Multicultural Marketing News December 2019 Newsletter Issue 2

Thursday, Dec 19, 2019

 

Multicultural Marketing News December 2019
Outlook for Multicultural Marketing and Diversity in 2020
  • Lead with Multiculturals in 2020 (C+R Research)
  • Asian American Consumers – Highly Informed Influencers & Powerful Purchasers (Ethnic Technologies)
  • The Pendulum Swings: The Rise of Mainstream Cultural Efforts, Trans-cultural Proficiency, Multicultural Business Units and Spend (INFUSION)
Outlook for Multicultural Marketing in 2020
Lead with Multiculturals in 2020 
Savvy brands and the marketers behind them will put multiculturals at the forefront of their marke­­ting strategies to succeed in the marketplace.
As we enter the 20s, we see plentiful opportunities and new challenges to tackle: multicultural consumers hold the key to growth in this new decennium. The 2010s were a rollercoaster for brands and multicultural consumers alike: the census information triggered a vibrant interest among companies eager to better understand Hispanics and African Americans. Some brands became committed, but way too many failed to see the potential.
As America continues to evolve, getting a solid grip on the multicultural consumer will be more important than it ever has been: we are on the brink of becoming a minority-majority nation! Companies that want to succeed should and will invest in understanding and forging sincere connections with multiculturals. In this new reality, we encourage and anticipate a renovated focus on multicultural marketing and research. Marketers’ focus will shift from understanding consumers through a single lens to diving deep into the intersectional reality of multicultural consumers, because multiculturals are multidimensional and many realities coexist in and for them. We are ready to walk on that journey with you! The CultureBeat™ team will help you navigate and emerge with a solid understanding of multicultural consumers and shoppers in the 2020s. By Jorge Martínez-Bonilla, Vice President, CultureBeat & LatinoEyesjorgem@crresearch.com.
View company profiles here and here.
Asian American Consumers – Highly Informed Influencers & Powerful Purchasers 
Flourishing Asian American market is now an understatement. Reports show that Asian Americans’ buying power surpassed $1 trillion in 2018 and the hit film Crazy Rich Asians made history by being the highest-grossing romantic comedy film in 10 years. It’s now crucial that marketers need to open their eyes to this fastest growing market with highest purchasing power. With over 19 groups of Asian origin living in the US, age and language preference is not the only factors that are important. One key factor to consider when marketing to Asian Americans is their age. Understanding younger generations of Asian Americans’ social preferences is key, such as their predilection for WeChat, Kakaotalk and Line over other messaging apps like iMessage or Whatsapp. If you’re aiming to connect with older Asian Americans, your messaging will be more effective if it’s in their native tongue. Brand loyalty and an appreciation for quality are common traits across all Asian American groups, so ensure that your product effectively conveys the value your brand offers. It takes effort to get to know an audience and what motivates them to purchase, but marketers who design campaigns to reach specific segments of the Asian American market will find the results well worth it in 2020. By Bryan Lee, Senior Sales Manager, Ethnic Technologies, bryan@ethnictechnologies.com.
View company profile here.
The Pendulum Swings: The Rise of Mainstream Cultural Efforts, Trans-cultural Proficiency,
Multicultural Business Units and Spend
2020 ends the ‘General market era’ glorified by Madison Ave. where my career started, and Minority-Majority is officially an oxymoron. The states driving our economy are already majority-Multicultural, Gen Z will be in 2020, Millennials by 2025, Gen X before 2030, the U.S. by 2040.The Census will only reinforce the urgency of revisioning these high value super-consumers who will account for $4.2T buying power next year and all future growth, while Non-Hispanic-Whites decline at an accelerated rate as deaths exceed births, putting brands that don’t do proper Multicultural marketing at risk.
Multicultural marketing spend, currently at $27B or 6% of ad spend vs. 40% of population, will increase to $30B with more investment, cyclical events (political, FIFA, Olympics) and doubling of English-cultural efforts given MCM represents a majority or sizable share of English viewership and even Hispanics watch over 55% of their content in English – but inexplicably, spend will remain below 10% of ad spend, underscoring marketers’ lack of maximizing their brand growth. However,
Multicultural focus in Video content, digital platforms, research, and agencies will accelerate. GM agencies will step up their cultural intelligence and staffing, as ethnic agencies better position their cultural marketing leadership and innate understanding of segment differences and commonalities.
I have a ‘pendulum’ theory that applies to even Multicultural marketing, of paradigms going to extremes before self-correcting in the middle. It is neither about the obsolete ‘siloed’ in-language models in the ethnic womb, nor blended ‘vanilla’ TMA approaches eroding effectiveness and growth. Revitalized MulticulturalCOE experts will proliferate – with deep segment understanding, sales growth and P&L accountability, and cross-functional team synchronicity.
D&I will be 100% table stakes, and this unequivocally benefits the workplace on so many levels, but being housed in HR, it does not replace a multicultural marketing business growth imperative nor linked to the larger priority of quantifying the value of Multicultural targets, and business strategy, metrics, product, offer and customer journey strategies to maximize performance. Then, and only then, does the right marcomm approach and cultural framework matter, which will assuredly have the cultural fluency across the proper combination of marcom efforts in English or in-language that logically materialize – whether unique, universal and/or cross-cultural efforts aka Bicultural, Polycultural, Intercultural or Trans-culturalTM (our word).
But one thing’s for sure, it is not about blending. Most Multiculturals self-identify as hybrid-Americans and want to belong to ‘their’ ethnic community. 69% of Hispanics and AA ‘feel and act differently than their American friends’. This is because Multiculturals’ access to their unique world of media, people, experiences, codes and references sets them apart, increasingly fueled by technology – and this cultural lens shapes their identity, values, influencers, how they socialize, make choices, and respond to marketing. Cultural ties and pride bind communities, with Black consciousness and Hispanics culture/language retention at an all-time high.
Multiculturals prefer brands who showcase their culture and community in mainstream ads in an authentic and empowered manner, and reject stereotypical or assumptive portrayals. Culture is at the core of driving response, with 75% of Hispanics and Blacks’ deeply connected’ to their heritage, even more than five years ago, and 69% ‘want ads featuring people who look like me’. And this applies across generations.
How culture is defined varies across ethnicities even at the lowest common-denominator view, and while significant common cultural values and traits uniquely differentiate each community, it goes much deeper than that. It’s about authentic ‘Bespoke’ representation, and there are many granular ways to analyze and dimensionalize the cultural tenets based on the business, goal, need or insight, and this will continue to increase in complexity. The key is that cultural relevance will remain a critical factor in today’s ever-more personalized marketing environment, and Trans-culturalTM proficiency and targeting will determine what brands win or lose.
We are a Trans-culturalTM society of young people defined by both ethnicity/culture and individuality, who celebrate diversity, and don’t put differences in a corner. We are all one, and we are all separate.  We are all the same, and all marvelously different. This is quintessentially American. By Liz Castells-Heard, CEO & Chief Strategy Officer, INFUSION, 213-688-7217, 213-305-4129, liz@adcastells.comadcastells.com.
Would you like to see your company POV featured  in our next theme newsletter? If you are interested in including your paragraph and logo in our next issue of Multicultural Marketing News/MMRNews ($425) or as a simple listing ($100), please visit:
https://multicultural.com/services/mmr_news or contact Lisa Skriloff at 212-242-3351 or Lisa@multicultural.com. Participation is free to organizations featured on multicultural.com. Sign up here to feature your organization/company on multicultural.com.
 
Next Issues:
January
Issue 1 Topic: Outlook for Multicultural Marketing and Diversity in 2020 – Your Multicultural Marketing News January 2020 Newsletter Issue 3
Deadline for reservations: December 28th
 
Issue 2 Topic: Save the Dates for Key 2020 Multicultural & Diversity Conferences + events
Deadline for reservations: January 10th
 
February
Issue 1 Topic: Black History Month
                       Asian Lunar New Year – Year of the  Rat begins Jan 25
Deadline for reservations: January 15th

 

Issue 2 Topic: Post Game Multicultural Commentary on SuperBowl TV Spots

Deadline for reservations: January 28th
For more info about participating in this newsletter email dominika@multicultural.com.
To see upcoming newsletters view our 2020 Editorial Calendar
Questions? Call 212-242-3351 or email Lisa@multicultural.com.
 
Subscribe to this newsletter at https://multicultural.com/mail_list_sign_up.
 
Like us on Facebook   Follow us on Twitter   View our profile on LinkedIn
About This Newsletter
Multicultural Marketing News (MMRNews), is published by Multicultural Marketing Resources, Inc. (MMR). For a free subscription, sign up here.