I had a terrific meeting yesterday morning. It was coffee with two guys from a general market ad agency. One was an account manager and the other was their head of multicultural initiatives. The great thing about this meeting was that they were as happy to be meeting with me (a media person) as I was to meet with them (agency people).

The reason for the meeting is that the agency is helping one of their big accounts reach out to multicultural audiences. To do this, they are utilizing all the same mediums that they use to reach the general market – TV, radio, print, and online.

That's right – online. For a general market agency like this, online is a natural part of the media plan. For them, online isn't new. What is new is figuring out the multicultural media landscape. Which is why they were excited to meet with me.

Because I spend all of my time working in multicultural online media, I spend a lot of time educating clients on the market – n

ot on Admixture's

position in the market, but about the whole multicultural online market. Depending on the client's needs, I start with Univision.com or AOL Black Voices or Gay.com and work my way through Batanga or BlackEnterprise and then on to all the sites like those that Admixture represents. I don't do this out of altruism. I do it because when agencies become comfortable that there is an online multicultural media market, they become comfortable launching campaigns in that market. These general market agency guys really want to get into multicultural online media, they just need a little introduction to it.

And that's the threat to multicultural agencies – Hispanic, African-American, GLBT, or otherwise. If the multicultural agencies don't embrace the online market, the online agencies are going to embrace the multicultural markets and build up capabilities, experience and know-how that gives them a competitive edge with clients going forward.

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