Think Multicultural

When I lived in Alaska, the popular wisdom was that in the Gold Rush almost nobody got rich mining for gold, but that people did get rich selling shovels to the miners who were headed into the hills to go prospecting. Similarly, after the oil boom in the 1970’s, the richest man in the state didn’t own oil wells, he owned… grocery stores.

What does any of this have to do with advertising? This week, Forrester Research released its “Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast: 2007 to 2013.” The report concluded that over half of businesses surveyed by Forrester have Web 2.0 (social networking, mashups, and RSS) on the agenda for 2008.

BizReport concludes that this result means that “The report adds weight to the frequent assertion that Web 2.0 isn’t just a passing fad and is indeed a long term strategy that marketers need to consider.” A hundred entrepreneurs are going to conclude that it means that the world needs more social networks. Several more Hispanic social networking sites will spring up.

On closer examination, that’s not what it means at all. Chances are that the companies surveyed (including BEA Systems, IBM, and Microsoft) did not respond that they are going to set up widgets on Facebook and homepages on MySpace like some Second Life pretender showing up two years late to the party. It’s a lot more likely that these businesses said that they will incorporate mashups and RSS feeds into their corporate collaboration tools, and possibly create an internal corporate social network among employees, vendors, and customers to facilitate interaction.

Those who are going to benefit from these trends are not the people who rush out and set up another new niche social network. Rather, it’s going to be the people selling shovels to the people rushing into the hills to find the next Facebook gold. Marc Andreeson is a really, really smart guy. He’s sold two Internet companies for over a billion dollars each. His newest company is Ning, which provides the infrastructure for people who want to launch a social network. They have enabled the creation of 230,000 (that’s right) social networks and are adding over 1,000 a day.

The point is that although Web 2.0 tools are interesting and likely the future of the Internet, the Forrester report is not evidence that marketers need to rush into using Web 2.0. The Forrester report is evidence that there is a lot of money to be made in the Web 2.0 tools that will be used by all those online prospectors looking for gold.

Here at TM, we preach the gospel of new media almost every day. However, as marketers and advertisers, as we embrace new media we also need to be cautious of differentiating between what’s new and compelling and what’s hype. As press releases come out announcing new research reports, take a closer look at what they actually say, rather than what someone thought would make the best headline.

Although the multicultural ad industry sometimes drags its feet getting into the digital age, the PR industry doesn’t seem to have that problem. Very early on, PR agencies and their clients realized the power of the Internet and of blogs in particular. The trouble that Wal-Mart and Edelman got into back in 2006 is a testament to this.

At ThinkMulticultural, we get outreach from time to time from PR agencies for companies like Wal-Mart and AT&T who want us to feature what great things their clients are doing in multicultural markets. This is done in hopes that something we write about those clients will reflect well upon them. That’s perfectly legitimate. Sometimes it is even interesting and we write about those things.

But there’s a downside to blog-outreach, and that’s the spam comment. Comments appear when someone writes in response to a post and it then appears below the post (see the “Submit Comment” box at the bottom of the page?). In contrast to real comments, spam comments are designed to look like real comments, but really are just links back to some other website, used to drive traffic and increase search rankings on Google.

We got a spam comment last week from a major multicultural media company. We were really surprised, because normally spam comments come from people selling Viagara and fake Rolex watches, not from large, legitimate companies.

We’re not going to name names this time, but you know who you are. And we know who you are. Do us all a favor - use legitimate PR and advertising. If you’re doing something interesting, we’ll write about it. Don’t drag down the conversation with cheap tricks like that.

Most of the contributors to ThinkMulticultural will be at the AHAA Conference in San Antonio this week. Keep an eye out for Diane Salcido, Jose Villa, and Danny Allen, and come say hi.

Diane and Danny will be spending a lot of time at the Admixture booth in the exhibit hall.

Jose will be in the sessions, being frustrated at how few Hispanic marketers understand online advertising.