Think Multicultural

As part of a panel discussion I took part in on Tuesday at the Multicultural Media Expo in Los Angeles, CA, I was asked to provide my perspective on how clients, agencies and media are responding to the demand for digital. That’s obviously a broad topic that can be interpreted many ways. For my part, I decided to look to the future and expound on what I think is happening in advertising and what our industry will look like in the next few years.

My answer is that advertising will be digital-centric.

So you may ask, what do I mean by “digital-centric?” Basically, I anticipate a future where interactive agencies and digital media are at the center of the advertising and marketing services industry. In fact, this vision is not far off and in many industries this shift is already starting to occur. During my presentation I referenced the groundbreaking decision by Ikea UK in February 2007 to select Agency.com (an interactive agency) as it’s lead agency.

As more recent proof of this growing trend, today’s New York Times reports that Pepsi’s new zero calorie beverage Tava will be launching online only. The Times describes this as a “non-conventional” approach. The reality is that this will be the norm for more and more brands and marketers.

As far as multicultural advertising is concerned, digital will also inevitably take center stage. More to come on this topic on my next post.

For those of you in the L.A. area, I highly recommend you stop by the Multicultural Media Expo taking place at the LA Convention Center 3/11 - 3/12.

In addition to an exhibit floor with lots of multicultural media and advertising companies, there will be 13 different panels discussions that should be very interesting. You will also be able to hear Danny Allen from Admixture and myself rant in person about various multicultural media and marketing issues. Stop by and say hello if you can.

For those of you who can’t make it, we’ll be sure to provide you with coverage of the event on ThinkMulticultural.com

Last week AdAge published an article basically stating that most marketers still do not understand multicultural markets. If you have a subscription to AdAge, you can read the article here.

The article only reinforces what I have already known about the decision-makers at large U.S. companies with significant ad budgets. Basically, they all know multicultural markets are a big opportunity and important for the success of their businesses, but the next tactical step is not so clear to them. This is evidenced by a statistic in the article that explains who these marketers typically reach out to for help. According to the Heidrick & Struggles / Brandiosity survey, of the 60 companies surveyed:
-58% use general market research firms
-51% use multicultural agencies
-42% use general market agencies
-35% multicultural research firms

While it makes sense to reach out to research firms first, the fact that GENERAL MARKET agencies are so often tapped for help decipher multicultural markets leads me to believe that there is a lot of confusion about multicultural specialists among marketers.

Are we not doing a good job of creating awareness of the 100+ Hispanic agencies, the dozens of African American and Asian agencies, or the countless specialist multicultural research and marketing firms out there? I wonder.