Think Multicultural

I just spoke at a very interesting conference in Chicago yesterday - the 5th Annual Multicultural Marketing for the Financial Services and Insurance Industries conference.

Although the conference was small in attendance (around 60 total attendees), most of the people there were heavy hitters from the largest financial services and healthcare companies in the U.S. In fact, I would estimate that 80% of the attendees were marketers from Fortune 1000 companies.

The conference had a very effective structure, with larger group-wide presentations on broader demographic trends affecting the financial services and insurance industries, followed by break-out roundtable discussions dealing with the Hispanic, African-American, and Asian markets individually. I moderated 3 very active and interesting roundtable discussions on the Hispanic Baby Boomer market.

One thing really stood out to me after Day 1 of the conference - Financial Services, and particularly Healthcare companies, are VERY interested in figuring out the multicultural markets.

I know that historically these industries have not invested heavily in reaching multicultural audiences. However, based on the attendance, questions, and general discussion at this unique conference, I would venture to say that this will be changing very rapidly.

A lot has been made about the fact that the three remaining major political candidates have done very, very little website advertising. There’s a story in the advertising trades almost every week about how ad campaigns are still run by “traditional media people” who wouldn’t know interactive if it came up and bit them (which would be funny).

Just now I saw an ad for John McCain on the Asia Times website. It’s the first online ad I’ve seen for McCain and one of the few I’ve seen for any of the major candidates, other than the gigantic one that Obama placed on the Dallas Morning News site right before the Texas primary/caucus.

I find it really interesting that the first McCain ad I see is on the Asia Times. Is he specifically targeting the Asian market? Did he do some kind of ad network buy because he’s behind the Democrats in fund raising? I would be very interested to hear if anyone knows.

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.