24/7
“I’m a black woman 24/7.”
God-is Rivera — Global Director Culture & Community at Twitter
An important takeaway from Ad Age Next: Multicultural Marketing is the urgent need for brands to understand that multicultural marketing is not an intermittent effort. Not a sporadic initiative with an on and off switch. Some brands look at multicultural marketing as a calendarized task, and we need to reprogram that mentality to an always-on mindset.
God-is Rivera says, “Brands need a consistent approach to relationship building and maintaining that relationship with historically marginalized communities.” There are several ways to achieve this perpetual multicultural relationship.
The first one would be an assessment of your team. From your internal team to agency and collaborators, it’s important to be surrounded by people that live the multicultural life. Living the multicultural life goes beyond gender, race, disability or background. It’s not a forced effort or a mechanical filter through which people would validate marketing efforts. It’s an organic, effortless professional cadence that understands the new cultural reality of the American market.
For brands it’s also about corporate culture. Committing to culture transformation through education, or if it’s a new brand, planting the seed of diversity and inclusion from day one. John Carruthers, communications manager for Revolution Brewing in Chicago says, “that it goes beyond having national x,y or z month arrive and suddenly brands changing their profile pic with the flag or icon and that’s it”. They’ve developed programs that aim to educate, support and improve the lives of historically marginalized communities. From community outreach and fair hiring practices to in-house career advancement programs, their approach to multicultural is much more holistic and permanent. This allows communication channels between community and brand to always be open and the conversation to feel authentic, not opportunistic or forced. “We can’t wait until a crisis happens to engage with these communities” says Michelle Ngome of the African-American Marketing Association.
Another important element for multicultural transformation is credibility and accountability. It needs to feel honest and be results-drive. The agency where I work at is probably one of the best examples of multicultural commitment and accountability. Not only is every team diverse, but there are established channels of communications that facilitate conversations of inclusion and diversity, from strategy to final creative product. And you may ask, how can an agency of over 700 people feel humane and truly connected? Quick example. After the Buffalo shootings I received an email where the usual corporate talk of thoughts and prayers was taken to a deeply believable level of compassion and action. The languages was firm, condemning the crime and labeling it by its true name, a hate crime. This was followed with a message of how with our talent as communicators, each of us can help change behaviors and it closed with an announcement of a donation and information on how to get mental health professional support. Further accountability in the agency comes from yearly reports from the Diversity and Inclusion Department (an actual department! how’s that for putting your money where your mouth is) regarding year-to-year comparisons of established measurements of diversity and inclusion, along with actual case studies where employee-driven resource groups act as consultants for improving multicultural representation in our client’s work.
For that work to be effective and relevant within your multicultural marketing strategy it’s always important to know your data and media. Roberto Ruiz, executive VP of strategy and insights U.S., TelevisaUnivision Inc. is still amazed that we’re still pushing for multicultural specific data research, but says that companies like Nielsen are listening and planning to develop listening tools and data analysis centered on this important market. For Isabel Rafferty Zavala, founder and CEO, Canela Media there’s a need to see multicultural media in reach and numbers, so that brands can see how effective it is. Brands need to look beyond pledges and actually invest big budgets, so they can see how effective the right message in the right medium can be.
Multicultural Marketing requires perpetual learning. Every session on Ad Ages Next: Multicultural Marketing mentioned the constant evolution of what multicultural is and how brands always need to check up on their strategies in order to stay relevant. Just like in any marketing strategy, insights and behaviors evolve. The challenge is to stay curious, hungry for knowledge and committed to multicultural marketing 24/7.