16773: Multicultural Marketing May Need A Rebrand—But Adland Needs A Racism Removal.

 

MediaPost published an opinion piece from DXagency CEO Sandy Rubinstein, presenting a persistent POV—Multicultural Marketing Needs A Rebrand.

 

Rubinstein regurgitated routine rants, including:

 

• The General Market is a Multicultural Market

 

• Swapping White people with people of color in advertising is not multicultural marketing

 

• Most work purporting to be multicultural marketing lacks relevance, resonance, and respect for the intended audience

 

• Multicultural marketing is not philanthropic, purpose-driven, DEIBA+, box-checking heat shields

 

• Multicultural marketing deserves more investment than crumbs during Fill-In-The-Minority History Month

 

• The majority of White people are culturally clueless and woefully unqualified to handle multicultural marketing

 

In the end, multicultural marketing does not need a rebrand. Rather, Adland needs a reprogramming to eliminate systemic racism.

 

Multicultural Marketing Needs A Rebrand

 

By Sandy Rubinstein, Op-Ed Contributor

 

As an industry veteran in the marketing, media, and television industry with over 30 years of experience, I have a problem with the term multicultural marketing. I’m a Hispanic, female founder of a digital marketing agency who has seen the unfortunate shift over the years that has happened when brands try to reach and cater towards diverse audiences. Multicultural marketing has become synonymous with only race and ethnicity, it’s now exclusionary when it should be inclusive marketing. Let’s be clear: General marketing is now multicultural.

 

The traditional approach to multicultural marketing is no longer effective. For example, given the growing Latino population in the U.S. more companies than I can count are throwing a Hispanic person into an ad and saying that it’s multicultural marketing, or that it’s quality, and that their work is done.

 

But most of the time, it’s not even relevant, it serves no purpose and they fail to ask themselves before launching their media buying campaign the necessary questions like “How does that feel?” “What’s the texture like?” to understand how it might resonate. It’s almost always never meeting the intended audience where they are. Instead they are only focused on how they can be visually representative and as a result oftentimes are feeding into stereotypes.

 

That’s not multicultural marketing. A lot of multicultural campaigns that go to market have produced one-dimensional stories that alienate a large portion of the intended audience. The nuances are the differences, and that’s the most important component that usually gets left out of the equation. What needs to happen instead is niche targeting with relevant content that speaks to that hyper-specific target consumer and audience. Brands need to go deeper to get a better understanding of the consumer.

 

Multicultural marketing is not your chance to do some social good in the world. It’s not a box that needs to be checked. Brands need to stop trying to appropriate the phrase. This is a for profit business, and thinking about those groups as audiences with inherent value, just like any other place needs to happen. It's not something you have to do, it's something you should do, and it's all about nailing specific audience targeting.

 

Yes, there are going to be times that the audience happens to be what we call multicultural, but if you just treat it like multicultural, then you're missing the boat entirely. If you focus on hyper target audiences with your media buy, you're going to be much more successful than just investing a small portion of your ad dollars in a one-time marketing campaign during Black History or Women’s History month.

 

One company that is getting it right is Rihanna’s lingerie and beauty line Savage x Fenty and beauty. They have managed to make women and men of all ages and sizes feel a part of the brand’s messaging and have set the bar high for the new industry standard. Their ads are inclusive of any way a person might look which makes them multicultural by default as a starting point, and not the end point.

 

There’s no doubt in the value of trying to connect and resonate with underrepresented groups. According to PQ Media, $45.8 billion is expected to be spent on U.S. multicultural advertising this year. Understanding subcultures while also creating content that resonates with a mainstream audience separates a winning campaign versus one that is not appropriate in connecting with diverse audiences.

 

Brands and the agencies they work with need to not only be on top of current trends, but trends to come because consumers are very savvy today and they can tell when messaging is inauthentic. Brands need to do a better job at taking into account the origins and backgrounds behind a certain group of people. You have to really micro target your conversations to the relevant audience.

 

Let’s call it what it is: niche marketing. Not multicultural marketing, and not diversity, equity, and inclusion. Stop talking about DEI and confusing the two. What matters is the audience and needing to communicate to these audiences in the right ways. There should always be a prioritization around cultural sensitivity in marketing that celebrates not just the differences between different groups, but also the commonalities.