Advertising Age and Adweek reported that Mickey D’s is poised to dump or has dumped ≈20-year incumbent media agency OMD in favor of Starcom, essentially moving multi-million-dollar media buying and planning duties from Omnicom to Publicis Groupe. That’s the equivalent of Zwarte Piet sticking a lump of coal—or pink slip—into many OMD staffers’ stockings. Happy Holidays!
Adweek published another standard attempt by a multicultural marketing practitioner to advocate for targeting minority audiences. One problem with the piece was the author’s opening line referencing “diversity in advertising.” Those three words will get the majority of visitors to stop reading immediately. Additionally, the continued efforts to justify multicultural marketing based on audience spending power is getting tired. Have the financial factoids alone ever persuaded an advertiser to commit to non-White customers? And while the author makes a decent presentation on cultural relevance and insights, such arguments always seem to lack strong case studies. Cautioning advertisers and White agencies about the risk in failing to engage minorities is a waste of time. As overall budgets get trimmed, the crumbs are reduced from plural to singular—provided there were any crumbs to begin with. Finally, it’s tough to take multicultural marketing advocates seriously when their perspectives are coming from inside an organization that doesn’t appear to be fully dedicated to the inclusive practice. That is, the author is employed by Starcom MediaVest Group’s multicultural division—which sounds like a segregated department that becomes even more insignificant when considering Starcom MediaVest Group is a unit of Publicis Groupe. Let’s face it, the French holding company has never been known for its diversity.
Multicultural Marketing Requires a Whole-Market Approach
Culture is often underleveraged
By Esther Franklin
The much touted diversity in advertising—the notion that advertisers have finally awakened to the growth opportunities grounded in the multihued population explosion taking place in the U.S. today—is at best malarkey and at worst a veiled attempt to feign a level of sophistication about reaching and connecting with a diverse consumer base.
It’s great that multiculturalism is showing up more on the industry radar. Yet it continues to be confounding that multicultured opportunities remain underleveraged and underfinanced in targeted and total market platforms.
Multicultured audiences are the fastest growing population segments, wielding increasing power and influence and will have a combined buying power of $3.8 trillion by 2017. Given they come to the marketplace with their own needs and desires, their own motivations and beliefs impacting what they want, where they shop and which media they consume and how, it’s perplexing that their perspective is still largely omitted.
That is not to say important elements of multiculturalism are not showing up. Casting more often involves the spectrum of America’s diversity, ensuring no one feels excluded. And tapping into the hottest, most popular tunes/celebrities assures that those who created and drove their popularity will have some level of connection to the messaging as well.
Casting and music were efficient at doing this back in the day as well (today’s celebrity culture had not yet taken hold). That was where multicultural efforts started in the early ’70s and it quickly became evident that the opportunity could not be fully realized, grounded in efficiency alone. It would be necessary to deepen connections with these new communities, which influenced brand-building behavioral shifts.
Deeply rooted, nuanced consumer-based knowledge helped evolve these early efficiency play models. Strategically applied, such insights elevated multicultural efforts—ascribing them with a point of view making them relatable, convincing and memorable.
Fast-forward to now. Casting, music and celebrity decisions in the development of diverse, total market advertising don’t stand alone. These decisions, too, are informed by “insights” providing understanding of mass, representative audiences. Insights at this level are by nature universal—designed to identify intersections of interest, motivations and behaviors across the vast spectrum of diversity in America.
Universal insights make us feel good as part of a larger collective. But they’re most effective when brought down to a nuanced, actionable level touching individuals and compelling them to do something different with brand offerings. That’s why globally, universal insights are adapted and localized to drive market level relevance, application and impact. In the U.S., this localized adaptation for maximum market impact is not happening enough with growth populations (multiculturals). Nor, are insights originating from these populations—increasingly influential against the broader whole—being fully leveraged.
If culturally based, localized structure and insight origination were applied to total market efforts and made proportionate to multicultured population growth, distribution and/or volume contributions, brands would quickly surpass the level of targeted sophistication and realize the growth they seek faster. Brands would be “culturalizing” for forward success.
But in today’s, post-racial, millennial-obsessed world does culture really matter? Absolutely. Not as the definer of one’s identity but as a critical component of what makes “me” uniquely “me.” And, as a route to resonating with and inspiring experiences and consumption shifts with growing audiences, culture is underleveraged.
To win over important growth communities, culture can no longer just be subtext; it must drive total market models. So are you “culturalizing” for future growth and success with the rapidly expanding and shifting multihued audiences critical to growth in the U.S.?
Fail to do so at your own risk.
Esther Franklin (@etwise) is evp, head of Americas experience strategy for Starcom MediaVest Group’s multicultural division.
MediaPost News reported Starcom MediaVest is facing a second discrimination lawsuit. How much interest did the story garner? Two comments at the post are hawking sneaker sales.
Starcom MediaVest Slammed With Discrimination Lawsuit
By Steve McClellan
Publicis Groupe’s Starcom MediaVest Group has been slapped with another discrimination lawsuit, the second such action filed against the media agency network this year.
In the latest complaint, filed with the U.S. Court for the Southern District of Manhattan, former planning strategist Angela Cahill said she was stripped of a number of responsibilities last year after she became pregnant and then was fired after she complained about it.
Cahill, who had been a top planner for local advertising on the Walmart account, alleged that both actions violated New York State and New York City human-rights laws.
The suit comes amid worries that Adland hasn’t made a lot of progress on the diversity front.
During Advertising Week earlier this month, a number of executives decried the lack of women in industry leadership roles. In April advertising and media recruitment firm Tangerine Watson released an industry diversity study that concluded most minorities working in the field believe their experience as an Adland employee is different from whites, and that the industry is not diverse enough.
SMG has not yet responded to the suit, which was filed in late September, although a pre-trial conference has been scheduled for Nov. 30. Cahill is now working at marketing services firm Focus Media as senior advertising and business development director.
Cahill’s filing stated that she is seeking “all compensatory, emotional, physical and punitive damages, lost pay, injunctive relief and any other damages permitted by law.”
The suit follows an earlier complaint filed by a Detroit-based former SMG staffer in March. In that action, Kristi Goldner claimed she was passed over for promotion because of her race. Goldner worked on the General Motors account and was let go after SMG lost the business. However, Goldner alleged her termination was retaliatory and in response to her earlier complaints about being passed over for promotion.
SMG has asked a judge in the U.S. District Court in Michigan to throw the Goldner case out “in its entirety,” denying any discriminatory behavior on the part of the company and asserting that Goldner failed to take steps required before filing suit, including taking her complaint to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The case is winding its way through the discovery phase, which is expected to last at least until Mid-December, maybe longer, according to court filings.
