Marketing to Minorities

If you are in the Fort Wayne, Indiana area on Thursday, March 27th, join our local Advertising Federation for lunch and a presentation on marketing to minorities. Email me at scloho@scloho.net, and I'll send you details.

The following research report came in my email today about this subject:

Marketers Still Confused about Multicultural Marketing

Though 84% of marketers agree that multicultural marketing is critical to their business, nearly 40% say they don’t know how much minority groups contribute to their companies’ revenues, according to a Brandiosity study conducted for Heidrick & Struggles, reports AdAge.

Asked what type of agencies they use to reach Hispanics, African-Americans and Asians, 58% of marketers said they use general-market-research firms; 51% cited multicultural agencies; 42% said general-market agencies; and 35% cited multicultural-research firms.

Among the findings cited by AdAge:

• Nearly half of the top 20 challenges that executives cited had to do with convincing management and their peers of the value of multicultural marketing.
• Asked which minority segment was most important to their company, 65% selected Hispanics, 30% said African-Americans, 24% cited Asians.
• Asked whether it “takes a Latino to market to a Latino,” 35% said yes - but 39% disagreed.
• Despite increased efforts in multicultural marketing, its perceived effectiveness in companies remains low. One reason may be systemic - that is, multicultural marketing is not an integral part of the organization - as 44% of executives say companies are not structured to efficiently conduct multicultural marketing.

About the data: More than two-thirds of the 60 survey respondents were chief marketing officers or senior VPs of marketing; 14% were VPs, managers or directors. Respondents represented a variety of industries, including retail, CPG, telecom, financial services, fast food and apparel.

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