This year, PRWeek will visit eight cities where an industry close to that respective region will be discussed. For each event, leading PR pros from a variety of firms, companies, and other organizations will gather in a roundtable discussion about the issues affecting them and their peers. Keith O'Brien and Kimberly Maul were in Atlanta to discuss multicultural PR.
Keith O'Brien (PRWeek): What is the fastest growing demographic in multicultural marketing and what is the most pressing issue in the space?
Ines Rodriguez-Gutzmer (Ketchum): It has to be Latinos and Hispanics for sure. I don't know if you agree. Of course, African Americans have the steady growth, but now the Latino market is outpacing the rest of the ethnic groups.
Wade Guang (InterTrend Communications): I think by far, the volume definitely belongs to the Hispanic market, but the Asian-American segment, in terms of percentages, is very significant as well.
Carlos Santos (Delta): The spending power in all segments is growing significantly as well. The ability to participate more in the entire commercial aspect of the marketplace is growing among minorities exponentially, so it's very important for marketers to know that.
Rodriguez-Gutzmer (Ketchum): Everyone knows that the multicultural space is growing; it's not news for anyone. Still I believe there is a disparity between resources and funds applied to the space and the growth of the space. I think that in the Latino market… there are so many kinds of dated visions of what the market is and I'm hoping the companies and marketers understand that Latinos are not very low-income people trying to making it to the end of the month. There are very high affluent people; I mean, look at us here: professionals, affluent, definitely a lot of crossover.
The other thing which I think is important is the diversity within the diversity. We're not just a bunch of Mexican-Americans and Cubans in Florida and Puerto Ricans in New York. Gosh, Colombians, Argentineans. The flags are more than just three and those are things that we continue not to see sometimes— not only in agencies, but also on the client sides. Sometimes clients just want to put their toes in the [multicultural space] and those are safe assumptions, but we all have responsibility to move from there to new spaces because otherwise we are not playing the right tune.
Sharon Sim-Krause (GolinHarris): Multiculturalism is really focused on three ethnic groups: African Americans, Latinos, and Asians. But more and more we have clients who say, "We want to reach the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community." We have clients who say "There are a lot of internationals living here who bring with them very different histories and backgrounds from Asians who were born and grew up here or Latinos who were born and grew up here." We are seeing that as the Internet evolves, as the interactive world evolves, we are also evolving and customizing our programs to multicultural audiences and they are very different.
Ana Toro (Fleishman-Hillard): We are already 34% multicultural including every ethnic group in America. Move on baby boomers, here we come. The demographics in America are changing. The face of America is a new one and we can see it everywhere. The trend that I see is that clients are not only tapping African American, but moving into the more complete program. I want to tap African American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian American and gay/lesbian, and some even go further to the Native American and Canadian. That's the whole package because they know that each segment represents a potential consumer.
Lori George Billingsley (Coca-Cola): Businesses are now looking at multicultural consumers in the whole diversity space and they are seeing it is a business strategy that can create sustainable growth and it will impact the bottom line. You're seeing more and more companies with dedicated Hispanic consumer marketing groups, dedicated African American consumer marketing groups, Asian-American consumer marketing groups, where they have a laser focus on these consumer groups. When you talk about one-third of the consumers are multicultural consumers, when you look at teens, it's almost 50%, so it makes good business sense to go after the multicultural consumer.
Keisha Brown (Lagrant Communications): One of the things that was mentioned earlier was diversity within diversity. I think that's something that everyone is going to have to take more of a look at. We've talked about Hispanics and Latinos not just being Mexican or Cuban. Same thing with African American. You have black Hispanics, you have people from Ethiopia, and then you also have a lot of races that are mixing. So now you have multicultural within the own race so where people don't identify as black, they don't identify as Hispanic, they just identify as people. So that's another generation of individuals that you still have to target in a certain way because they do bring a lot of ethnicities into one person.
O'Brien (PRWeek): How well do decision makers, C-Suite, and those outside of multicultural marketing understand the segmentation among demographics?
Patricia Beatty-Gonzalez (American Heart Association): I think it is a challenge to get your companies to understand it's not just about a simple translation and call it a day. Or slapping a logo or a new look so that we can push it in that market and that makes us feel like we did something to reach that population and group.
Amy Swygert (American Cancer Society): As a nonprofit, we actually recognize the importance of reaching multicultural audiences. We recognize they're way more segmented than maybe we've recognized in the past. We want to reach everybody we can reach because cancer disproportionally affects racial and ethnic minorities. For us, it's a matter of prioritizing the very limited resources we have.
Toro (Fleishman): All the multicultural groups we represent have the highest health disparities in the nation. In the government sector and the health associations for any disease, they are all developing programs targeting minority populations because it is a health issue.
Swygert (American Cancer Society): And there are a lot of cultural challenges with health behaviors. For example, fatalism is something that is ingrained in a lot of different cultures like African American and Hispanic, and that is really counter to preventative [care]. And we've found that women are the gatekeepers for the family, probably across the board, but especially in the Hispanic world. Heart disease is the number-one killer of women. Only 29% even know that, so we have this huge current of lack of awareness, that that is even an issue, a health threat for them. And then they are so busy caring for everyone else in their life—their extended family, their parents, everyone else is so important—so they don't even take care of themselves.
O'Brien (PRWeek): For the nonprofits, do you get a sense that there are more Fortune 500 companies reaching out for partnerships for multicultural marketing and CSR?
Beatty-Gonzalez (American Heart Association): We definitely have sponsors who are very interested in what we can do together. And they may bring certain expertise to the table. For example, that may be a huge part of their business, so they can help us and we can help them with awareness materials and patient education materials, so it kind of provides a benefit for both. It helps their business reach out and do good by the community and it helps us spread the message in ways that we can't afford to do otherwise. Additionally, [nonprofits have] partnerships with each other. We have alliances with American Cancer [Society], American Diabetes [Society], the National Hispanic Medical Association—we work with them on some issues. There are a lot of alliances that we have to create because that's where it helps spread our ability to leverage without using dollars, per se.
Brown (Lagrant Communications): It's important, not only as marketers but as consumers, that companies stay in the space and at a consistent level. Not just to come in during Black History month or Cinco de Mayo. If you're targeting a consumer who you have never really reached out to, or invited to buy your product, or even know about your company, you can't think you're going to do it for a one-time campaign for six weeks and think you're going to have a consumer who is going to stay with you for the rest of the year. Companies have to realize that in order to be able to continually target these consumers, you have to do it on a consistent, sustainable basis, not just go in and out of the market.