O'Brien (PRWeek): Is digital playing a larger part in multicultural campaigns?
Everyone: Yes.
Guang (InterTrend): Especially for Asians, there is a very high index against Internet usage and it is very prevalent for us to look into this platform and utilize it more.
George Billingsley (Coca-Cola): It's another tool. It's another way to target and segment your market. We just started a partnership with TheRoot.com [a daily online magazine geared toward African Americans]. It depends on how you're trying to slice the pie. Whatever outlets make the most sense to go with to target that specific segment, that's what you do, and digital is just another tool in your toolkit.
Beatty-Gonzalez (American Heart Association): I think what's challenging for Asian and Hispanic [is that] the younger ones may be getting information for their older parents and grandparents, so they're getting health information, but they're not reading it from their eyes, they are filtering it or downloading it and giving it to their aunts or their grandmas. So who are you writing to and how are you reaching them? It may be the younger ones that are really on that are looking for that information to help their parents with their health issues.
O'Brien (PRWeek): Social networks do a lot to inform PR professionals on how different cultures are identifying themselves. Are you on Facebook and MySpace? How are you using social networks?
Guang (InterTrend): [We worked on] a recent campaign for the Asian Film Festival around the launch their new Matrix model. In terms of using the Internet, definitely blogging, they invited all the Asian directors, Asian actors. They're talking about the films featured at the film festival. So it's very interactive and measureable platform.
George Billingsley (Coca-Cola): In our public affairs and communications functions, we have a whole digital communications team and so they basically take everything and make it work digitally. They're reaching out to all the different social networks and all the different online tools that we can use to help expand our message.
Ernest (Images USA): One of the things that is a challenge, though, is getting your client to realize how you count the numbers. I met with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution right when they were going though a lot of change in the newsroom and one of the things they were doing was putting a greater importance on their [Web site]. The problem was that so many clients want to see that newspaper article, that magazine article that they're used to—that book of clips, with the circulation numbers and the impressions. But when you're online, those numbers are harder to come by and so how do you report that? That's the challenge.
Swygert (American Cancer Society): We've had a great amount of success in Second Life, doing fundraising there. You can get really creative. It almost equalizes the multicultural issue. When you're on Second Life, it's hard to know which cultures you're coming across. Relay for Life is our most successful fundraising event offline and we've had a lot of success online with it in Second Life. People get so creative with the ways that they raise funds and the way that they come together to do Relay for Life. We've had our volunteers actually build us a headquarters in Second Life. It's all volunteer driven and we've got a core group of volunteers in Second Life who are very dedicated to advancing our mission in that virtual world. It's been amazing to watch.
Franco (Cox): The audience is dictating how entertainment is to be and how they consume their media. With cell phone and chat, it's not the easy way for us.
Sim-Krause (GolinHarris): But it's what makes our jobs interesting.