Aligning Multicultural Marketing to the Evolution of the American Consumer

Collage Group Joins Ad Age for a Conversation About Multicultural Marketing.
Reading Time: 3 minutes

May 17, 2022
Zekeera Belton– Vice President of Client Services

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An incredible cultural transformation of the American consumer is now fully underway. Between 2013 and 2019, the U.S. multicultural population drove more than 100% of the country’s growth. The demographic landscape of the U.S. is transformed, as 140 million multicultural consumers now represent 42% of the U.S. population. Brand after brand sees the massive growth opportunity that these 140 million multicultural consumers represent. These consumers–particularly prevalent among younger generations–are remaking the consumer landscape and redefining the mainstream.

Fill out the form below to watch the replay and hear how brand leaders responded.

As the U.S. consumer landscape evolves, there’s a need for brands and agencies to improve their understanding of culture–across race, ethnicity, generation, sexuality, family relationships and more–and, in turn, evolve marketing strategies for authentic engagement. Understanding culture is grounded in the journey to Cultural Fluency, the ability to tap into shared experiences and intersectional expressions to truly activate and engage today’s diverse consumers.

Representation alone is not enough to prove that your brand cares about consumers across culture. Does your brand truly understand America’s diverse consumers? And, are you effective in authentically engaging across consumer segments?

In a recent collaboration with Ad Age, “Ad Age Next: Multicultural Marketing,” Collage Group had the pleasure of joining other leading brands, including Unilever, Twitter, BET Networks and PepsiCo, to dig deeper into multicultural consumer engagement strategies. The conversation of the panel I joined centered on the term “multicultural,” and the state of multicultural marketing–how it is evolving, best practices and lessons learned.

I was pleased to share key insights that brands need to keep top of mind to continue to be relevant and drive growth across diverse segments.

What we’re seeing across segments is that satisfaction levels of portrayals in advertising have dropped. There is a rising increase in importance of race, but also a backlash in inauthentic portrayals in advertising. Clearly, there is more work to do.

Recent Collage Group research shows multicultural Americans are increasingly interested in supporting brands that support them.

Multicultural Americans Are Increasingly Interested in Supporting Brands that Support Them

% of respondents who say they’re more likely to buy from a brand that supports their own race or ethnicity

Hispanic (+8pp)
60%
Black (+13pp)
76%
Asian (+15pp)
58%

However, they are becoming less satisfied with how they’re portrayed.

But Americans Are Becoming Less Satisfied with How They’re Portrayed

I am satisfied with portrayals of my race and ethnicity in advertising

Acculturated Bicultural Unacculturated
47% (-9pp)
51% (-1pp)
61% (+29pp)

With insights like this in mind, Collage Group has developed a range of solutions to help brands succeed. Our shared-cost syndicated research model embedded into our world class Cultural Intelligence Platform, gives brands access to more than 10 years of diverse consumers insights with new reports weekly. Our members also have access to our CultureRate reports that assess the Cultural Fluency of brands and ads–our database is the largest of its kind, growing annually by more than 200,000 responses. And we offer SO much more.

Contact us at the form below to learn more about how you can gain access to these diverse consumer insights and much more in our Cultural Intelligence Platform.

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Zekeera Belton

Zekeera Belton
Vice President of Client Services

Zekeera Belton is the Vice President of Client Services at Collage Group. Zekeera’s oversees the team that acts as an extension of member organization by fostering deep relationships and leveraging the full set of Collage capabilities—strategies, insights, analytics, data, peer solutions and commercial collaboration—to plan and craft specific solutions that meet member challenges. Zekeera is a results-driven marketing and communications executive with 20 years of proven performance executing private and public (government) sector B2B, B2C, and G2M campaigns and programs. She has expertise in all aspects of marketing, from strategy to execution with real world know-how of the national, regional, and grassroots strategies needed to reach niche markets, such as multicultural Americans, women, LGBT, and people with disabilities. Prior to joining Collage Group, Zekeera served as a Marketing Director for Penn, Good & Associates, a marketing services consulting firm located in Washington, DC. Zekeera holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, with a double concentration in Finance and Management, from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, Washington DC.

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