Challenge

The North American marketing and insights team at an International Alcoholic Beverage Brand with a portfolio of more than 50 premium brands, recognized that they needed to significantly rethink their approach to marketing to diverse America. They also recognized that the change from mainstream-focused messaging to a culturally authentic and connected approach would require a strategic shift in mindset, extending not only across the organization but also into channel partners.

Solution

The Brand joined Collage Group’s Multicultural Cultural Intelligence Program to obtain the always-on support, education, assessment and data they needed to launch the strategy to more authentically engage America’s diverse consumers, using the following steps:

1) Assess the Cultural Fluency of key brands to evaluate performance gaps and identify where they needed to build new marketing competencies.

The process began with an assessment of brand performance using the Collage CultureRate:Brand measurement process. Embedded as a part of the membership service, the tool enables brands to rate where they are versus competitors and diagnose where they have the biggest opportunities for improvement.

The Alcoholic Beverage Brand evaluated the Brand Cultural Fluency Quotient (B-CFQ) of six brands and six direct competitors using CultureRate:Brand. B-CFQ measures how brands are resonating with consumers, combining six key cultural dimensions: Product Fit, Relevance, Memories, Values, Trust and Advocacy. Each of the component scores can be broken out and compared to competitors across demographics, and then linked to unique insights from the Collage Group database to help close performance gaps.

Further, the Brand used Collage Group’s Four-Stage Cultural Fluency Maturity Model to evaluate their own organization. As a result, they have been able to identify a set of organizational actions needed to put them on a path to reach Stage IV, the highest level of maturity.

2) Identify which cultural audiences to target.

Through CultureRate:Brand, the Brand was evaluated on the Brand Cultural Fluency Quotient (B-CFQ), which measures how well brands are resonating with consumers. It assessed the Brand along six key cultural dimensions: brand fit, relevance, memories, values, trust and advocacy. The B-CFQ Threshold then helped illuminate whether the Brand’s B-CFQ score was high enough to lead to increased brand favorability and purchase intent.

3) Meet the target market where they are.

The Alcoholic Beverage Brand then moved to creating their marketing campaigns and strategic targeting. They called on Collage Group’s…