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.