With the rise of multiculturalism and a chaotic political climate, brands have found themselves in a tough balancing act. Often, they need to decide if they should stay on the sidelines or take action, at the risk of becoming a punchline.
What does it mean to be authentic in today’s world? How can companies create content that truly resonates with key consumer targets? There are four critical areas that marketers need to assess to create compelling campaigns: casting, language, passion points, and situation.
We look at the framework through a brand lens to inform activation choices for marketers. If you’re new to this idea, start with Cultural Fluency: A Framework for Winning in Today’s America.
Multicultural America will dominate population growth and influence for the foreseeable future.
Younger Americans expect brand to embrace diversity and take stands on issues they care about. The general market will be won by brands that efficiently and effectively appeal to all segments in an authentic way. Is your brand ready?
Every brand manager struggles with a fundamental trade-off:” do we go deep on “ethnic” segments and generate deep connection at the expense of no connection to other segments?
Or do we go broad on safer “gen-pop” themes and risk being forgotten as savvier competitors win with stronger messages? How do we handle the impossible: multiple “ethnic” segments to target, each growing rapidly, but limited marketing dollars. And what about backlash from our traditional consumers?
We believe this trade-off can be transcended. Our Cultural Fluency framework enables marketers to move ahead of competitors with savvy insight that combines deep cultural insight for specific segments AND generates broad appeal, revealing a new equilibrium that generates higher ROI on marketing investments.
Our Cultural Fluency originated in research we began for our 2017 Executive Roundtable series, co-hosted by Google and A+E Networks.
Fundamental to our work is a new method to measure cultural variation, enabling us to quantify cultural differences and similarities across race, ethnicity, generations, gender identity and sexual orientation. These measures have given us the ability to exhaustive document the cultural traits of these consumers, and help brands identify ways to extend their reach across and impact within cultural segments.
In addition, we developed a way to measure the cultural fluency of ads and brands, enabling brands to diagnose cultural fluency gaps with these metrics. Our members use these diagnostics to identify where they need to close gaps with insights gleaned from our work in cultural traits. Budget-conscious brands use these insights to reduce the cost of custom engagements.
Our members use the Cultural Fluency Roadmap to declare a destination, measure their progress and hold themselves accountable to delivering the cultural fluency consumers now expect as price of entry. Multicultural consumers want to see themselves represented correctly. Younger Americans expect brands to embrace the diversity they have grown up with. Brands cannot afford to miss out on the growth opportunity America faces across all segments, driven by multicultural America and the embrace of diversity. It’s time for brands to declare Cultural Fluency as a top goal.
Recent Posts
While political polarization has been on the rise in the U.S., in many ways the 2016 presidential election was a collective moment of realization of just how far apart Americans are.
Young vs. old, left vs. right, urban vs. rural – since the election, understandings of “other segments” are frequently discussed. However, many of these conceptions are constructed through stereotypes and anecdotes instead of data.
In today’s media landscape, consumers are deluged with advertisements: on TV, before YouTube videos, sandwiched between Instagram posts, you name it. In the sea of content, it can be hard for consumers to differentiate between ads and remember brands.
We constantly assess what makes certain spots stick, while others fall by the wayside. Over time, the pattern is clear: consumers like content that authentically mimics their experiences, cultures, and values.
African-Americans comprise 39 million, or 12.8% of the U.S. population. Although the future growth narrative is not as strong as other multicultural segments, their growth still outpaces Non-Hispanic Whites. They were responsible for 14% of population growth from 2006 to 2012, while the non-Hispanic white population actually contracted.
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Collage Group is a certified Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) by the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC).
