LIONS DAILY NEWS
MONDAY / JUNE 16 / 2014
THE ‘TOTAL MARKET’ CONCEPT IS HELPING CULTURE TO BECOME THE NEW UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF THE US. BUT NOT EVERYBODY IS CONVINCED THAT THE GRAMMAR MAKES SENSE, WRITES MARIA CAROLINA ALONSO OF PRODU
WHEN THE MINORITIES BECOME THE MAJORITY T
HE 2008 financial crisis in
the US not only affected the nation’s economy but also sparked an important change in its way of doing business. And it also, of course, hurt the advertising industry, which had to face tough times with slashed budgets, nervous clients, lay-offs and even agencies being forced to close their doors. Those that made it through the crisis had to practically rewrite their game book, which needed serious updating if it were to remain relevant to the market. It meant the end of traditional advertising. Then, two years later, another big event changed the US reality — the results of the Census 2010 confirmed that the country’s minorities were becoming the majority. Businessmen and company executives suddenly woke up to the importance of Hispanic consumers and their ever-greater purchasing power, which it is estimated will reach some $1.5 trillion by 2015. Since the ‘total market’ concept surfaced, not an advertising-industry summit, seminar, conference or event has gone by without it being a key topic. Every programme has to make a place for it. And there is nothing cut-and-dried about this new approach — doubts abound as to the part of both agencies and clients, and nobody seems to have a handle on the absolute truth. During the last ANA Multicultural Marketing & Diversity Conference, AHAA: The Voice Of Hispanic Marketing presented the results of a study focused on the total-market approach and how companies are using it. The research not
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only polled the Hispanic segment but also included the Asian-American and African-American markets. Among other data, the survey found that eight out of every 10 advertisers said they were familiar with the total-market concept, but only 35% of brands have activated strategies based on this new trend. Fifty-four per cent said that they had done so ‘sometimes’, and 14% said they had tried it once. Asked what the term ‘total market’ actually means, the majority defined it as a strategy for managing marketing budgets more effectively. “There’s no single, clear definition of the total-market strategy,” says Carlos Santiago, CEO of Santiago Solutions Group. As a result, AHAA is organising a group to develop guidelines and best practices. So is total market an excuse for cutting back budgets and gaining efficiency? Will Hispanic agencies be the ones to lead the discussion? Or on the contrary, will these be cannibalised by the general-market agencies? PRODU invited leaders of the Hispanic ad industry to offer their perspectives and so help create a unified action plan out of all the different ideas about this trending concept. “There are a lot of people who are nervous about the idea of a total market, but I think it’s vital to show that our multicultural agencies are better prepared to apply this approach than general-market agencies,” says Luis Miguel Messianu, president and chief creative officer of Alma. He adds that
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the industry must establish total market as a vision: “You can’t present a single campaign that will engage everyone because you’ll end up with very generic insights.” For his part, Gustavo Razzetti, Lapiz’s marketing executive, innovation, digital and cross-cultural strategist, considers that in some cases the concept is misunderstood. “Some agencies think that by incorporating multicultural insights they have a campaign ready for the general market, but that’s not the answer,” he says. “We’re in a much more diverse, much more complex market.” According to Razzetti, Lapiz has redesigned its strategies following that line of thinking. He adds: “Let’s stop thinking about segmentation by ethnicities and think more in terms of behaviour — because whatever ethnicity you are, it doesn’t mean that you’ll necessarily have one particular kind of behaviour.” Meanwhile, Greg Knipp, CEO of Dieste, believes that, to achieve success with the total-market approach, it should be applied at an early phase of developing the marketing strategy. This, he says, is the time to take decisions about market segmentation and optimising the target: “In the best of conditions, a holistic perspective should be employed to segment the total market, not by personal or ethnic data, but rather by shared behaviour and attitudes.” From the creative point of view, Martin Cerri, senior creative director of Walton Isaacson, translates the totalmarket idea into something very positive. “Agencies with the ability to understand the changes taking place will search for deeper, more relevant
6/15/14 7:13 PM