The future of marketing is multicultural

The US demographic landscape has transformed; 129 million multicultural consumers now represent 40 percent of the population. At the same time, multicultural consumers have driven over 100 percent of US population growth over the last five years and are projected to drive even greater growth for the foreseeable future, while Hispanics in the US are set to reach the 111 million mark by 2060, according to the US Census Bureau.

By Romanita Oprea

Cristina Blanaru, Digital Marker

After years of research and building business cases for multicultural marketing initiatives within Fortune 50 brands, Juanita Velez, Multicultural Marketing Expert and Founder of HYPE, defines Multicultural Marketing as a niche within marketing growing a brand’s marketing goals within a clearly defined ethnic/race-specific audience such as Hispanics, African Americans, Asian Americans, LGBTQ+ or perhaps BIPOC and non-multicultural segments as well. This automatically forces this team to be intentional about learning this target audience’s motivations, aspirations and purchase drivers for the brand’s product or service.

“And while we understand that the term multicultural can take on a variety of definitions, it is also equally important to differentiate multicultural marketing from other niches that fall under the marketing umbrella as a profession: total market or general market marketing refers to marketing efforts made to reach all consumers in a specific market; cross-cultural marketing refers to marketing efforts that capitalise on insights from multicultural and general audiences through shared points of connection in a specific market, while international marketing refers to efforts made to reach international customers capitalising on cultural insights within a country or region outside of the United States,” added Juanita Velez for campaignmonitor.com.

“We live in a world in which people from different cultures find themselves being blended together. Each have their own characteristics, sensibilities, ways of reacting. And it is important for marketers to be aware of and address common points, but also differences, which come from an underlaying cultural divide, from colour perception to the style of reactions and ways to formulate oneself,” said Cristina Blanaru, COO & founder at Digital Marker.

A study conducted by PQ Media on behalf of the ANA’s Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing (AIMM) revealed that overall multicultural advertising and marketing spending totalled USD 25.9 billion in 2018. Spending targeting Hispanics reached almost USD 18 billion, a 5.3 percent increase over the previous year and far ahead of the amount of spend aimed at African-Americans (USD 7.2 billion, up 6.1 percent) or Asian Americans (USD 722 million, up 7 percent). According to 2017 US Census Bureau figures, Hispanics comprise 18.1 percent of the overall population, while African-Americans make up 13.4 percent and Asians represent 5.8 percent. Moreover, multicultural consumers comprise almost 40 percent of the total US population, yet multicultural media investments make up only 5.2 percent of total advertising and marketing spending.

The “US Multicultural Media Forecast 2019” report also showed that there was a clear opportunity for more marketers to engage multicultural consumers to drive business growth. In what is perhaps the most significant finding, multicultural media revenue significantly under-indexes against the general population. Although 100 percent of the total population growth comes from multicultural segments, marketers are significantly underspending to reach these consumers, and conversely, decidedly overspending to reach non-multicultural consumers. Marketers should better leverage digital advertising to reach multicultural consumers and there is an opportunity to have multicultural communication specialists work more in nonendemic media (i.e., general market media) to help craft communications to appeal to both general market and multicultural audiences.

BETTER EMOTIONAL CONNECTION

Multicultural marketing opens new roads for brands to engage with their consumers outside the “majority audience.” It targets specific consumer segments based on ethnic and socio-cultural patterns, building a deeper emotional connection that increases the chance of a conversion.

According to Cristina Blanaru, in a society that blends together people of different descent, creating a mix of beliefs, approaches, and perceptions, marketers have to be skilled and diplomatic enough to consider all sides and all perceptions and use them in their favour in their efforts to sell more products to more diverse audiences. “The companies have to demonstrate thorough knowledge of their consumers, regardless of the ‘box’ society puts them in. To reach all groups, marketers must spot the common points and exploit them, but they must also make use of elements of cultural divide. A warning though: yellow might not trigger the same reaction in Romania as it does in Denmark or Germany and a red label could raise an eyebrow but not open a wallet,” Blanaru noted.

Moreover, the Digital Marker representative argues that target analysis and knowledge is needed at all times. Of course, in a world where all races, colours, are mixed together more than ever, finding out what bring us together and what sets us apart becomes increasingly important when it comes of communicating and selling. And the brand hat hits the perfect mix and generates the most reactions from all segments will be the one to attract most customers. Converting that to sales… well, that’s another story.

COMMUNITY AND TARGETING

To survive, marketers must target all subcultures within their target audience. They need to use appropriate and effective, culturallyspecific messaging campaigns. “You need to start your marketing strategy with research into the cross-cultural differences of all of your target audiences. It’s also essential to involve different departments when crafting personalised messages. This ensures that they also understand how the differences affect communication patterns and marketing activities. Brands should not assume that audiences will take on the majority experience. Young people tend to try to fit into dominant cultures as teenagers. However, when they start their own families, they often revisit their heritage. Consumers who identify as multiracial take on diverse cultural paradigms and behaviours. It becomes hard to put them into one marketing box. Thus, businesses must change workplace dynamics, lifestyles, and cultural references in their marketing efforts,” Shane Barker wrote for bbntimes.com.

At the same time, as Barker further argues, the buying power of minorities is growing at a faster rate than that of white consumers, according to a UGA report. The reasons for this include changes in demographics, entrepreneurial activities, and increased educational achievements. Brands fail at multicultural marketing because they unable to understand these groups and they cannot figure out that a customer’s culture affects their purchasing behaviour.

“A multicultural consumer is more likely to buy products and services that reinforce their cultural roots. It’s one of the reasons companies that fail to consider this receive backlash or aren’t able to reach their full potential. Brands that want to target the powerful minority spending power must change their strategies. They need to design messaging that appreciates the values and cultures of these minorities. Their messages should have an authentic appeal to influence behaviours and tastes,” Barker added.

Research by Collage Group confirms that community matters to pretty much everyone, but data also reveals how community is experienced and expressed differently across cultural backgrounds. In their 2020 Roundtable Study, the Collage Group team learned that multicultural Americans, especially Black and Hispanic consumers, want to see communities that look like their own represented in advertising. Moreover, it is within their communities that these segments discuss and evaluate marketing executions. The importance of this insight cannot be overstated, especially for Black and Hispanic consumers. These segments are far more likely to talk about your ads, even if their respective racial/ethnic background isn’t the focus of the advertisement at hand.

To activate on the shared value of community connection, brands must therefore understand the power of authentically representing community across multicultural and other segments. For most brands, the authentic representation of community and family offers pure upside: not only does it result in increased activation of the target

group, it also resonates with other segments, who are drawn to the authentic representation of segments, even if not their own.

At the same time, Cristina Blanaru thinks that creativity really has a place to shine in a multicultural environment. Borrowing ideas from one culture and translating them for another is a normal thing these days. “Keeping it clean and neat and down to land’s law says is also an approach. A genius touch of creativity on top of all that is usually what makes the difference. Brands should pay attention to all potential customers, and that’s just common sense. Today, all customer targets include more categories with more unique features. Take everything into consideration, pay attention, adjust when needed and you’ll be on the right path,” Cristina Blanaru said.

According to a statement by Margaret A.Boden for sciencedirect.com, creativity is a fundamental feature of human intelligence and a challenge for artificial intelligence. AI techniques can be used to create new ideas in three ways: by producing novel combinations of familiar ideas; by exploring the potential of conceptual spaces; and by making transformations that enable the generation of previously impossible ideas. AI will have less difficulty in modelling the generation of new ideas than in automating their evaluation.

By Romanita Oprea

Mihai Cojocaru, One Night Gallery & RADAR

Creativity is not a special “faculty” nor a psychological property confined to a tiny elite; it is rather a feature of human intelligence in general. It is grounded in everyday capacities such as the association of ideas, reminding, perception, analogical thinking, searching a structured problemspace, and reflective self-criticism. It involves not only a cognitive dimension (the generation of new ideas) but also motivation and emotion, and it is closely linked to cultural context and personality factors.

MAKING ART “MAINSTREAM”

The interest in using AI algorithms to create works of art is not new; it goes back decades. But recent advances in neural networks and deep learning has spurred innovation and activity in the field.

One of the areas where artificial intelligence has made the greatest contribution is in enabling more people to express themselves creatively, regardless of their skills in wielding brushes and pastels. Artists will also find inspiration and new ideas through the eccentric workings of AI algorithms.

Moreover, as AdAge shows, creativity is an inherently human endeavour. The imagery and psychology behind advertising is all predicated on how it will relate to consumers on an emotional level, but that doesn't mean it can't benefit from a little AI ingenuity. An integral part of creative strategies is personalisation, but there's no need to manually produce multiple versions of the same campaign to test on varying audiences.

“AI is proving itself to be a revolutionary tool across all industries, and marcomm is no exception. The most significant improvement is the ability to target specific consumers and cater to their specific tendencies. On the content side, we are witnessing the birth of a plethora of algorithms, art AI, music AI, curator AI, critic AI, script writer AI, etc. These algorithms are not yet sophisticated enough to replace a human specialist, but they are proving valuable as a template for inspiration and as proof of concept. AI will most likely continue to improve and change our industries in even more fundamental ways, so this is just the beginning of our AI journey,” said Mihai Cojocaru, technical & creative director at One Night Gallery & RADAR. In his projects he has seen perception changes in the audience and even among artists to some extent. Cojocaru and his team have worked with numerous artists who create in traditional mediums and who were initially a bit sceptical about using these technologies to enhance their creations. However, they were convinced of the usefulness and potential of these tools after the first few uses, and the resulting artworks serve as proof.

“The audience always has a mix of curiosity towards novelty and a slight shyness about interacting with it. We’ve always strived to deliver experiences with effortless interactions and that are instantly captivating so that people can engage with the artwork in a very personal way. It's exciting to see people embracing these new experiences and integrating them in their expectations about the art world. The general truth that older generations are more aversive to change holds true for these technologies as well but with a

difference: once the user experience and interface is improved for a certain age or social group, the adoption rate tends to go up,” said Radar’s representative. He therefore believes that it isn't so much about facing aversiveness to change as much as it is about making that change understandable and useful to certain groups.

On the other hand, the younger generations are growing up with these technologies and new media art as the norm and they will be the drivers of the next cultural revolution and the bridge to the metaverse. “We want to help them become fluent in art & tech through our new education platform FAR - Future Artistic Requirements. This programme offers scholarships in emerging tech and it is youth oriented. These are exciting times, and we should focus on expanding understanding, skills, and adoption if we want to be an active and relevant part of the future,” Mihai Cojocaru added.

THE MARCOMM VIEW

How much are AI and virtual reality changing the way people see advertising and interact with it? When human creativity is combined with the enormous computational power of AI techniques, we could push back the frontiers of our understanding of the world around us.

Rather than just being a faster way to analyse information, AI can become a stimulus for more creative thinking about how to use data by suggesting solutions humans may never even have considered. Creativity may be a uniquely human trait – but just as AI can improve the efficiency of other systems and processes, so too can it optimise the creative process.

“We think about AI as software that emulates human-like cognition. It’s really just math at an enormous scale and it can be applied to an almost infinite number of use cases across every sector,” said Keith Strier, EY Global and EY Americas Consulting Leader for AI.

According to Mihai Cojocaru, advertising is most effective online right now, and on the receiving end people are getting a higher level of customisation as ads are tailored for their specific interests and needs through the use of big data and AI.

“Another important trend in advertising has been the shift towards an experiencebased format for establishing a brand presence for their fans and customers. For this purpose, we’re seeing a big increase in the use of art and technology, more specifically through tech like virtual reality, augmented reality and even artificial intelligence. New media art & technology enhance artistic expression and allow users to engage in stimulating, immersive experiences that are more personal and rewarding than traditional advertising media,” Cojocaru added.

Moreover, according to EY, one thing is certain: as customer expectations continue to shift, businesses will have to be ever more creative in meeting them. That’s one need that will never go away – and AI may well be a key tool that can help enable a more effective creative response. Only with the strategic combination of human understanding and technology empowering human enterprise will you be able to create a truly effective, adaptive, creative organisation and succeed in solving future challenges.

TOOLS. APPS. POWERING COMMUNICATION

While AI can serve as inspiration in the creative process, it can also help with more mundane tasks, especially in the digital field, where much of the behind-the-scenes work is far from glamorous. “It’s about the augmentation of creativity. In the end, the human is really the one being creative, and it’s more about how can you get better efficiencies,” said John Smith, Manager of Multimedia and Vision at IBM Research.

In 2016, the IBM Watson cognitive platform was used for the first ever AI-created movie trailer for 20th Century Fox’s horror flick, Morgan. Led by John Smith, the project had Watson analyse the visuals, sound, and composition of hundreds of existing horror film trailers. Watson then selected scenes from the completed Morgan movie for editors to patch together into the trailer—ultimately reducing what could be a weeks-long process to one day.

In 2020, it launched the IBM Watson Advertising Accelerator, a new approach to dynamic creative optimisation for display, video, and OTT. No lengthy manual setup or preset rules involved. Instead, the artificial intelligence will do the decisioning and deliver personalised, high-performing creative at scale. Accelerator leverages IBM Watson machine learning to make sense of real-time consumer engagements and cookieless data signals to predict the best creative for each user or household, helping you not only

achieve campaign success but also uncover meaningful creative insights.

Communication is about understanding who is on the other side of the line and what is the most relevant message that will lead to the desired outcome of the interaction. According to Mihai Cojocaru, AI is helping us understand ourselves on a more fundamental level, sometimes revealing truths and tendencies that we wouldn't think about on our own and sometimes wouldn't even want to admit. This expanding understanding will hopefully facilitate more efficient and sustainable ways of communication.

“New media art is helping us appeal to new artistic aesthetics and expand the cultural landscape in ways that reflect the reality of a tech-driven society and paint a digital canvas for our future requirements and desires. This movement is allowing more creators to reach an ever-bigger audience and benefit from increasing material support for their work,” Cojocaru concluded.