Ditch Your ‘General Audience’ Approach: Every Audience Is Multicultural

“If you look at the population numbers, 40% of California is considered to be Hispanic, 40% of Texas is Hispanic, 26% of Florida is Hispanic. So my question to a lot of my clients and companies is: what is the general market? Is it the old outdated model that you've been using for the last 50 years? Or is the general market this new multicultural millennial-focused segment that is driving growth across every single population DMA in the country? That's the critical question.”

—Armando Azarloza, co-founder and CEO of the Axis Agency

Nearly every organization has focused on increasing diversity in the ranks of their employees and their customers, but they’re not all successful. One reason: they still treat so-called diverse people as separate – as members of groups, rather than as the multi-faceted individuals we all are.

One result has been that we’re all very aware of our own or others’ categorizations. This reinforces our differences rather than our similarities and gets in the way of achieving true inclusion.

I interviewed Armando Azarloza, co-founder and CEO of the Axis Agency, a full-service multicultural marketing agency, for the Personalization Outbreak Podcast. The quotes that appear in this article were taken from that episode.

Update Your Definition of the General Market

The new 2020 Census data provides clear evidence that while White Americans are seeing near double-digit population decline, the U.S. Hispanic population alone grew 23% to over 62 million. Also, today 40% of Americans self-identify as being of a race other than White–an increase of 129% compared to 2010.

These demographic shifts have real-world implications. Across both the public and private sectors, the call for diversity and cultural awareness has gone from a nice-to-have to a critical requirement.

But yet, the investment that major U.S. companies are making in multicultural marketing and advertising is only a fraction of what that they spend in the general market. Azarloza said, “We're seeing only about 5% to 10% investment in multicultural marketing.”

So, isn’t the general market now synonymous with a multicultural market? According to the 2020 census, people of color represented almost half of the total U.S. population in 2020. But even using Census data is too binary to give the full picture. What about those who agonize over which Census boxes to check?

Michele Norris is a host and special correspondent for NPR and the curator of the Race Card Project, which she wrote about in this National Geographic article. Here’s how she describes it: “To understand race—and more specifically racial ambiguity—it helps to understand those whose lives are defined by it. For three years now I have been collecting stories about race and cultural identity on the Race Card Project, and it has provided a window into society like no other I’ve ever experienced in more than three decades of working as a journalist.”

She asks people to submit six words about their experience and their lives.

“FLEW through Security :) …husband stuck behind. :( “

KB, Louisville, KY

“I fell for the assimilation trap”

Brian Roberts, Gaithersburg, MD.

“Too brown, too white, so lonely.”

Anonymous, Detroit, MI

“Race sees race. Love sees love.”

Naette Lee, Philadelphia, PA.

The project captures the nuance of identity and both the universality and the uniqueness of our experiences as individuals and within our families. It doesn’t make sense that so many companies still treat people as if they fit into boxes that they think they can easily define. We’re more racially and ethnically diverse than ever.

Multicultural Markets Are Increasing

“There's no question that the country has changed. Our priorities have to be adjusted as a result of that, both from a political and social perspective and from an economic perspective” said Azarloza.

A 2017 study by Nielsen focused on the buying power and influence of what they called the multicultural Millennial population (“Multicultural Millennials: The Multiplier Effect”) – saying members of this population spend more than $65 billion each year and influence upward of $1 trillion in total consumer spending. According to the report, the multicultural Millennial population consists of almost half of the Millennial generation (42%) and represents local markets that drive 47% of the total U.S. gross domestic product.

Here's why it’s dangerous to think you can put people in groups and define them according to your ideas about those groups: Nielsen describes these individuals as fully ambicultural, shifting from what was once a dominant family-based culture to a posture that blends a variety of cultures into a new mainstream.

If we can’t define people according to groups, how do we know them? You have to put in the work. There’s no shortcut.

Here are 3 insights of multicultural marketing from Azarloza.

1. Get to know the people you’re serving.

Make the time and effort to experience other cultures even in your own city. Demographic reports can only tell you so much.

“I'll tell you what you can do – you can go out across the country and explore culture from city to city, from neighborhood to neighborhood, from community to community,” said Azarloza. “Go to Chinatown in San Francisco and see the vibrancy of that economic culture. See the vibrancy of small businesses and what they contribute to a city. Go to an AME church in Georgia and understand some of the religious fabric that connects that community. Go to Miami and sit with some of the older Cuban Americans who are playing dominoes and understand the vibrancy of that particular cultural reality. Once we do, we'll have a much deeper appreciation for the diversity that exists in the country and the values that these communities bring. That will make us much more willing to come together in a way that is much more genuine and authentic.”

2. Realize that multicultural marketing is not a cost – it’s a fuel for growth.

Most companies treat it as a cost, and therefore they undervalue and underfund these vital investments.

“Multicultural marketing has to be part of the growth process for any company,” said Azarloza. “It's where we're seeing the majority of the growth in consumer segments. Treating it as a cost center versus a growth or profit center is just a failed strategy.”

Azarloza said his company had a client that wasn’t growing like it wanted. They started looking at their local retail stores and realized they could be engaging the Hispanic audience much more directly and authentically. Once they did, they saw an increase in sales across the chain.

“They realized that their growth had been held down as a result of not properly engaging that particular Hispanic audience. As soon as they engaged them in an authentic way, sales increased double digits across individual stores – which gave new life to the brand across the state of California.”

3. Apply these insights to your employees, as well.

Consumers and employees are one and the same. Yet, corporate America spends millions of dollars to attract and create loyalty and engagement with consumers in the marketplace – but we're lucky if they make a fraction of that investment for their employees in the workplace.

That audience segment you’re targeting as consumers is working for you as employees (or they should be).

“The more diverse your organization is, the more diverse that your products will be in the marketplace,” said Azarloza. “Today, brands either do business in the currency of culture with diverse American consumers, or risk being rendered irrelevant or obsolete.”

If you’re bringing people in but they don’t stay and move up, that’s a problem.

“Companies in general do a pretty good job of recruiting diverse candidates into their operations,” said Azarloza. “But where I think companies fail is we forget the final step, which is how do we retain people once we bring them into the corporate structure? How do we invest in them? How do we give them the tools and the resources to be successful? There's a significant gap in terms of how companies look at their employees and allow them to be themselves in the workplace and to contribute in ways that bring value.”

And this is not limited to the workforce only. A recent study by the Latino Corporate Directors Association showed that Hispanics, the second largest demographic population in the U.S., are vastly underrepresented on corporate boards.

“Sixty-five percent of Fortune 1000 companies lack Latinos, and Latinos are seeing the least growth of any other group,” Esther Aguilera, CEO of LCDA, told CNBC at last week’s L’Attitude Conference.

Lean on what we have in common.

One of the best ways to reach multicultural audiences is realize how much we all have in common. We have been molded and shaped by our cultures, but we also share many of the same values.

Azarloza said we don’t always have to think in terms of having five different campaigns to target different audiences. We don’t have to have “one for Hispanic, one for African American, one for the general market, one for older Americans,” he said.

“How do we craft a story that combines us all together? What's the commonality? How do we develop a message specifically for that audience that is not separate from what we’re telling everyone else, but that will evoke engagement with a particular group?”

That is the question we have to continue answering. There is no one answer. There’s no one report that will tell us how to reach certain so-called segments of the population. We need a process for continuous exploration, evaluation and evolution.

To learn how to create a more inclusive approach to your go to market strategies, register free for the virtual version of the 2022 Leadership in the Age of Personalization Summit hosted by Clemson University’s Wilbur O. and Ann Powers College of Business on October 14.