ANA Multicultural: Challenging the "Mainstream" Market
Hola from Miami! We, the AOL Advertising team, are sponsoring the ANA Multicultural conference held at the Fountainebleu hotel and resort in beautiful Miami Beach.
The ANA Multicultural conference is an incredible experience. Here is where the conversations begin about the new America- a country more diverse and tech savvy- and what marketers are doing to effectively communicate with them.
Today, we learned that integrating multicultural efforts into your entire company and not just your marketing and communications has proved very successful for some marketers.
The New Multicultural Woman
The morning started with a breakfast full of delicious food and data! Michelle Ebanks, President of Essence and People en Español, and Monique Manso, Publisher of People en Español, began the day with insights into the new multicultural woman. This woman cares about her family, career, and community. She does this with some help from technology - 65% of Hispanic women and 61% of African American women use smartphones. Incredible!
The Sound of Success
Following that, we had the pleasure of hearing the one and only Emilio Estefan's story of how he achieved success in the US after leaving Cuba. In the early days of his and Gloria's music careers, music execs told them to tone down their culture by changing their names and music. It's a good thing they didn't! Estefan has also been working with brands on helping them understand the Latino market in the United States. He was also integral in starting the Latin Grammys - it took them 14 years, but now it's a fixture in the Latin music community.
Diversity Management as a Strategic Imperative
One of the themes of this conference is that a multicultural effort or an attempt to diversify a message or campaign cannot be forced in at the end. It must be a part of the company's core DNA. Jennifer Jones of AT&T gave us an insight as to how AT&T has gone "all-in" to make their company more diverse. Their effort to diversify starts with personnel - their employees' ethnicities reflect the diversity of the United States. In addition, they make an effort to partner with companies with a developed multicultural initiative.
Jones says that AT&T is in a great position to succeed, given that Hispanics and African Americans overindex on the products they sell--cellphones, internet, and other media consumption.
More updates to come! To see what's happening in real-time, follow us at @AOLAdvertising on Twitter.
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