Diversity was in the air at the recent annual meeting of the American Association of Advertising Agencies. At the heart of all the discussions about building the agencies of the future and the industry’s existential crisis, almost every session turned to the subjects of gender parity and ethnic diversity.
A multicultural panel of female agency leaders attacked both gender and racial parity, rapper Mike Boston spoke about his work with agency Allen & Gerritsen to bridge the gap between African-Americans and police, and comedian John Leguizamo and Alma DDB CEO Luis Miguel Messianu spoke about Hispanic representation in media.
Marketing and advertising have not escaped the shocks of the #MeToo, #TimesUp and #OscarsSoWhite movements. Some clients, such as HP CMO Antonio Lucio, have demanded their shops step up the parity game in the account teams that serve their business.
But while many welcome the drive to diversity, they worry about the unintended consequences. Combined with the current drive to establish one-on-one, personalized user experiences, it raises questions about the place of ethnic specialists such as Hispanic, African American and Asian agencies, which have spent decades toiling in “minority representation” long before multiculturalism was a trend.
When doing an agency search for 20th Century Fox Film, Julie Rieger made a list, grading the attributes of each agency in the running and “where everybody got an F was in multicultural,” she said.
“I saw more white people (and) I saw more men walk on that stage, than I need to see in a lifetime,” said Rieger, a former agency exec who is now the studio’s president, chief data strategist and head of media. Film audiences are multicultural and agencies have to make a commitment to match: “We’re not going to move forward as an industry if we don’t,” she said.
“It’s a real issue for us. We recognize it’s a business imperative,” said Steve King, CEO of Publicis Media. The network is reaching out to universities and other academic institutions to develop diverse talent, but “our industry has a real issue.” He noted the agencies’ main employment bases are in expensive cities like New York and London, which puts them at a disadvantage against industries that can offer better starting salaries, “an issue we’re trying our best to resolve.”
Not coincidentally, many global networks have acquired Hispanic agencies in the last two decades, ever since the 2000 census first projected that the U.S. was on track to become a majority-minority population by mid-century. Among the leading Hispanic agencies, WPP acquired Bravo Group and Zubi, Omnicom acquired Del Rivero Messianu (renamed Alma DDB) and Dieste, and Publicis Groupe absorbed Conill Advertising and Bromley Communications.
After the shock of the 2000 census, a new consensus developed that integrated multicultural advertising into the mainstream of campaigns. Many networks integrated the ethnic shops into their full-service agencies, eliminating the split between “general market” and multicultural advertising. The emergence of Millennials and Generation Z, which will be more diverse and less likely to split along ethnic lines than previous demographics, is accelerating that trend, as well.
The industry is having an ongoing conversation on diversity issues, but change is slow in coming, said Evin Shutt, COO and partner at 72andSunny, so the agency created a launched a playbook to help other shops and made it available as an open-source document to other agencies.
Hispanic and other multicultural work remains siloed, and it needs to be brought into the core proposition of the company in order to scale it as the country’s demographic makeup changes, said Karina Wilsher, Partner & Global COO, Anomaly. She noted her agency brought a Hispanic team into the core work and saw results: “Johnny Walker’s Keep Walking, America would never have happened without that,” he said.
In an age when artificial intelligence can push engagements shaped by psychographic profiles and behavioral targeting, will there still be a place for agencies that can create work based on their superior knowledge of culture and language subtleties? Yes, said Marina Filippelli, chief operating officer of Orci, an independent multicultural agency.
“If I’m marketing to you as an individual, I need to understand you, your background and your motivators,” she said. “Some of those things are going to come from your cultural background, whether you think about them or not.”
A number of studies, notably a landmark Geometry Global worldwide survey, have noted consumers of different ethnicities—whether Hispanic, Asian or African-American—tend to have different vantage points regarding status, individualism and other personal qualities that affect their personal customer journeys.
Hispanic consumers tend to be more community-minded—perhaps based on a history of immigration, said Filippelli. As they come into a new country, forming a support network is important, and that quality endures, even as new generations are born here, she explained.
“In the Latino space we see often: ‘What does my community need’” said Filippelli.
Every marketer will have to think about those kinds of nuances when following psychographics, and marketers in the multicultural space are better prepared to find and understand those insights, she said.
“I don’t think the world is changing. I think the world is catching up,” said Leguizamo, who co-founded NGL Collective, a Latino content company. “We just weren’t included in the story. We need to have a seat at the table.”
The multicultural agencies say they are set for the competition, and are counting on entrenched attitudes to help them. Despite the diversity talk at most networks, there is still a sizable gap between expectations and reality, they say.
“The reality is: What is general market in today’s environment? Multicultural is the new general market” said Luis Miguel Messianu. “We’re addressing a new country, a new audience. It sounds little biased, but we’re better equipped… It’s part of our nature.”
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