Last week, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) held its annual Multicultural Marketing Conference, and despite a heavy-hitting agenda focused on the importance of targeted and relevant communication to drive growth in the multicultural segment, many attendees and reporters walked away with the misperception that a singular insight focused on cultural commonalities should guide marketing strategy. That one-size-fits-all marketing approach doesn’t deliver multicultural consumers. In fact, some of the country’s top marketing thought leaders at the conference cited case studies in which specific multicultural insights, which reporters erroneously called narrowcasting, indeed were the cornerstone of their profit-building campaigns.
By Jessica Pantanini, chair of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies (AHAA) and COO of Bromley Communications.