Ethnic groups account for 83 percent of population growth in the last 10 years.
Marketing to specific cultures makes good business sense, but it is much more than taking an advertisement and translating it into a specific culture's language. To reach a culture with advertising that has results, you must understand the culture you are attracting and integrate your product's concept into their belief and value systems. A marketing group also needs to use caution and not degrade a specific culture by assuming the culture's values.
Generational Multiculture
An important rule of multicultural marketing is not to assume you understand a culture or stereotype them. Market research is vital to finding the right marketing approach. Many distinct cultures such as Asian Americans, African Americans, Latinos and Hispanics have been in the United States for many years. Many of their young people have distinct ties to both the culture of the United States and of their ethnic origin. For example, a young Japanese American may be listening to an iPod as she travels to a traditional Japanese wedding. She may be outspoken at work, but quiet and respectful to her parents at home. A commercial that shows a young woman in an argument with her parents may be offensive to her, but a commercial that shows a young woman arguing in a boardroom might seem powerful to her.
Cultural Understanding
Developing a clear-cut marketing strategy for a specific cultural group may not be clear-cut at all. For example, within the Hispanic market, the cultures are diverse. You can't market to Brazilians in a Mexican/American campaign. You also can't market to everyone within a culture in the same way. For example, some Mexican/Americans cannot speak English and need advertising in Spanish. Some Hispanics can speak English very well and prefer English messages.
Inclusive Marketing
In the past, a marketing department would target a white audience and then hire a dedicated black or Hispanic marketing agency to target the smaller cultural market share. Now the strategy is moving towards integrating the targeted marketing groups and using multicultural specialist. In this way, marketing to other cultures becomes part of the overall campaign strategy instead of being a side activity. When encompassing various cultures from the onset, the campaign can be more inclusive and potentially gain wider market share sooner. For example, if a new product first targets middle-aged white people and then plans eventually to add commercials for the Hispanic market, significant earnings could be lost.
Online Strategy
According to McDonald Marketing, multicultural consumers are the first to use new technology, at a 4 to 1 ratio over non-Hispanic whites. This makes the Internet a serious marketing tool for multicultural campaigns. McDonald Marketing shows that targeting a "receptive audience," specifically, the multicultural consumers who are quick to adopt the technology of the Internet, may result in many business opportunities.
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