Behind Alma’s repositioning as an ‘ungeneral’ agency

The term “general market” has been used in the industry to identify the mainstream audience a brand would seek to target, and often signaled white audiences. “Multicultural marketing” was interpreted to mean targeting other cultures and audiences. Now Alma, which has roots in Hispanic and multicultural marketing, is looking to challenge those labels by repositioning itself as an “ungeneral agency.” Read about Ad Age’s 2024 Leading Women here Alma CEO Isaac Mizrahi said this positioning is a new way to promote the agency to marketers and consultants who sometimes haven’t been aware of some of the work it has done beyond a multicultural scope. The shift won’t mean a complete move away from multicultural or Hispanic work; it is meant to expand how the agency is viewed and how general market work is approached. “We believe that the general market no longer exists, at least in the way that it was defined before,” said Ana Bermudez, Alma’s managing director. “That’s why we gave it a new name. The ongoing demographic shifts that have been taking place confirm that the general market is not general anymore; it’s highly complex, it’s not uniform. What we’ve been doing for [clients] for the past seven to 10 years is helping brands navigate this new world and we want to eliminate the boxes.” Read more: Inside the state of diversity in advertising According to the latest U.S. Census figures, there are over 63 million Hispanics in the U.S., accounting for 19.1% of the population. Beyond the Latino market, understanding subcultures and different demographics has become increasingly important for brands and agencies. Along with a new logo, Alma created a video explaining the positioning that will appear on the agency’s website and social accounts. As clips from Alma’s campaigns for various brands play, narration includes lines such as “General looked backwards. Ungeneral sees the future,” and “Specificity drives authenticity.” The narration also mentions that the agency “goes deep to see into people’s souls”—soul is an English translation of “alma.” “When it came to refreshing our logo, we wanted to keep a similar style, but enhance how it could tell our story,” said Alvar Suñol, Alma’s chief creative officer. “By taking the ’un’ in ungeneral and animating it into our refreshed alma logo typeface, we literally show how ungeneral is ‘in’ alma, which led to the logo being formed by the letters U and N.” While the agency’s revenue has increased for 14 consecutive years, Mizrahi said that it may have been “naive” to think in the past that its work alone would show clients how Alma is different from other agencies. So he tasked Bermudez, who rejoined Alma last year from 72andSunny, to help with this repositioning. Mizrahi pointed to a recent campaign Alma launched for Opendoor targeting people who are 55+ years old; its “Better with Pepsi” work; and the fact that it was recently named global social agency of record for Intuit Quickbooks as examples of the broad range of work the agency handles. Currently, around 30% of Alma’s clients go beyond a multicultural scope, Mizrahi said. Other key clients include companies such as Molson Coors, McDonald’s and Eli Lilly. “The world really needs to pay attention to Alma. They are much more than a Latino agency,” Molson Coors Chief Marketing Officer Sofia Colucci said in a statement. “We’re proud to be one of Alma’s partners who saw early on who they are and how they can speak to consumers from many angles.”

Behind Alma’s repositioning as an ‘ungeneral’ agency

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