Why the future of multicultural marketing is about making social impact

After a few years of working at international networks in Latin America (I’m a proud Leo Burnett alumni), I have spent the rest of my career at minority-owned multicultural agencies in the U.S. I never wanted to work at a traditional agency. There is something invigorating about working every day alongside people with different accents, colors and backgrounds. It can be confusing at times, but it is always fun. Read Ad Age's latest news on diversity, equity and inclusion. In those early days at my former agency, our diversity problem was the need to hire non-Hispanic white talent that looked and thought like our clients. It was important to have someone on our team whom clients could culturally relate to. But times have changed. For me, multicultural America has always been the coolest experiment happening in marketing. I saw it as an opportunity to shape the tone of a country within a country. I loved the idea of representing the perpetual underdog, of being the “other.” It felt like we were constantly breaking new ground. We were not the “general public.” When many big agency executives in the late 1990s and early 2000s saw the Hispanic or African American markets as a second-class industry not to be bothered with, I saw the roots of a huge cultural shift in the making. It was obvious to me that the pop culture of the near future would come from the bottom-up of our minority communities. Around 2010, Black culture became more influential and Hispanic purchasing power turned into a headline. Traditional general market agencies started paying attention to multicultural markets, and my colleagues and I endured a weird transition phase called the “Total Market,” which was a way for the old establishment to say, “Come on, folks, you are not that different after all, we can cast you in our campaigns.” In parallel, we were going through seismic social changes in the country. Since we live them every day, we may at times lose the magnitude of what has happened during the past 10 to 15 years. But when you pile them together in a couple of lines it’s clear that we are living in a different country: social media, the first Obama election, the approval of gay marriage, BLM, the Me Too movement, Trump, the population shift, the legalization of marijuana, gender equality, the pandemic. (No wonder why we are stressed.) It hasn’t been easy, but one thing is for sure: We are not in Kansas anymore. The U.S. is now a mature multicultural society and diversity is here to stay. Some of the best creative work in the country (and the world) today comes from agencies (and clients) led by diverse talent, and I am proud to see Latin creatives leaving their mark at agencies including We Believers, Gut, David, FCB, Saatchi, Grey and others. Real talent has no color or gender. I agree 100%. But when you add to your talent the passion and the conviction of who you are, magic happens. A future for multicultural agencies? Ironically, as the country becomes more diverse, every client, agency and tech company will staff plenty of creative and intellectual talent from different races, ethnicities, genders and cultures, making multicultural “expertise” as traditionally understood—a commodity. Is there a future for multicultural agencies? Absolutely. But the future cannot be to sell one more burger or wireless plan. I believe that the most relevant and important work is yet to be done: Social impact. Think about it: if the growth of the country comes from communities of color, brands need to ensure that their future consumer and talent base is educated, healthy, productive and financially stable. That’s where we need to focus next. Our industry as a whole has an appetite for this kind of work. For the last few years, Cannes and the most important advertising festivals in the world have awarded campaigns that try to make a difference. There are great examples from large corporations and advertising agencies trying to do work that matters. Procter & Gamble’s “The Talk” addresses racism head-on, Blue Cross Blue Shield’s “Do You Hear Me?” tackles racial disparities in public health. But these and other campaigns still feel like one-off efforts. There are two main obstacles for consistently doing social impact work for our minority communities: The first one is that many of the main themes that require action can easily be politicized, and in a country still politically divided, brands and agencies are very cautious about the issues they decide to work on. Nobody talks, for example, about teenage pregnancy in Texas, a rampant problem that affects the future of thousands of Latina girls. It is clearly a communication problem that needs a creative solution, but the state’s abstinence policy and conservative values make it hard to find corporations willing to invest in a solution. The second obstacle for social impact work is that there is no immediate ROI. The results will come in the long term. It’ll take a generation to see the results of a deliberate financial literacy campaign for Black and Hispanic kids. To invest in improving the quality of life of minority communities in the U.S. is to invest in the future of the country. The multicultural marketing of the very near future needs to be about action: We need to start doing something rather than marketing something. Sign up for Ad Age’s Influencer Marketing newsletter.

Why the future of multicultural marketing is about making social impact

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