Are Brands Actually Ready for the Multicultural Marketing?

The AdAge Next: Multicultural Marketing conference, to be held on June 29th, will have leading marketing and media executives define how they intend to tackle the underrepresentation of many cultures in the marketing industry more scientifically and beneficially.

The entire marketing industry has responded to the people’s complaints, triggered by the death of George Floyd, for a better society that is based on justice and equality. The brands and marketing agencies voiced their stance against racism and injustice in society and within their companies during this period. They changed their hiring ratios, invested in programmes to support NGOs and the Black community to rise to the leadership level and vowed to change their internal policies to support the hiring of coloured people.

But changing their policies to provide opportunities for the Black and Asian workforce has affected the rest of their customers adversely as the shift has been short-sighted and unplanned. According to Aaron Walton, Walton Isaacson, this change is far more dangerous than offensive. What the brands have done is to reallocate their investments in favour of the Black and Asian communities instead of increasing their investment. The brands and agencies have failed to get a larger picture of the market approach before moving forward with this. The Hispanic Marketing Council mentions that the investments made by brands in the Hispanic market have been shifted to Blacks and Asian leaving them with no alternate plan. Bryon Allen and Sean Combs stress that what the brands spent for the Black-owned media is only a portion of their overall Black consumers.

The conference on June 29th will enable people to know what solutions the leading marketing agencies and brands have to solve this imbalance caused by hasty decisions. The conference also aims at answering many more striking questions regarding this matter.