According to the data from Nielsen, “multicultural consumers are the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population. Already over 120 million strong and increasing by 2.3 million per year, multicultural populations are the growth engine of the future in the U.S. Hispanics, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and all other multiculturals already make up 38% of the U.S. population, with Census projections showing that multicultural populations will become a numeric majority by 2044.”
For a successful multicultural company like Mcdonald’s, they must succeed in understanding the “melting pot theory” of marketing. From the language, imagery, product design, to different cultures around the world based on the tastes and societal behaviors present in their specific environments. Apple is another brand that master at reaching multicultural audiences. They have created a group of fans that transcends ethnicities and heritage, while simultaneously creating an environment that provides the opportunity to participate, belong, and connect with others– family, friends, even strangers.
Multicultural is such a complex topic. This project intends to use simple Twitter hashtags as a starting point and serve as baseline to explore the aspects and practices of multiculturalism. Using the twitter API to query the hashtag #multicultural, I found the most frequent texts to be used with #multicultural are: “interracial”, “diversity”, “female”, “millennial”, “visionary”, “innovative”. What do these words are related with multicultural? Why do people use them together? When I conducted researches on the subject, or trying different keywords mentioned above on twitter, another set of keywords keeps showing up: ethnic, barriers, nuances, cultural insights, hollistic approach. As a multicultural millennial, I am curious what companies have done to study and engage target audience like myself.
Dos and Don’ts
If you look at the demographics of Multicultural Millennials, we are inherently multicultural. When companies think about marketing strategies, they need to think about how to connect with these groups with different cultural backgrounds and traditions, and make their products relevant. A good example of multicultural marketing is Honda’s bilingual advertisement “Un Buen Fit” (“A Good Fit”), which targets Hispanic Millennials in an intelligent way by making fun of Hispanic marketing clichés. Other brands that have been building connections with multicultural Millennials include Toyota, Wells Fargo, State Farm, Procter & Gamble, McDonald’s, and Kimberly-Clark, which has a program – “Celebrate FUN” . They all have one similar focus, which is to drive family pride and motivate families across cultures to come together.
However, there are also multicultural campaigns fails to connect with their target audiences. For example, Volkswagen’s 2013 Super Bowl spot “Get in, Get Happy” — which poked fun at the Jamaican accent — received mixed reviews on twitter. Some criticized the commercial for being racist, while others found it amusing. Another example is Coca-Cola 2015 Super Bowl ads “America the Beautiful” — which aired in several different languages, and sparked responses on twitter like followings:
Generally speaking, I see that universal insights and values make us feel good as part of a larger collective. However, it seems that not every ethnic group is inherently open to diversity or foreigners — I can say that from personal experience and use the generation of my Taiwanese grandparents as example. On the digital marketing, a popular platform like Twitter, where people are more honest and straight-forward about expressing opinions, I am surprised to witness responses like such.
Understanding that multicultural consumers are media-savvy and socially empowered, it’s great that multiculturalism is showing up more on the radar. Yet, multicultured opportunities continue to remain under-leveraged and under-financed in targeted and total marketing platforms.
In my opinion, to win over an unique target communities like multicultural, culture cannot just be subtext; it must drive total market models. Until today, even for some multicultural-savvy companies/brands on twitter, they seem to fail bringing down to a nuanced, actionable level touching multicultural individuals and compelling them to do something different with brand offering/awareness; not to mention that insights originating from these populations — increasingly influential against the broader whole — are going to be completely leveraged, anytime soon.