So, what did I learn from my panel discussion… "Identity Politics - Marketing to Youth in the Age of Obama: In an era where youth identity is being influenced by online & mobile interactions, is Urban and Multicultural Marketing dead?"
Companies need to look internally and determine whether their customer segments still make sense. Multicultural marketers have fought long and hard for the budgets allocated to Hispanic and African-American markets, but realize the marketplace is changing. And, after spending so much time justifying multicultural marketing budgets, no one wants to go back and say “hey, it no longer makes sense to just have an African-American or Hispanic budget because our campaign won’t resonate with the entire marketplace.” I know some people are reading this and saying this dude wants to give up on multicultural budgets. That’s not what I’m saying. I think marketers need to look beyond skin color and language, and also look at Rituals. Then marketers should figure out how their respective brand adds value to that ritual so marketing messages resonate with their audience.
I know I just dropped Rituals in the last paragraph without a definition. Rituals is one of the steps in The Reasoning, our proprietary consumer engagement process. The point is marketers should entrench their brand into relevant rituals (meaningful activities); rituals in which your audience is actively engaged, physically and emotionally. Check out my Neutrogena for Men post for an example of Rituals.
So, does your current customer segment make sense in the Age of Obama… here’s how we build meaningful customer segments at The Reason...
- [name of your brand] adds value to [name of ritual] because __________
- Who is involved in this ritual
- Why are they involved in this ritual?
- When are they involved?
- Where does this ritual take place?
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