The Reason: A marketers guide to engaging cliques

Powerpoint Stats: Teens embrace smart phones

Here are some stats on teens embracing smart phones and the mobile web.  I trust this information will help with your next teen-focused initiative.  According to The Pew Internet & American Life Project, black teens were more than twice as likely as whites to go online with their mobiles phones.

The numbers look something like this for teen mobile web access:

• Nearly 1 out of every 2 black teens
• 1 out of every 3 hispanic teens
• 1 out of every 5 white teens

Check out the study here as it has tons of useful information.

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The Reason provides consumer insight by observing and interviewing people where they live, work, shop, and play. We translate insight into engaging ideas to positively impact the lifestyle of our clients' customers. 

Powerpoint Stats: African Americans embrace Twitter

A recent Pew Internet study shows that African Americans are more likely that any other ethnic group to use Twitter or another online status update service.  In fact, 1 in 4 African Americans online use Twitter or a similar service. No reason for me to reiterate the entire study, check it out here.   

General Market Advertising

A recent Ad Age white paper “2010 America” highlights some key points begging the question for me – What’s The Reason for general market advertising?

 

For instance, the author Peter Francese writes -- Minorities are the new majority.

• In the two largest states (California and Texas), as well as New Mexico and Hawaii, the nation's traditional majority group -- white non-Hispanics -- is in the minority
• In the nation's 10 largest cities, no racial or ethnic category describes a majority of the population

 

If you’re like me, you read those two bullets and said… “word.”  That’s right… the concept of a general market is dead.  It’s no wonder so many people think advertising sucks… most of its not targeted to anyone in particular. 

 

So, what do we do with this information?  The easy answer – focus on consumer lifestyles and integrate your brand within those lifestyle by figuring out ways to add value to those peoples lives.

Powerpoint Stats: Digital Divide no longer exists

The Digital Divide is a relic of the past.  The Reason... mobile devices.  

That's according to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project.  The study concludes -- African Americans are the most active users of the mobile internet -- and their use of it is also growing the fastest. When mobile devices are factored into the mix, the digital divide between African Americans and white Americans diminishes.  

Highlights of the study...

• 48% of African Americans have at one time used their mobile device to access the internet for information, emailing, or instant-messaging. National average is 32%.  
• 29% of African Americans use the internet on their mobile device daily.  National average is 19%.

Powerpoint Stats: ESSENCE research on African-American women

ESSENCE is once again arming multicultural marketers with insight on African-American women by releasing its Smart Beauty IV research study, developed in conjunction with Vision Critical Group.  The study is designed to inspire real change in marketing to women of color by identifying their buying power, influence, needs and desires in the prestige beauty category, inclusive of cosmetics, skin care, hair care and fragrance.

Highlights of Smart Beauty IV:

• Regarding spending power -- African-American women spend 80% more on cosmetics annually and nearly twice as much on skincare products than general market women do annually. 
• Regarding the mindset of African-American women -- her self-confidence is evident in describing herself as intelligent, independent, attractive, ambitious, sexy and fabulous more often than general market women.
• Regarding what informs the purchase decision for African-American women -- reflecting her personal style, being a brand she trusts, offering high-quality ingredients and being suited to her needs all stand out as key attributes to compel purchase across cosmetic, skin and hair categories respectively.

Seen on Target Market News

Powerpoint Stats: CPG trends driven by multicultural consumers

Nielsen recently released a study which projects growth in multicultural populations will drive consumer packaged goods (CPG) trends over the next 10+ years.  The study points out that while non-Hispanic white consumers will dominate the aging population, the majority of new families will be multicultural in less than two decades.  This presents both challenges and opportunities for CPG brands.  The most obvious challenge is also the most obvious opportunity -- will CPG brands make the shift away from mass marketing to more niche focused marketing plans.  

I've said it before and I'll say it again... mass marketing is probably the most effective way to NOT connect with anyone.  Mass marketers still believe in a world where you can target the 18-49 year old consumer.  I feel a tangent coming on so before that happens, check out Nielsen Wire for more info on the study.

Powerpoint Stats: Estimated $50 Billion African Immigrant Consumer Market

We all know the black consumer market isn't a monolithic group and to further prove this point, New American Dimension and the U.S. African Chamber of Commerce has just released a study describing the buying potential of the African immigrant market.  

Check the website for the U.S. African Chamber of Commerce for more info on the study.  Here are some highlights...

• Email and international calls are heavily used for keeping in touch. Younger Africans are also the heaviest visitors to internet social groups.
• African immigrants spend more hours watching English language media than African language media, most probably due to availability of in-language options. Overall, CNN tops the list of favorite English-language TV channels followed by ABC, Fox and NBC. Yahoo and Facebook top the list of favorite websites.
• Success is often described in meaningful, far-reaching terms. African respondents emphasized the need to give back to their community. Most send money to relatives back home on a regular basis, but when talking about success, they mean giving on a larger scale, more often in terms of the community-at-large.

The Focus Group is Not Dead

Recently finished moderating a few focus groups, actually 15, for a new client.  I’ve been conducting ethnographies and moderating groups since we were worrying about the Y2K bug.  Prior to these most recent groups, I was questioning the usefulness of focus groups as a research-gathering instrument.   The doubt was fueled by the emergence of social media tools like Facebook and Twitter, which provide immediate interactivity with consumers. 

Long story short, different tools produce different results.  Makes sense… right?  Focus groups have their place(and I was definitely reminded of this during the groups) just as interviews, observations, questionnaires, etc. have their place.  Here's some Reasoning on when it makes the most sense to use these different tools.

Twitter:

• Customer Service Improvements. Search and see what people are saying about your brand… this allows you to address both negative and positive comments.
• Competitive Analysis.  Search your competition and find out what people are saying about them.  Step it up a notch and follow what your competition is saying to its brand advocates (known as followers on Twitter).

Facebook:

• Survey research.  Facebook has a branded survey instrument “Facebook Polls”, where you can target users based on gender, age, location or profile keyword.  Speed is definitely the selling point as Facebook charges more based on how quickly you want the results.
• Online Panels.  Engage with a dedicated group of people who are interested in providing timely feedback to your marketing queries. 

Focus Groups

• Qualitative.  Unlike Twitter and Facebook which can be used for quantitative research, focus groups only provide qualitative information i.e. focus groups tell us "why", "how" and "when" something occurs, but they don’t tell us "how often" or "how many."
• Communication Checks.  Run your creative concepts by a select group of target consumers to see what they think before you release it to the general public.

The Digital Divide

The digital divide.... haven't heard that phrase since 2000 when we were working with Darien Dash and Places of Color.  I usually read the Unorthodoks Marketing newsletter and although they provide insight on reaching blacks online, they never use the phrase.  I should ask them why?  In any event, eMarketer uses the phrase and recently released a report analyzing the demographics and usage patterns of the African-American online population.   

The report covers:

• How African-Americans use mobile phones?
• Which media do African-Americans trust?
• How many African-Americans are online?
• And, a bunch of other stuff

Check out the eMarketer report here...

Powerpoint Stats: The Multicultural Economy

The Selig Center for Economic Growth at The University of Georgia recently published "The Multicultural Economy 2008."  Here are some excerpts...

2008 Buying Power... buying power is essentially personal income available after taxes

• Combined buying power of African Americans, Asians, and Native Americans was $1.5 trillion—more than triple its 1990 level of $454 billion—which amounts to a gain of $1,030 billion or 227 percent.

• Black buying power rose from $590 billion in 2000 to $913 billion in 2008, and its forecast to reach $1.2 trillion in 2013.  African-American consumers’ share of the nation’s total buying power in 2013 will account for almost nine cents out of every dollar that is spent.

• Native American buying power in 2008 was $61.8 billion and its forecast to reach $84.6 billion in 2013. Entrepreneurial activity is one of the forces powering the growth of Native American buying power. The 2002 Survey of Business Owners showed that the number of American Indian-owned firms increased by 67 percent from 1997 to 2002 whereas the number of all U.S. businesses increased by only 10 percent.

• The Selig Center’s data for Asians combines two race categories, including those who identified themselves as Asian or as Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander. At $509 billion in 2008, the U.S. Asian market already outshines the entire economies of all but seventeen countries—
  it is smaller than the 2007 GDP of Turkey but larger than the GDP of Sweden.

• By 2013, one person out of every six in the U.S. will be Hispanic. Between 1990 and 2008, the Hispanic population increased by 107 percent compared to 14 percent for the non-Hispanic population and the 22 percent gain for the total population. Hispanics controlled about $951 billion in spending power in 2008.