Apt. 64 W11

It used to be that consumers were king.  Now consumers own marketing.

In the new “conversation model”,  they will make you or break  you faster and easier than ever. After all they have plenty of other choices. So tend to them.

If your brand has equity among a diversity group you are primed for success with the total market enlisting them as your advocates through social media.  

- African American and Latinos fuel mobile growth. 

- Mobile web usage is higher among these groups.

- The presence of these targets is clearly felt in the digital space. 

Naturally grouped by their cultures, their discourse is emotional and colorful (vs. technical and cold). This is good. Social media, gaming and other digital platforms are emotional. They are about engagement. (Think about how you engage your friends and family in a productive conversation.) 

Right NOW these are your best advocates.

This proposal brings three seemingly unrelated ideas together:  (1) Multi-cultural  and diversity consumers are (2) provocative and effective advocates of your brand (3) in the digital space for the total market. 

In reality, this “converged” idea is much bigger than the sum of its parts. Let’s examine each of them.

First lets think differently about multi-cultural. These are not siloed or separate groups who live in some inaccessible neighborhood. Everything is accessible in digitaland. That is today’s reality: we don’t have geo-boundaries and at the same time can easily make cultural alliances for a strong show. 

Which brings me to another thought about multi- cultural or diversity targets.  It is not about color, language or place of origin, but about culture defined in its broader form. So single moms are a diverse target, LGBT are certainly a diverse target (each initial is a target on its own), and so on. 

Another piece of the puzzle, the digital culture, creates a whole new way to look at brands and for that matter the way they present themselves to consumers. I think of brands like movie franchises: There is a story arc, characters, comics, sequels, games, t-shits and so many other revenue opportunities. Some of these executions overtly show the name of the movie. Others just make references to it in order to help the fan feel at ease but not oversold. Why is this important?  When a brand is loved (just like when a movie or a TV show is loved), consumer can’t get enough of it. They are looking to experience it in many ways.  What does this have to do with brands in the digital space?  A smart movie franchise strives to engage its fan in a conversation.  Think of Star Wars. Which has been fueled for decades by its fan desire to tie all parts of the story together.

Think of Nickelodeon’s iCarly (the most watched prime time show on cable).  Allowing fans to post their mini clips and making them part of the story is the heart of brilliant creator Dan Schneider’s success. What Dan does very well is participate in (and above all listen to) conversations on line among his initial target audience:  a self identified group of technorati, self-sufficient kids and tweens - another diversity group. He took his cues from them. After just one year, the show was seen by all kinds of followers.

I can see Tide detergent doing the same. When I said this a few years ago to a high level ad executive, the response was: “Tide is not a TV character.” Yes it is… for years. But that’s not the point.  The Hispanic moms LOVE tide. They have a most perfect laundry routine.  Hispanic moms are in the top blogging groups.  I am sure Tide is having a commercial or sampling conversation with them online.  However, the conversation should be about them. Tide should listen and connect them to other moms. Easier said than done? Wrong again. As I said in an earlier post - this is what Pepsi is almost accomplishing with the refresh project. 

Diageo has done it in the off line space with brands like Tanqueray and Don Julio. They have used the love that many multi cultural targets have for their brands as their presentation card to the general market.  Don Q is trying to do it in the online space. Rum Don Q, relatively new competitor in the U.S. spirit category is betting on getting big and global by linking its social media efforts and its magazine ad buys.  Their Lady Data  site is a survey for ladies on how young professional men should behave. The data collected digitally makes its way to the editorial pages of Esquire through different social media platforms. In early May 2010, one month after launching Lady Data, it was reported as the most visited spirits site. Originally from Puerto Rico, Don Q has a very strong Hispanic fan base . The company is focusing these efforts in urban centers.  They include Foursquare geo targeting and referrals hopefully tapping into their loving Latino fans as advocates for all men. 

Ultimately the goal of aligning all your marketing and media efforts around digital strategies and digital consumers as advocates is to be highly efficient. The sum of all parts will work very hard for you.  Be aware that the individual parts will only work as much as they can, and remember we live in a media fragmented universe. Here’s where measurement -again - becomes very important. 

An article in Ad Age’s CMO Strategy by Carlos Cata and Scott Davis invites CMOs to become marketing architects and to lead creative application of analytics to better understand success in the context of consumers’ digital lives. Continued partnerships with VCs in the technorati space will be critical to this. Universal McCann recently announced a social media monitoring platform and shared case studies that links “word of mouth” activity to advertising. These are first good step. There are many more to take.