Category Archives: Trends

Hispanics Will Drive Future Denim Sales

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denim imageThe rapidly increasing US Hispanic population are particularly keenjeans buyers and will be a market driver for denim according to the research. This is the fastest growing population group in the US, expected to rise by 15.6% between 2012 and 2017.

“Hispanics tend to own more pairs of jeans, they shop at department stores more often than any other group… they are fairly brand loyal and they like to keep up with the latest styles,” says Lipson.

Consumers in this category place a great deal of emphasis on their appearance, which makes them keen purchasers of fashion and footwear. Hispanic consumers are very brand aware and their purchasing power is projected to reach over $1.5 trillion by 2015.

Mintel found that 20% of Hispanics own more than ten pairs of jeans and 24% own seven to nine pairs. Hispanics also buy jeans for a wider variety of reasons than other racial groups and are more likely to have bought several pairs of jeans in the last year.

Source:  WGSN

Highlights From Nationwide Survey Of African American Women

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The Washington Post along with Kaiser Family Foundation have just released their findings of a nationwide study focusing on the lifestyles, attitudes and aspirations of African American women.  The interesting part of the study is it was conducted among black and white women providing an interesting look at how African American women’s hopes, dreams and expectations differ from their white counterparts.  While these differences are obviously very insightful, I think in this day in age of tighter budgets marketers should also be looking at where there differing target markets are aligned.  Similar mindset can be an opportunity for shared marketing strategies/messages.

  • MORE THAN A FIFTH OF BLACK WOMEN SAY BEING WEALTHY IS VERY IMPORTANT, COMPARED WITH ONE IN 20 WHITE WOMEN.

  • SIXTY-SEVEN PERCENT OF BLACK WOMEN DESCRIBE THEMSELVES AS HAVING HIGH SELF-ESTEEM, COMPARED WITH 43 PERCENT OF WHITE WOMEN.

  • FORTY PERCENT OF BLACK WOMEN SAY THEY EXPERIENCE FREQUENT STRESS, COMPARED WITH 51 PERCENT OF WHITE WOMEN.

  • NEARLY HALF OF BLACK WOMEN FEAR BEING A VICTIM OF VIOLENT CRIME, COMPARED WITH ABOUT A THIRD OF WHITE WOMEN.

Read more here…

Are African American Marketing Budgets Dwindling? Here’s Why That’s A Mistake

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As the focus on our growing multicultural market appears to finally be gaining traction are US companies engaging in an either/or scenario when it comes to targeting Hispanics and African Americans?  With the explosive growth of the Hispanic market it seems only fitting businesses would sit up and take notice but does that mean they’ll let African American consumers fall by the wayside?  A new Nielsen study outlines why that would be a big mistake.

The report notes that this population has a buying power of nearly $1 trillion.

Key findings in the report include:

Demographics

  • The number of African-American households earning $75,000 or higher grew by almost 64%, a rate close to 12% greater than the change in the overall population’s earning between 2000 and 2009.
  • The percentage of African-Americans attending college or earning a degree has increased to 45% for men and 53% for women (adults 25+).

Television

  • The average African-American household spends about seven hours, 12 minutes daily watching TV – 213 hours a month – which is 40% more viewing time spent than the overall population.
  • 12.5 million African-American households helped make this year’s Super Bowl XLV the most watched Super Bowl ever.

Mobile

  • African-Americans use more than double the amount of mobile phone voice minutes compared to Whites – 1,298 minutes a month vs. 606.
  • African-Americans send/receive on average 907 text messages.
  • 33% of all African-Americans own a smart phone

Consumer

  • African-Americans may spend less on each shopping trip, but they make the most trips – 167 – annually of any other group.
  • African-Americans in higher income brackets, spend 300% more in higher-end retail grocers, more than any other high income household.
  • African-Americans over-index on purchases of health and beauty products, household cleaning items, clothes, food and electronics to name a few.

Online

  • During July 2011, there were 23.9 million active African-American internet users.
  • African-Americans are 30% more likely to visit Twitter.
  • Top online purchases for African-Americans in the last six months included:
    • Airline tickets/reservations
    • Hotel reservations
    • Any clothes/shoes/accessories
    • Women’s clothes/shoes/accessories
    • Men’s clothes/shoes/accessories

Read more here…

Multicultural Marketing: 12 Essentials For 2012

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We’re fully into the new year and for those companies that want to get serious about their multicultural consumers here are 12 key ideas to consider for 2012:

  1. Hire more people of color!  This should be a no-brainer but the lack of diversity in many companies is still astounding – you should have employees who reflect the consumers you’re trying to attract.
  2. Multicultural consumers are an often overlooked and under funded business opportunity.  If you really want to attract Hispanics and African Americans stop being so stingy with your multicultural marketing budget. This is a substantial market that’s only getting bigger – allocate your budget accordingly.
  3. Find examples of who’s doing multicultural marketing right, like Gain detergent’s Anything but Ordinary campaign, and who’s doing it very wrong (sorry, Men’s Warehouse) – and if you can’t tell the difference then contact us.
  4. Represent today’s diverse marketplace. An overwhelming majority of African Americans and Hispanics say most brands are not reaching them in large part because advertising does a very poor job of showing diversity.
  5. Add some diversity to your diversity.  The majority of us interact with many different kinds of people everyday so stop with the all African American, or all Hispanic, or all White ads – mix it up because that’s the world we live in.
  6. Tweeting?  Check.  Facebook page?  Check.  On Google+?  Check.  No doubt these are the go-to sites for everyone but if your company doesn’t have a specific social media strategy targeting Hispanics and African Americans then you’re missing a huge opportunity.  We can help you connect with these consumers.
  7. Surprisingly few companies bother to translate their online marketing efforts (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, corporate websites) into Spanish – big mistake – a large portion of Spanish only speakers visit Spanish language sites exclusively.  Companies who want to target Spanish speakers can benefit from increasing their marketing efforts to address this underserved audience.
  8. Translating your marketing efforts into Spanish is a good first step but if you really want to connect with Latino consumers you need to understand the cultural drivers behind their attitudes, behaviors and preferences.
  9. Given the diverse nature of multicultural Internet users the micro targeting of different segments should be coupled with your overall targeting to a wider general audiences.  If you’re not sure where you should be micro targeting then let us help.
  10. It’s a fact.  Hispanics utilize their mobile devices more than any other group that means you should develop a Latino focused mobile strategy.
  11. Given the high proportion of Hispanics aged 18- 34, Hispanics are poised to greatly influence trends across all categories. Begin to focus on these younger consumers because their preferences will soon outweigh those of other ethnic groups.
  12.  While it’s true the Hispanic market is growing exponentially don’t forget your African American audience.  Black household incomes have grown faster than Asian, Hispanic, or non-Hispanic white household incomes over the past two decades and the median income of Black married couples far exceeds that of Hispanic couples.  Find out more…

What Will You Do Differently In 2012?

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With 2011 turning into 2012, Ad Age gave Big Tent bloggers this request: Share one thing you wish you had done differently in 2011 (in terms of multicultural marketing) that you hope not to repeat in 2012. Here are some responses…

Craig Brimm
Multicultural Advertising Blogger
kissmyblackads.blogspot.com

I have a secret motto that I try to apply to most projects. It gets me in trouble sometimes, but it’s worth it to me. The motto is: “If you ain’t making history, you ain’t making nothing.” We have to think big, because most African-American marketing is 10 to 15 years behind African-American culture. However, African-America culture is generally five or more years ahead of the general market. This is evidenced by the days-old African-American slang that permeates everything from general-market TV spots, to the evening news, to the dictionary. The marketing often is outpaced by the market. It’s a huge gap.

In 2011 we attempted to push a well-established but languishing brand into “modern” times by proposing new, greener packaging — a much-needed update to where and how the client thought about advertising, its placement and purpose. Our mistake was ignoring the pace at which this client was accustomed to change, although we felt the market was primed and ready for it. Initially, the client applauded our effort. But ultimately the new thinking was forced into a 1980s wardrobe that the company’s marketing team has been high-fiving for the past 30 years. We wound up doing print ads and nearly static banners.

In the future, I’ll make sure to prime the client first. We should have introduced the company to a progressive and a balanced relaunch. We needed to walk them into a clearer understanding of media’s increasing range of platforms and marketing’s growing role of being personal, useful and entertaining to consumers.

Stephen Palacios
executive vice president
Cheskin Added Value, New York

I regret not having a better definition or metaphor to describe the shift occurring in ethnic identity in the United States. We use “new mainstream,” “intercultural new mainstream” and “total market.” Lack of a generally agreed-upon label with a clear meaning is causing confusion and leading marketers and their agencies into turf wars, marketing-spend allocation fights and marketing-process debates.

“New mainstream” describes the rise of ethnic-identity consumers and the growing importance of African-Americans/Hispanics as discrete marketable segments but leaves out the impact of ethnic shifts in the general market. ”Intercultural new mainstream” suggests that ethnic identity is more pervasive in consumer marketing and changing the nature of the general market. While perhaps more accurate, this term is cumbersome to use. “Total market” rolls off the tongue more easily but can lead to confusion. It suggests to some marketers that a “total-market” approach can replace an ethnic-specific effort, or that a “total-market” effort is the “whitewashing” of multicultural marketing.

My hope for 2012 is that we come to a better understanding of what we are observing in ethnic consumer shifts and their impact on U.S. consumer society as a whole, and in the process either create a new term or better definition for one we already have.

Yuri Radizevsky
senior partner and CEO
GlobalWorks Group, New York

Rather than something that needed correcting, we prefer to call it a resolution for 2012: to press clients to embrace digital solutions more expansively. Multicultural budgets and initiatives tend to be conservative and more tentative in their new-media involvement. The budgets have never been fat, which meant going more for the sure thing than something new and risky. Well, today the risk lies in not going with the new. This year, we expect to push much harder to raise the proportion of client investment in social and mobile channels.  If we have to, we’ll hold workshops to demonstrate how much leverage these channels can potentially yield over offline media.

Our mantra: Follow the buzz and the money.  Billions of dollars are flowing into online, and the most successful marketers talk about — almost to the exclusion of everything else — how their digital presence is fueling growth worldwide.

Read more here…

Hispanic Youth Market – Marketing Trends

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Coming of age is a complicated matter in even the simplest of circumstances. It’s that much more complex, naturally, when the country in which you’re becoming an adult isn’t the one in which your parents (or you) were born.

That’s the theme of a report released last month by the Pew Hispanic Center, under the title “Between Two Worlds: How Young Latinos Come of Age in America.” The report’s findings have significant implications for the way marketers address Hispanic 16-25-year-olds in the U.S. — a cohort that numbers some 7.5 million and accounts for 18 percent of all U.S. residents in that age bracket.

As the report says, this is a life stage at which Hispanics in the U.S. “navigate the intricate, often porous borders between the two cultures they inhabit — American and Latin American.” Based on polling conducted in August and September, the report goes on to say “it is clear that many of today’s Latino youths, be they first or second generation, are straddling two worlds as they adapt to the new homeland.”

c/o: Hispanic Market