tele? check. salsa? check. same old same old? check. And now it’s a HuffPo hattrick. They just ran MHB’s essay about how brands, if they want to make money, should please take notice of the manymany interests and activities of multicultural spaces.
How, you may ask, did team Desedo score passes to the national media pool? Well, there are trade secrets, alas, even in our open-source hearts. Look for some motion pictures of the inauguration from us soon.
But we’ve also covered the event in the industry press. Here’s an article I’ve written in AdAge on diversity, youtube, and the industry.
The advertising world has had its own race issue, on the table now for more than 40 years, but has yet to find a voice that can apply salve to that gaping wound whilst moving an otherwise ailing industry toward reconciliation.
Read the full piece in Ad Age here. Or in the business section of Huffington Post, another space where we’ll soon be penning more thoughts.
If a black kid in the woods gets 20 million views, will the advertising world notice?
Raafi wrote an article for Ad Age about YouTube representation and content creation – and how this dovetails with the marketplace of race, still not understood by advertising.
As Agency Spy teased last week, we’re working with LA-based Muslim Ad Network (MAN) to launch the first ever US advertising agency that will focus on the American-Muslim consumer demographic.
MAN has aggregated the Muslim new media space for ad placement, providing vertical access to +10 million page views each month. BFD? Well, yes. This is an ignored demo with $170 Billion of spending power. And in this recession, brands are aiming to engage ‘new’, niche consumers.
We’re now meeting with larger agencies to introduce them to this space, and we’ll keep you posted as the work comes out. Give a shout if you want to learn more.
yoyoyo amigo? STFU. Ad Age published an essay by MHB about how social media will help get advertising past tired cliches when attempting to engage multicultural marktes. TBD when SMH will slowdown.
The idea that online is ‘colorblind’ is now thankfully being replaced be a more intelligent discourse on the topic. No doubt, you can see more about it here at Desedo, cause it’s the world we live in.
[T]he proliferation of media voices and sources enabled by the internet has allowed a more nuanced and less gangster voice of young black america to emerge, untempered by market concerns and sensationalism. Because of social media’s democratized communication tools, we are now seeing a more accurate depiction of black america. Mainly because that media is actually being created by, ahem, black people.
The authorship space of social media has fostered a cross media rise of black skaters, black rockers, black gamers and a wildly successful new strain of nerdy hip-hop. (Kanye West, Gnarls Barkley, N.E.R.D., Cool Kids, etc…) These diverse depictions and distributions of black life run counter to what we often see in mass media.
And that’s one case study. Many other groups within America have used social media to this effect : GLBT, American-Muslims, Asian-Americans, etc… Increasingly more content is made + moved by these groups, counterbalancing the content about these groups as seen in mass media. Dialogue is supplanting monologue.
As a society, we are all richer for it.
So. What is the upside for marketers within this diversifying social media space? It is a chance to engage oft ignored multicultural markets. Money is still on the table. And in our current economic state, brands are seeking “new” consumer groups.
My thinking is this:
1) Except for humor, traditional advertising is a risk-adverse platform. When brands aim to reach multicultural markets, most opt to play it safe with the tropes that Blacks value ‘soul’, Latinos love ‘family’, Asians are ‘sedulous’, etc… >>
3) Social media is where this engagement strategy can begin to change for the better. Why? Because social media is built upon the truth of multiplicity. As Raafi notes above, one person can now use this space to identify himself as: a gamer + a skater + black + a man + a music lover + a photographer + more. As brands understand this truth, they will rethink the narrow content used to engage multicultural consumers. And given the online ability to reach niches at low cost, brands can actually put to use their knowledge of multiplicity – beginning new conversations with those consumers who’ve too long been writ as simply a clatch of soul claps and sombreros.
