If your brand hasn’t implemented a strategic plan for advertising to multicultural audiences, then you’re lagging behind the curve. The face of America is changing—Gen Z is the most multicultural generation to date. And consumers expect hyper-personalized advertising that applies to them and appeals to their identity and values.
So as a brand trying to make a genuine impact and stand out with your target audience, what should your next steps be? We’ve been researching and advertising to multicultural audiences for over 30 years and, in that time, we’ve collected an overwhelming amount of data to help our clients succeed. Here are three reasons local print and out-of-home media drive results—and why you should include these tactics as a part of your multicultural marketing strategy.
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1. Local media impacts multicultural audiences during their daily routines.
The best way to impact a consumer is to target them at different points in their day—at work, in their car, on their phone, and so on. This day-in-the-life strategy delivers message frequency, but be sure to adjust the creative based on your channel. There are different benefits to making an impression on consumers at a certain time and in a certain headspace. Consumers will simply have different associations and ability to take action based on where and when they see advertisements.
Local print and out-of-home media catches multicultural consumers in the comfortable and familiar parts of their daily routines—reading their morning newspaper, riding the bus to work, walking to their neighborhood store. Local multicultural out-of-home media is placed in high-traffic, high-impact areas, such as barbershops often visited by African Americans (2 times a month) or bodegas/convenience stores often visited by Hispanics (8.8 times a month) to ensure the greatest number of impressions within a community. Local multicultural print is placed in trusted, familiar newspapers and magazines, consumed frequently by multicultural consumers.
The benefit? Local media impacts multicultural consumers when they’re in familiar, trusted places and routines—and that familiarity and trust is then transferred to your brand.
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2. Local media is contextual and language-targeted.
When it comes to multicultural marketing, context, culture, and language are everything. Communication and messages are highly subjective and open to interpretation, and misunderstandings can happen easily (just take a look at any one of these cross-cultural communication fails).
That’s where local out-of-home and print media really solves problems. Because you’re able to hyper-target local audiences, you’re also able to craft highly specific and strategic messages to appeal to your target demographic. For example, you can create a custom message to run in local Spanish-speaking newspapers which over 3 of 5 Spanish speakers often read and trust as a news source. You’re able to effectively target Spanish-speaking audiences—in their own language and in a medium they consume often and trust.
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3. Local media is highly trusted by members of multicultural audiences.
For over 30 years, we’ve conducted research on advertising to multicultural audiences, and consistently over time, we’ve found that multicultural audiences trust local out-of-home and print media over other forms of broadcast or mainstream media sources.
Data from Refuel’s Hispanic Explorer Series™ shows that Hispanic consumers trust Hispanic print media — and 55% of Hispanic consumers are paying attention to print advertisements. Our research shows that Hispanic voters are 18% more likely to be interested in newspapers than the general population. For Hispanic readers, print media conveys a certain permanence, significance, and trustworthiness that is important to the multicultural audience. Experts know that most media consumed by this audience are newspapers. Print media is the most trusted source of news by the Hispanic community of all ages.
Additionally, the cost of print media is relatively low compared to other broadcast and online options, and the ROI is typically high when we track other brand advertising in print media. We suspect print advertising will be a much larger focus in 2021.
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Strategically marketing to the many members of multicultural audiences across the US is more important than ever. With a spending power of over $3.9 trillion, members of multicultural audiences are market movers, culture creators, and highly influential consumers that your brand needs to be specifically marketing to—yesterday.
Are you ready to create a multicultural marketing strategy that will drive brand awareness, sales, and brand loyalty? At Refuel Agency, we’ve been crafting strategic multicultural advertising campaigns for over 30 years, and we’re invested in ensuring your campaigns make an impact. Contact us today to get your custom multicultural marketing strategy.
