Abstract
- Strategy change. Cultural marketing has evolved into a key marketing strategy for showing how your brand fits into your customers' lives.
- Model integration. Platform business models provide a bridge for converging product offerings, messaging, and personalization strategies.
- A serious approach. By combining aspects of platform and cultural marketing, we can create authentic messages and partnerships that are appropriate for special cultural events such as Black History Month.
The most innovative form of personalization marketing that has become popular over the past few years is cultural marketing. Complementing the growing visibility online of discussions during events such as annual cultural holidays and Black History Month, cultural marketing has become a strategic element that brings marketers closer to diverse customer groups.
However, the complexities of approaching diverse groups remain. A notable change that seems to fill this gap is the use of offline and online media within platform business models. Marketers can leverage this shift to build stronger connections with their customers, from choosing ad creative to hiring her AI assistant.
Related article: Overcoming AI bias in CX with Latimer
What is cultural marketing?
Cultural marketing, also known as multicultural marketing, is the tailoring of marketing messages and media to resonate with specific cultural groups. Culture is the customs, arts, social institutions, and landmark achievements of a particular nation, ethnic group, or other social group, with traditions, arts, and expressions passed down from family to family in various forms.
Expanding personalization
Culture has become a highlight in marketing as personalization strategies grow in customer messaging. Marketers realized that their appeal required talking about the customer experience in a collective way, and culture began to be emphasized as the shared experience of a specific audience. Once marketing began to serve specific groups as audiences, the benefits of injecting culture as an element of attraction became clear.
historical lenses
In a previous CMSWire post, we discussed cultural marketing through the historical perspective of African American consumers. Its history emerged as early journalists and marketing pioneers competed for advertising investment. They worked to highlight the economic viability of black consumers as a market, which many brands ignored at the time. One of his pioneers is Byron Lewis, who founded the Uniworld agency in 1969. Uniworld was the first marketing agency to champion multicultural advertising and advance the interests of Black and Latino consumers.
data insights
Also, in my post, I discuss how the African American consumer market can market itself by using a combination of insights from broader economic data trends for the black middle class and smart digital media. We also explained how it has become more visible to those in charge. As a result, each segment of the African American consumer market has become better explored. For example, Pepper Miller, a prominent marketing researcher who has written extensively about the black consumer market, in her latest book, Let Me Explain Black Again, describes how some of these segments, such as black immigrants and black people, We examined the differences and similarities between his five segments. LGBTQ+.
Related article: Ensuring cultural sensitivity in marketing and advertising
Platform your business to maintain brand and cultural resonance
Since my post in 2019, this story has evolved to include industry trends ranging from the largest retailers to the smallest companies. In the era of websites and then mobile apps, companies have come to treat digital media as an extension of their business. This choice transformed the business model into a business platform.
high position
According to the most common definition, a platform refers to a high position from which to speak out on an issue, much like a politician would discuss a campaign theme. However, platform also refers to an assembly of components, similar to the subassemblies that automakers use to produce a variety of affordable vehicles. For example, Toyota Supra and BMW Z4 are two different sports cars. BMW manufactures both the convertible Z4 and the coupe Supra for Toyota. Subassembly design allows for strategic sharing of vehicle components between two vehicle designs, reducing development and production costs.
accept the platform
Major retailers are embracing the platform concept, positioning their stores and online presences as “digital-physical” platforms. This approach enables purchasing and customer service activities through a combination of tailored services through apps, websites, and store locations.
Platform adoption
Adopting a platform approach to business models gives companies better control of the “high ground” for sharing branding messages that attract customers. The measure of its appeal is brand resonance. Brand resonance indicates how much people identify with your brand. People are attuned to a brand's message that shows how their life experiences fit with the brand, enough for them to consider becoming lifelong customers of the brand and its products, both existing and new.
omnichannel environment
In an omnichannel environment where customers encounter brand messages through a variety of channels, platforming has become an essential way to monitor marketing elements, including cultural marketing. Cultural marketing is designed to show how a product, service, or brand fits into a customer's life experience.
brand resonance
Similar to platforms, brand resonance has been forming in cultural customer experiences for some time. Cheryl Grace, former Nielsen US Strategic Community and Senior Vice President of Alliances and Consumer Engagement, highlighted this trend when speaking at the 2020 CMSWire DX Summit and Dom Nicastro's post. I emphasized.
Related article: Cultural intelligence improves customer experience
What do platforms mean for your cultural marketing strategy?
The platform complements marketers' efforts to develop customer experiences through culture-based personalization strategies. These give you the opportunity to share messages and images that appeal to your customers at the point of sale or when ordering for in-store pickup.
Existence of platform
The existence of a platform also means marketers need to quickly identify when a message or image, be it a product or a campaign, has been compromised. For example, Target removed a game from its shelves that misidentified a black historical figure. This action shows that the brand strives to be a platform that protects its resonance, amplifies relevant messages, and does not compromise its efforts to connect with its audience.
Analysis function
The platform also extends analytics capabilities to capture reactions to branding messages, uncovering connections between customer behavior and technical reactions on the device, whether on a mobile page or within an app.
Related article: Cultural intelligence and CX: Lessons from around the world for better CX
What marketers can do
Marketers can gain insights from annual cultural festivals and learn how to connect with customers in their target communities in the right way.
For example, to do this during Black History Month, marketing teams should keep the following concepts in mind:
Beyond performative action
Avoid using Black History Month and other cultural moments solely as opportunities to get your product or service message across, especially if a true commitment to diversity and inclusion has not been established.
Do thorough research
To excel at cultural marketing, marketers need to be diligent students and learn the common points and objections of the cultures of their particular customer groups. These learning instances can occur anywhere, whether the points are raised in person at an event or online through digital communities.
Being educated about cultural history, including Black history, can help you understand which messages perpetuate stereotypes or are perceived as exploitative.
Partners in scaling Black individuals and organizations
Brands are learning from successes and failures in cultural marketing and are realizing that authentic voices are the best to choose for partnerships. These authentic voices from influencers and businesses are applying platform business models to better reflect their values through the customer communities they attract.
For example, Health In Her HUE is a healthcare startup that connects women of color with healthcare providers and provides content tailored to their needs. With approximately 13,000 members and her 1,300 healthcare providers across 60 medical specialties, the startup represents the success of growing minority-owned businesses operating as a platform. As reported by TechCrunch, HUE's recent $3 million seed funding highlights the growing investment and branding opportunities for true partnerships with brands that are still in the early stages.
When collaborating with Black creators, businesses, and professionals, marketers should consider how to maximize their voices in co-created content and campaign plans. Discussions should highlight what true platform messaging looks like, not only for brands but also for partners. As a result, your customers will feel true brand resonance when they view your campaign.
Understand the risks of AI to cultural marketing messaging
Cultural marketing involves technical risks. The most significant technological risk facing marketers today comes from the advent of AI image creation. New innovations like OpenAI's Sora provide convenience for developing imaginative images and videos. Meanwhile, AI models power services related to the platform, such as document labeling, document segmentation, and making personalized recommendations.
Brand managers need to ensure that failures such as AI illusions do not create a negative image and break the spell of brand resonance with customers.
Marketers can learn from organizations that are becoming more aware of what artificial intelligence pitfalls can impact the AI capabilities of their platform operations. As AI becomes more widespread, efforts like this are an important part of preserving cultural history. Founded by AI researcher Joybu Olumwini, his Algorithmic Justice League is a nonprofit organization that advocates for his AI ethics in affected communities. Buolamwini is best known for his groundbreaking 2018 study, published in collaboration with independent AI researcher Timnit Gebru, outlining gender and skin type bias in commercial artificial intelligence systems. . New AI models like Latimer seek to reduce these biases.
While these ideas have Black History Month in mind, the following steps also apply when planning the best way to truly celebrate a cultural event.
Related article: Does your marketing “take into account” African Americans?
Lessons through culture evolve with revelation.
Cultural events and holidays like Black History Month and Chinese New Year will continue to be celebrated, and authentic voices will be seen and heard through digital media. The digital nature of platforms brings many long-overlooked historical elements to the forefront, and with stories like Byron Lewis' now being documented, marketers need to remain ever-vigilant. there is. Last fall, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History featured documents and materials related to Lewis' career in an exhibit collection.
Understanding culture will tell you how to effectively connect with your target audience and honor their most important and solemn moments without getting in the way. Only through this approach can marketers expand, represent, and empower their audiences.
