BLACK History Month is coming to a close and a small peep

What happened to the VERY LOUD Black Marketers that we heard & saw last year and the craving by all advertisers to be perceived as woke or engaged?

It is a legitimate questions, especially in the light that Black History Month is closing in 6 days.

What has been the diversity and DE&I buzz lately?

Adweek, Ad Age and many other trade publications could not stop promoting or offering Diversity ideas, how to earn the DE&I merit badge, promoting the miss use of the term LatinX, and other so called high volatility racial disparity issues in Corporate America and in the advertising, marketing, media, public relations and research industries.

Some tried to do the right things, other just were measured and fell short.

• It’s interesting to see what a little money (insignificant) thrown in a certain direction can do.

Today’s ad spend towards US Multicultural segments is almost an insignificant amount based on the social, political and economic power of Multicultural Consumers.

Those companies that underspent against Multicultural Consumers were hailed as Best of Class, while those that do spend a representative allocation of their ad spend towards Multicultural Consumers were not even mentioned.

Remember all the PR releases by Media Buying Companies stating they were allocating more media dollars to Minority Owned & Operated media entities?

• How much was it really worth $125M, $100, $500M? It should have been $1 Billion at a minimum. We should have enjoyed a banner year!

The word DIVERSITY was the buzzword for the last two years.

Well not really, there was no diversity of thought or focus. Black Consumers and Black Marketers were the flavor of the year, at the expense of all minority market demographic groups or their executives.

• Hispanic Consumers facts and Hispanic Marketers were not present or sought after. Maybe the US Hispanic market we did not fit the extreme representation of the narrative.

Remember the articles, the webinars and hosted virtual panels that surpassed 200+ in the last two years?

• There was a 1 to 10 ratio of Black Executives to Hispanic or Asian Executives in these meets. Unacceptable, especially since Hispanic Consumers represent the largest part of the Multicultural Bucket and represent the most important marketing opportunity.

Were we cancelled?

It was if, the US Hispanic Market, the US Asian Market or the Native American Market did not exist. Maybe we were not LOUD Enough. Did we missed the opportunity?

But, the facts are the facts. We were basically obfuscated. We could have been LOUD, but we were not.

Yet, the 2020 Census was published and the real facts were ignored. Maybe now we can market the truth.

So it was not about the facts….. No, it was Political Marketing & PR cover you ass efforts. Shut up the loudest.

OK, we lost this business battle ourselves, now what?

Sell the US Census facts ……….

Gene Bryan
CEO
HispanicAd