“Multi”-cultural ≠ 100% Hispanic

It’s no secret that today’s multicultural market has exploded.  Nearly half of the American population identifies as part of one minority group or another.  However, multicultural agencies have been slow to adapt to the changing marketplace.  The very change that they argued and fought for themselves, they are now denying the other up and coming multicultural marketing segments.  The vast majority of “multicultural” agencies in the U.S. are former Hispanic agencies, who have merely adopted the multicultural title, without changing their exclusionary practices to include many other equally valuable and worthy market segments (e.g. South Asian, Indian, Asian, Filipino).  In effect, they are talking the talk, but not walking the walk.  This is particularly critical to clients because, dollar for dollar, these growing markets represent greater buying power, household incomes, levels of education and professional status.  Shockingly, although the U.S. Hispanic market currently makes up less than 50% of the overall multicultural market, some industry sources estimate it accounts for as much as 95% of multicultural agency spending. The very agencies that for years have proclaimed the need for multiculturalism, seem to have turned a deaf ear to any market segments other than Hispanic.  Anecdotally, in the last year, Emerging Networks has reached out to many of the nation’s top-rated multicultural agencies and virtually every one of them refused to even meet – the sole agency that did meet, told Emerging Networks’ executives: “It’s not your time yet.”

This kind of apathy and dismissive practice is more than merely bad business, as agencies are not providing their clients the best possible advice, but unethical, because it suggests that these agencies are arbitrarily limiting the choices they are making and the counsel they are passing on for reasons other than the value they represent to their clients.  This type of exclusionary practice has no place in business or in our society in 2017.