New Guidelines to help Marketers start investing in Diverse Media Suppliers

The ANA and the 4A’s released a new set of guidelines designed to help companies increase their advertising and marketing investments in diverse media suppliers.

The guidelines followed an April report by the ANA that revealed a gap existed between intent and action when it came to marketers investing in diverse suppliers.

“The gap exists as there are some companies (particularly large ones) which have started to support diverse suppliers but are not investing with them in any meaningful way,” the guidelines stated. “There are also some marketers still sitting on the sidelines who are not sure where to begin. These guidelines are specifically intended to help the latter group.”

ANA CEO Bob Liodice said: “Our earlier study clearly demonstrated that there are a significant number of marketers who want to invest in diverse media suppliers but need help getting started. These guidelines will help them develop a strong and substantive investment strategy that includes increases in diversity spending that reflect each company’s customer base.”

4A’s President-CEO Marla Kaplowitz added: “If you don’t have a plan to reach diverse audiences, long-term growth is difficult, if not impossible. Similar to DEIB efforts internally, using diverse media suppliers to reach a diverse audience is not a ‘nice to have,’ it is a critical business imperative. If you are not growing your relationships with diverse media suppliers, you are failing to reach a brand’s full potential with a growing audience.”

Guidelines for Getting Started When Investing with Diverse Media Companies was created by a task force consisting of key members of each trade organization. It includes a total of 11 recommendations. Among them are the following:

• Find out if your company is already investing advertising and marketing dollars with diverse suppliers. If your company has a supplier diversity team (often part of the procurement function), that would be a great place to start to obtain that information regarding diverse suppliers.
• Get started with investing in diverse media suppliers that meet your company’s strategic communications goals. Don’t be overly concerned with the “appropriate” spending benchmark and look to increase investment over time. Think about allocating a percentage of your budget for diverse suppliers; otherwise, it’s easy to cut such spending first.
• Measure your market share, not just overall, but for each ethnic segment if possible. Understanding present business performance among these audiences will help identify growth opportunities. Then, gauge the size of that opportunity to understand the revenue potential of increasing that share.
• Look for opportunities beyond traditional media such as event sponsorships, experiential marketing, and product placement/integration, among others.
• To be authentic, invest throughout the year and not just during tentpole events like Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, Asian New Year, and Pride Month. Investment in diverse media should be a core element of a company’s communications strategy to meet its diverse customer base.
• Some diverse media suppliers have expressed a strong interest in having direct dialogue with marketers. While agencies absolutely have key roles to play, marketers should be open to relationship building with diverse suppliers.
• Know the diversity make-up of your teams both internally and externally with your agencies. When marketing to an increasingly diverse America, those teams should ideally reflect the diversity of the consumers they are serving.

The complete Guidelines for Getting Started When Investing with Diverse Media Companies, CLICK HERE.