Diverse Perspectives, Powerful Results: Multicultural Marketing Insights

Doug Downs (00:07):

I was having coffee with a friend one day about 15 years ago. I don't normally remember coffee conversations from that long ago, but this one stands out because something happened to me. My friend and I somehow came across the topic of the movie Pretty Woman with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, and we both remarked that our favorite scene was when Julia's character goes into that high-end store and gets treated so poorly.

Julia Roberts (00:33):

You got nice stuff? Thank you. How much is this?

Sales Lady (00:37):

I don't think this would fit you

Julia Roberts (00:39):

Well. I didn't ask if it would fit. I asked how much it was.

Sales Lady (00:43):

How much is this, Marie? It's very expensive. It's very expensive.

Julia Roberts (00:49):

Look, I got money to spend in here.

Sales Lady (00:52):

I don't think we have anything for you. You're obviously in the wrong place. Please leave.

Doug Downs (00:58):

Great scene. And that got us both to comment on the experience of walking into a high-end store and having the salespeople respond, and we both kind of paused to think at the same time. What was going through my mind was how the sales staff always trip over themselves to try to please me, hoping for a big expensive commission. And I commented on that thinking our experiences were probably similar. My friend, a Filipina female said her life experience in that scenario wasn't like that at all. Sales staff watch her like a hawk thinking she's going to steal something. Well, she could have thrown a glass of water in my face. At that moment, I realized that my ethnicity, I have the complexion of a mobile phone flashlight, was probably why I'm treated like temporary royalty in those stores, but my friend is regarded suspiciously. Your life experiences shape who you are, how you think of things, how you speak to others, how you understand others, all influenced by the way people treat you in life. As marketing and comms pros, we need to understand that aspect of our audience if we're going to be successful today on stories and strategies, the benefits of multicultural campaigns and why failing to embrace diversity in your strategies could be

Julia Roberts (02:27):

Big mistake. Big, Huge. I have to go shopping now.

Doug Downs (02:46):

My name is Doug Downs. Brief scene from Pretty Woman Off the Top, distributed by Touchstone Pictures, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and Touchstone Home Entertainment, the song Pretty Woman, written by Roy Orbison and Bill Dees, of course. Just before we get started, I want to thank Kristina Brekhova who lives in Moscow, Russia. She works in PR and Communications. She left a great little promo for our podcast Stories and Strategies on LinkedIn. Thank you for that. Kristina. Spassiba.

(03:14):

It is Hispanic Heritage Month, September 15th to October 15th. My guest this week is Manny Machado joining today from Miami, Florida. Hi Manny.

Manuel Machado (03:26):

Hi Doug. How are you? Good morning.

Doug Downs (03:27):

Good morning, good morning. For me. It is a pleasant, let's in Fahrenheit, let's call it's seventy degrees outside, maybe high sixties. How is it for you?

Manuel Machado (03:41):

How nice. I'm headed to the airport. No, for us, it's just a little humid and warm and hot, but it's great that we can have a balance of temperatures to keep the conversation flowing. So I could tell you it's quite warm

Doug Downs (03:54):

Here. And you're saying the Weather Channel has a, here's how hot it feels. How hot does it feel in Fahrenheit right now?

Manuel Machado (04:00):

The heat factor today is 105 Fahrenheit, so it's nice, warm and humid itself.

Doug Downs (04:07):

I'd be bringing an extra shirt to work if that was me.

Manuel Machado (04:10):

That's a great idea. I'm going to take you up on that.

Doug Downs (04:13):

Manny you have more than 30 years experience in branding, strategic marketing, public relations, and business administration. You're the co-chair of the CCOMM group, which is a full service multilingual agency based in Miami, one of the top multicultural agencies in the US by Billings in 2020 CCom was chosen the number one PR team by PR news, and you've been part of more than 34 award-winning campaigns touted by the American advertising federation's ADDY Awards in 2022. You've been part of a number of boards and foundations. For example, you were on the board of directors for the Smithsonian Institute's Latino Center. That sounds like awesome work right there.

Manuel Machado (04:56):

It was really fun.

Doug Downs (04:58):

Manny, Tom Petty, good Florida Boy by the way, has a song with the opening lyric. "I started out down a dirty road," just kind of suggesting humble beginnings to all things. And I think those humble beginnings really set the context for what makes a multicultural campaign ultimately successful. You are a Cuban American. What was life like for Cuban Americans in the nineties as opposed to today?

Manuel Machado (05:28):

That's an interest juxtaposition because as Cubans continue to migrate regardless of the times, it really hasn't changed much. It just has evolved into and transitioned into different wants and needs, especially in the multicultural space. We're able to address those because being of Cuban origin, my parents were immigrants, and I'm a first generation Cuban American, so our life has changed, thank goodness, obviously because of technology innovation and where our voice is headed. When I started in this business, everyone predicted that multicultural and especially the Hispanic space would disappear, would integrate. We would stop speaking Spanish and all of the data and all of the research from much more learned people than myself lead to quite the contrary. And that's an opportunity, and also it demonstrates growth in our society and acceptance of multiculturalism and how relevant it is to today's marketplace.

Doug Downs (06:39):

Isn't that interesting? Even in the nineties there was prognostication that the language would become at least lesser, if not disappear, just become lesser in the world of business. I find that amazing.

Manuel Machado (06:51):

It was. And interestingly enough, we find that as there are first, second, and in some cases even third generation Hispanics, that they're still reaching. We are, and when I say them, we are them. I am them. We are reaching back into our roots to totally identified with all things Hispanic or Spanish speaking. So yes, there was this entire move when I started my career in television that we would ultimately not be able to have a need for Hispanic television or Spanish language television or even addressing the multicultural space. And then as a result of that, we realized not only how wrong it was, when we have all of the fiber optic technology that leads us to five or 600 or a thousand channels, we see that that's just not the case.

Doug Downs (07:46):

Right. And through the course of your career, then you sunk yourself into corporate life, just like me joined the dark side, celebrate the Dark Side for a little while. Then you left corporate America to start your own firm. I kind of share that story with you. Tell me about that path for you though.

Manuel Machado (08:05):

It was an interesting awakening because I gave my heart and soul to corporate America and became a true believer in how I make a living today and what hopefully I'm contributing back to the space that I am so identified with. But you were so graceful in how you positioned my exit from corporate America. I really didn't have a choice. I was a casualty of an M and A. And so that led me to think, well, I want to call my own shots. I want to be an entrepreneur and I want to make a difference, especially in all things Hispanic. And so that insight of knowing what corporate America was looking at, but more importantly, what corporate America was not addressing, what they were not speaking to, where we were missing the mark is what led me to formulate what is today, how I make a living and how I contribute back to my original upbringing and my roots.

Doug Downs (09:06):

Okay. Let's dig into multicultural campaigns. Tailoring a campaign to meet your audience. Marketing 1 0 1, but always good to start with 1 0 1 before you move on to 1 0 2. The key there is to not treat any one group as one homogenous group, right? We can't just say the Hispanic community, oh, well, everybody thinks like this. That's not it. People of Hispanic heritage share similarities. They obviously don't all think alike. Share some examples of campaigns that your team has led with that in mind and what made them successful.

Manuel Machado (09:43):

Thanks for bringing that up, because I think that that is a myth of, and we see it every day as part of our work in our new business effort, we see a lot of important marketers that are just not being well counseled because they're thinking that a check mark is going to help them reach the overall Hispanic audience. And then I'm thinking, well, someone is translating and not creating, someone is being driven and not being guided. And so we did a great campaign for our client partners at Neutrogena, which was called Urban Divas, and that is a great example of being able to address so many different Hispanic audiences. The Hispanic market in the West Coast is completely different than the Hispanic market in the southeast or in the Northeast. We have Caribbean Latins in South Florida. We have a different type of Caribbean Latins in the Northeast coming from the islands, from Puerto Rico, from Santo Domingo in Miami. We have, as an example, Cuban Americans, Colombian Americans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and then we have all of the largest Hispanic audience, which is on the west coast in Texas, which are sometimes first and second generation Americans, which are still tied to their ethnicity and are still perceiving messaging and media from their own countries, so from Mexico in particular. So we need to be able to be smart in how we create campaigns that are culturally and language sensitive to all of these different audiences.

Doug Downs (11:41):

Tell me about how you saw the differences between the two. Some examples of how someone of Cuban or a Puerto Rican descent was different from someone of more of a California descent or an Hispanic person living in Texas. What were some of the little nuggets that you could tailor that made it special for them?

Manuel Machado (12:02):

In this particular campaign, urban Divas, for example, that I was referencing earlier, we were able to come up with a lineup of 10 different top line entertainers that really were representative of each of the different nuanced markets within the Hispanic market.

Doug Downs (12:21):

YOu mean Gloria Estefan doesn't cover everything? You don't just hire Gloria Estefan and that's it.

Manuel Machado (12:26):

You're touching you a very soft cord because she's a friend. And also because we're both Cuban, but there are so many talented performers and we are very fortunate that in the Latin genre or the Hispanic genre, that there are so many crossover performers that have been able to strike a chord and bridge that gap with all audiences. So to be able to put them all in one package and be able to market it as urban divas, it was really right on point because that little nugget, which you were referencing earlier, was what is the commonality, obviously the language, but Carol G is not going to say same thing that Cardi B might say, or even Gloria if she were not so busy and would've been on the stage. So all of those nuanced possibilities for reaching each of the language factors and each of the geographic factors is what made that particular campaign a success.

Doug Downs (13:30):

Just theoretically, how would one go about finding those subtle, or I guess sometimes not so subtle differences, and I'm not asking for specific examples, but what kind of research do you need to do, or is it a constant stream of research and being in touch with different communities so that you understand this is what's going to make it special?

Manuel Machado (13:53):

Well, that's a great question because that's explaining that very question that you asked me is how I make a living and how all of the associates here at CCom make a living, our cultural insight and our diversity in the workplace and countries, we have over 20 countries represented just within our small mid-size firm. So it's having that cultural insight and no, it cannot be replaced by just a very well-spoken person that happens to speak Spanish properly. You need to know that there are four or five different words that you could use to talk about a flip flop as an example. And so having that knowledge internally and that cultural insight allows us to pivot campaigns to talk to the audiences that we need to reach at any given time.

Doug Downs (14:52):

And if the bottom line is money, which it so often is multicultural campaigns really are a no-brainer. I pulled up some stats according to January, 2023, numbers from Statista, the Hispanic population of the United States is just under 63 million with a buying power of $1.72 trillion. That's up more than 400% just in the last 20 years. That is powerful stuff, Manny.

Manuel Machado (15:24):

It is. And thankfully in 2000 and in 2020, I was wrong. I underestimated how important this market is, and all of the research, pew Gen X, all of the research led to us thinking that our population and growth exponentially would be obviously the largest minority in America, but we did it so much faster and so much sooner while embracing what was perceived as a multicultural divide before, for embracing multiculturalism, embracing different other sectors of the Hispanic or multicultural community in that we will continue to grow, which is why it's baffling to me how hard my pitch has to be to advertisers and clients alike from the onset. I have to spend 40% of the time that I get in the elevator pitch or on stage for 45 minutes understanding and trying to justify what is clearly evident to anyone that's reading or has the possibility of listening to someone as an example, as you has learned it, as you that caress about this and understands the value of the Hispanic market,

Doug Downs (16:53):

Amazing. Baby steps, maybe baby steps. And lastly, the benefits of creating a narrative for your brand as a multicultural brand so that when people see the emblem, that's just the logo, but they think about your brand, your essence, they think multicultural. Why is that important?

Manuel Machado (17:14):

Well, it's important because it's representative of the market and the landscape where we live. So wherever you are in America or in North America and you're driving around or you're going about your daily life, you'll be touched by multiculturalism regardless of what you do. Even if you chose or decided you were going to live in a silo, you can't. So those little touch points are always going to be relevant, and all of those provide insight to us as we further develop campaigns for our client partners in the future. We recently made a presentation to one of our esteemed client partners, Toyota on AI, and they asked many agency partners to come in and to talk about how we were innovating in a very broad question, what are you doing in innovation and in AI? And I was proud to say that let's say if I could be objective, which I'm not about the Hispanic market, that we were as good as all of the other agency partners that we work with and collaborate with, if not the best, and why we were ahead of the game.

(18:31):

We realized that when we asked, we prepared the presentation and said, we want Sophia Vergara to be the person that's going to be the AI voice for our presentation. AI nuanced it to sound like her tone, but to sound like an English speaker as Sophia Vergara, the reason that ergo why they need us. So we are not going to be driven by ai. We're going to be guided by AI, and all of our insights are still relevant. We said, no, that does not sound like Sophia Vergara. It just sounds like the tone of her voice, but it does not sound how she would speak. And so that insight, again is what we're getting from all the touch points as your original question was in terms of multicultural and the multicultural space.

Doug Downs (19:18):

That's perfect. I really appreciate this today, Manny. Thank you for your time.

Manuel Machado (19:22):

No, and thank you for the platform and for listening to us. Hispanic Heritage Month is an integral part of the Hispanic community and celebrating it is an essential goal for our company and for our community, so thank you so much for giving us the platform.

Doug Downs (19:36):

Absolutely. If you'd like to send a message to my guest, Manny Machado, we've got his contact information in the show notes. Stories and strategies is a co-production of J G R communications and stories and Strategies, podcasts. If you like this episode, do us a couple of favors. Number one is leave a rating and a review that really tells others that this is a podcast worth listening to as well. Share this episode with one friend. Thanks for listening.