Multicultural shoppers attract US brands

NEW YORK: Companies in the US are ramping up their digital expenditure targeted at multicultural consumers, the Association of National Advertisers has reported.

The trade body polled 106 client-side marketers in its survey, and found 87% of represented firms are increasing or maintaining annual multicultural media budgets.

"Marketers have responded to the growing diversification of the US population by increasing their spending to reach multicultural consumers," said Bob Liodice, ANA President and CEO.

"These consumers are younger, more acculturated, and more tech-savvy, making the use of newer media platforms more important than ever."

More specifically, 84% of the sample are either boosting new media outlay levels – such as on the internet and mobile – or matching their total investment from last year.

Among the corporations raising their spend in this area, the average lift was pegged to come in at 9.1% year on year.

A 56% majority were reallocating funds from broader marketing budgets and 22% were shifting resources from other multicultural channels. A further 28% reported that this growth was incremental.

Since 2010, the proportion of multicultural media expenditure dedicated to digital has grown from 6.6% to 7.7%.

Company websites received the highest share of overall investment for 27% of firms, while 18% afforded this status to online ads. An additional 14% prioritised email, the same score as mobile.

When rating the platforms used to engage multicultural shoppers, official websites recorded 75%, beating web ads on 72%, paid search on 71% and organic search on 70%. Social media logged 67%, ahead of mobile on 64%, email on 63% and viral video on 51%.

Some 33% of operators began using mobile to achieve this goal in the last year or planned to do so in 2013. Viral videos posted 29% here, with blogs on 28%, social media on 27% and location-based apps on 25%.

In terms of effectiveness, company websites were seen as delivering strong results by 64% of the panel, with paid search on 60%, mobile on 53%, email on 52% and organic search on 51%.

Data sourced from ANA; additional content by Warc staff, 8 October 2012

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