What: Media agency GroupM is leading the New Majority Ready™ Coalition which also includes Disney, Google, iHeartMedia, Meredith Corporation, NBCUniversal, Twitter, Univision and Viacom.
Why it matters: The coalition’s aim is to help brands adapt to the changing U.S. demographics and assist in developing their audience planning and media strategies accordingly. The ultimate ambition of the coalition is to increase brand relevance, business growth and create a seismic cultural shift.
The coalition will collaboratively develop tools and solutions to help brands get “ready” to engage the new majority, including:
• A benchmark tool – Multicultural Maturity Framework – that will help assess a brand’s “readiness” for this demographic shift across audience, investment, culture, content and more;
• Cross-platform content solutions based on the framework assessment and inspired by brand need
• A communications program to drive better understanding of America’s population transformation and to assist in driving adoption of new majority-first media strategies that reach, engage and authentically connect to these consumers.
Gonzalo del Fa, President of Multicultural, GroupM (photo), tells Portada that “the multicultural demographic in America is increasingly fueling the economy (they currently represent 40% of the U.S. population) yet the ad dollars committed to them are disproportionately low at just 5%. In addition to that, 2020 will be the first year that a large demographic group (individuals under 18 years old) will be ethnically and racially diverse.”
Facebook (including Instagram) is not part of the new coalition. Asked why this is the case, Gonzalo Del Fa, President of GroupM, Multicultural, tells Portada that “this first phase represents a handful of media partners across multiple disciplines such as video, print, audio and social media. A really exciting start. Our hope is that we will be able to welcome other leaders to join this movement”. According to del Fa, The New Majority Ready (NMR) coalition was initiated by GroupM to help brands better adapt to the changing of the U.S. demographic. In order to achieve that goal, GroupM is bringing together industry-leading companies across media, technology and publishing”.
The Challenge of Accurate Multicultural Measurement
The need for a more unified measurement of multicultural audiences is a major challenge that has hindered growth of investment in media targeting multicultural audiences. Asked about how the newly formed coalition will approach this particular challenge, del Fa says that “our benchmark tool (Multicultural Maturity Framework) will assess a brand’s “readiness” for the New Majority. This assessment includes brand’s growth potential, audience strategy, consumer perception, resource allocation and corporate impact among others. Based on that assessment, communication strategies and cross-platform content solutions that reach, engage and authentically connect to these audiences will be created to address challenges and opportunities. We will work with each client’s marketing team as well as our own analytics team to accurately measure the level of success of these initiatives.”
[ctalatamb]