Winners and Insights from the Multicultural Marketing Conference

A special congratulations goes to the winners of the ANA’s Annual Multicultural Excellence awards, which honor those who have created outstanding multicultural advertising campaigns and are sponsored by the ANA Multicultural Marketing Committee. Winners included:

In the General Market category, which was voted on by conference attendees, Lowe’s Companies with agency BBDO New York.

In the Asian category, MetLife, with agency partner IW Group.

In the African American category, Tyson Foods for their “Powered by Tyson” campaign with E. Morris Communications.

In the GLBT category,Pernod Ricard USA for their Stolichnaya Vodka campaign with agency partner Double Platinum.

In the Hispanic category, Procter & Gamble for Tide, with Conill Saatchi & Saatchi.

And the Campaign with Significant Results was Verizon Communications’, created with partner Burrell Communications.

These brands and agencies have worked together to create remarkable multicultural campaigns- let’s hope more marketers follow in their footsteps.

Read on to see insights from the conference...

Top insights from ANA’s Multicultural Marketing Conference:

Marketers from the likes of KIA, Wells Fargo, Washington Mutual and Harrah’s shared many of the same issues and successes.

• Multicultural marketing needs to be in the ‘C’ suite; those advertisers that are, are succeeding.
• Building relationships and reflecting the community are two insights you must activate to be successful.
• Cross enterprise engagement with a multicultural focus delivers superior results.

Tavis Smiley spoke of a multicultural audience “craving authenticity” and people of all races examining the depth of your love and the quality of your service, highlighting three key business needs:

• We must do a better job of reexamining the assumptions we hold and make.
• We must do a better job of helping people expand their inventory of ideas
• We must individually reach for a our goals and inspire others to do so.

Rev. Jesse Jackson’s keynote, and coincidentally the ANA General Market Award winner Lowe’s Companies, focused on inclusion. Reverend Jackson spoke of how exclusion kills entrepreneurship and creativity while inclusion leads to growth.