By: Irina Skaya
With the Multicultural Marketing Conference around the corner, this is a great time to lend my two cents on multicultural advertising and this year’s submissions.
By no means am I a connoisseur of multicultural advertising, but I believe there is often a misconception that the higher the production cost, the greater the production value and, thus the better the commercial. In the past, it was challenging to judge print and television ads in the same category due to disparate production values (according to our judges). With the fast-growing media technologies, it is even harder to judge flash banners and digital billboards with traditional television ads. It is especially hard for smaller agencies to compete with larger agencies that may have bigger budgets to produce high-tech ads.
Good news for small agencies - having been directly involved with the judging of the Multicultural Excellence Awards for two years, the winning campaigns have been agencies with the most creative messages and in-depth consumer insights that were successfully executed, not the ones with the most complex medium. John Hibbs would pat me on the back when I say, “Medium is NOT the message!” At least, not according to our judges (the majority consists of client-side marketers) – the message (content) and executing against this message to produce relevant ads for the targeted audience are the secrets behind top multicultural campaigns.
I particularly like the Anheuser-Busch ad campaign for Bud Light that is amongst the finalists in the General Market category. I know some of you must be thinking I am either a heavy beer drinker or have stock options in the company, neither – I honestly appreciate the sense of humor and creativity in their ads. Take a look yourself and I guarantee you will laugh your socks off.
Another suggestion that I’d give to agencies is - for a brand to be successful, instead of directly translating ad copy from English to another foreign language or recording a voice-over in a foreign language for an already existing TV commercial, focus on your demographic and make your ads resonate with and relevant to your consumer. I’ve also seen ads that evoke emotion and thought succeed the most. Speaking of relevancy and thought-provoking, here is a Black History Month television ad from a Verizon Communications campaign (African American category) whose premise was to acknowledge those who are creating a change and impacting the lives of African Americans today rather than only highlighting the Black History Month icons. Their second creative was even more hip – an audio ad with J. Ivy’s spoken word embedded in a brochure. Although I can’t show you the brochure, take a look at the ad below – one of my favorites.
The point I am trying to make is: new media is impressive, but if you are a small agency with low funds, you can win too! It’s still about the consumer insights and the message. I encourage all advertisers and agencies to enter this competition next year - small, big, those who have adopted the new media model and those who are still creating ads using traditional media. To check out this year's winners, click here.
For the 2007 Multicultural Marketing Conference photos, click here.
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