New, more sophisticated efforts show a growing respect for the gay and lesbian audience – and its buying power

By Anne Stuart

With sales down and its product line not generating the excitement it once did, car maker Saturn decided that it needed to overhaul not only its cars, but also its marketing focus. Even as the company dedicated itself to a “product renaissance” starting in 2006, it was also looking to make a bigger splash as a major marketer, seeking out new audiences that would show loyalty to the brand and evangelize on its behalf.

It didn’t take long before the automaker realized that the buying attitudes and behavior it was seeking abounded in at least one audience that also seemed heavily drawn to Saturn’s new line: the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) community. “We’d dabbled in working with this demographic group for a couple of years, and we had more and more [GLBT] customers coming into the showrooms,” explains Ross Bird, who was an assistant divisional marketing manager for Saturn during the lineup overhaul. “From a finance standpoint, they tended to be good customers with good credit. More important, they seemed like a loyal group of customers. Once you sold them, they’d come back — and they’d bring friends.”

In overseeing Saturn’s integrated push to communicate with GLBT consumers — an effort that blended direct mail with event planning and other marketing outlets — Bird also witnessed firsthand what an increasing number of big-brand marketers now realize: namely, that the GLBT community is a consumer force that cannot be denied.

While it’s still a niche market — researchers estimate that the GLBT audience represents about 6 to 7 percent of the total U.S. adult population, or about 15.3 million adults — it’s a particularly influential one, with gay men and lesbians in particular wielding enviable buying power. Overall, market projections suggest that this adds up to $712 billion in annual purchasing power.

And those numbers have never been more important than they are right now. “As a community, we seem to be a little more immune to the economic downturn,” notes David Posegay, advertising director for the magazines Out and The Advocate. “It may be because so many of us are professionals with dual incomes and no children.”

For all those reasons, dozens of industries — from automakers to airlines, credit cards to companies, banks to breweries and beyond — are trying to tap into this lucrative market. As they do, they are realizing that it takes more than showing a same-sex couple in ads or pasting a rainbow flag, the unofficial banner of the GLBT community, on a mail sample. “The (companies) that communicate to GLBTs authentically are being rewarded with market share,” says Andy Bagnall, vice president and account director for Prime Access, a New York City–based multicultural advertising agency that has run many GLBT campaigns.

Saturn’s Story

Saturn was determined to be one of those companies. A while back, the automaker partnered with Atlanta-based Gaywheels.com, a gay-friendly car information site, to participate in the Atlanta Pride Festival and Orlando’s Gay Days®* Spread out over several days, each festival attracted thousands of attendees from the Southeast and beyond.

At both, Saturn sponsored parade floats and pool parties, handed out T-shirts with the slogan “Does your ride reflect your pride?” and took hundreds of pictures, which attendees could later order in commemorative frames via Gaywheels.com.

Festival-goers could also visit Saturn’s tents to check out the new models — and fill out survey cards indicating their interest in learning more about them. Marketers sent the cards to Saturn dealers in attendees’ hometowns, and those dealers followed up with customized mailed invitations to visit.

The effort generated an uptick in car sales, but more important, it proved that Saturn could influence brand perception among a coveted group of buyers. “The overwhelming conclusion was that it was a huge success in terms of connecting with that group in a non-traditional way and changing its perception of the brand,” says Bird, now a regional GM distribution manager. “We heard comments like, ‘We never considered Saturn before, but now you’re on our list.’”

Bird also gives credit to Saturn’s partnership with Gaywheels.com and its founder, Joe LaMuraglia, who connected the automaker with festival organizers, designed an integrated ad campaign and promoted Saturn’s activities on the Web site before and after the events. “He opened a lot of doors for us, giving us instant credibility with this audience,” recalls Bird.

LaMuraglia says it’s impossible to overestimate the importance of that credibility. “You’re dealing with very savvy consumers,” he says of the GLBT community. “If you do it without any thought, if you do it wrong, it’s going to backfire on you.”

The financial services industry is pushing hard to tap into the growing Latino market. But making a connection means more than speaking their language

By: Samar Farah

Serving the coffee is only the smallest touch.

Still, when employees at branches of the Eastern Financial Florida Credit Union take breaks during the day to pass out piping-hot Cuban coffee to customers, their efforts are key to a larger marketing strategy aimed at connecting with one of the credit union’s most coveted customer segments - Latino immigrants.

Four years ago, Eastern Financial, southern Florida’s largest credit union, decided it was time to court this market in earnest. Eastern Financial officials whose sales team had long been inundated with consumer requests for Spanish language brochures and services understood that properly serving this broadly diverse customer group meant more than just printing documents in Spanish. The company hired more bilingual employees, designed posters and flyers culturally relevant to Latinos and introduced Spanish-language content to TV monitors in its branches.

The moves, along with efforts by other financial institutions around the country, underscored a growing willingness by more finance industry marketers to commit to the necessary steps to making real inroads into the fast-growing Latino market.

Only a few years ago, the financial services industry was still reluctant to dip into these waters, even as other industries, like consumer packaged goods, were devoting larger budgets to capture the Latino segment. The hesitation was due in part to the particular challenges of selling them financial services from debit cards to checking accounts and, in part, to some misperceptions.

In some cases, industry leaders worried that their marketing messages would be viewed cynically by Latinos from economically distressed countries, nations with unreliable banks or nations marred by financial scandals. In other instances, banks and credit unions simply bought into hoary stereotypes about poverty and a lack of sophistication among the Spanish-speaking population. Randy Stockdale, executive group account director at Lopez Negrete Communications, a leading Latino agency, says that for years, marketing departments within financial institutions believed that “Latinos don’t make enough money or aren’t credit-worthy’ and that they were not a worthwhile target to go after.”

But a lot has changed. With $976 billion in spending power, immigrant and U.S.-born Latinos wield significant purchasing clout. Marketing departments now recognize Latinos as upwardly mobile, loyal and tech-savvy consumers aspects that appeal to any financial institution. According to Forrester Research Online, Latinos in the United States are more likely than others to go online for instant messaging and music and video downloading. Latinos are also more likely to use mobile phones to access financial data like real-time stock quotes.

There are also enough Latinos in the United States with no bank accounts, say marketers, that they’ve become an integral part of a segment with potential for significant growth in the financial services industry: the “un-banked” market. “The calculus is that it will cost [marketers] more to get a consumer to switch a bank than to create different offers for someone who doesn’t have an account already,” explains Stephen Palacios, executive vice president and head of the Hispanic Practice at consulting firm Cheskin.

As a result of this mix of factors, banks and other financial institutions are competing fiercely with tactics as diverse as the Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians, Guatemalans, Hondurans and other Latino immigrants they target to distinguish themselves in the eyes of various Spanish-speaking consumers. According to a recent survey of agency principal members of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies, more respondents (75 percent) chose the finance industry over any other as the category most likely to boost ad spending to the Hispanic market most significantly in the next five years.

Suddenly, says Palacios, “many financial institutions are jumping in with both feet.”

BY: Elaine Appleton Grant

One day last March, Liz Murphy sat watching Oprah, listening to every word her guest, actress Meg Ryan, said. Murphy, who runs a search engine marketing firm called Red- Boots Consulting LLC in McLean, Va., was making rapid-fire, critical decisions, and she was spending thousands of dollars a minute doing so.

As she watched the show, she was working for her client, the international development nonprofit CARE. As a search engine-marketing expert, Murphy was the linchpin in a multi-channel rebranding campaign for the 60-year-old humanitarian organization, which CARE Internet strategist Tobias Smith said was perceived as “an agency that responds during emergencies.”

To help sharpen its message, CARE chose to refocus its efforts specifically on women in developing countries, where women are often the breadwinners and caretakers. Centered around the slogan “I am powerful,” the campaign inspires Western women to help impoverished women around the globe.

CARE, under the leadership of Vice President for Marketing and Communications Adam Hicks, used every channel it could afford, employing Meg Ryan and other celebrity spokespeople, online advertising, airport kiosks, billboards, direct response, direct mail and public service ads.

Tying all those channels together were the search techniques - search engine optimization, pay-per-click search engine ads and contextual ads - that pulled visitors to CARE’s Web site from whatever media they happened to see.

Search engine marketing (SEM) has come a long way from its roots: Successful execution today takes a lot more than bidding for keywords. It’s a sophisticated blend of techniques that build on the strengths of on- and offline advertising and public relations, while helping measure the return on investment of that advertising and PR as well.

In an age where Web sites are the purchase gateways for so many customers, using a wide range of SEM techniques seems like common sense. That’s because search can do something that no other single channel can: It can reach consumers and customers no matter where they are in the buying cycle.

Steven Kaufman is senior vice president and media director for the digital advertising agency Digitas, in Boston. “We say you should be thinking about search all the time, no matter what,” he says.

“There’s no more qualified lead than somebody who is actively seeking information that you can provide.”

That means being savvy enough to anticipate what people will search for. For instance, as Meg Ryan talked about CARE, Murphy rapidly jotted down key words from her interview - words that Murphy presumed interested viewers would search for following the show. When it ended, she immediately purchased them on major search engines.

Murphy’s hunt for the perfect search terms didn’t end there. She and her colleagues then turned to major online news sites to see what the press was saying about Ryan’s first interview in two years. Murphy bought terms that appeared in headlines, because they have a greater chance of showing up in an Internet search. “If the New York Times or Reuters leads with something about our client, we want to buy those same terms, because we know that people are reading it online and they will search for information,” she says. “Search is real-time, constant monitoring, reacting instantaneously to everything.”

In addition, CARE boosted the exposure of ads it was already running on Oprah.com anticipating Ryan’s appearance on the show. “We bought at least a million impressions that day. Our ads were ‘road-blocked’ around the editorial story about the show,” Murphy says. Timing those ads with Ryan’s appearance created the search world’s version of a home run: “We saw a gigantic increase in clicks to the CARE site.”

In the world of search engine marketing, what Murphy did is known as search engine-optimized (SEO) public relations. The principle is, if you’re publicizing something, watch how people talk about it and write about it, then capture those keywords fast and use them to lead your targets to your Web site.

It’s one tactic search experts are using to blend offline and online marketing campaigns. In CARE’s case, using SEO, SEO PR and search engine advertising (SEA) to capture interest generated by the offline campaign worked beautifully. The campaign drove approximately half a million new visitors to its Web site. The campaign’s goal was brand awareness; however, within three months, those new visitors donated an extra half a million dollars to help fund CARE’s efforts.

Agency markets to diverse populations by looking for commonalities

BY: anne marie Sylvester

Many advertising agencies plan diversity campaigns by focusing on what makes that ethnic or racial group different from the mainstream.

Jo Muse thinks that’s short-sighted. The president of Hollywood, Calif.-based Muse Communications, says to effectively market to diverse audiences you have to understand the culture and not focus on race or ethnicity. To do that, he says, you have to know the differences and the similarities that the group shares.

He cites a recent television spot for American Honda, in which the approach was not limited to the race of the proposed targets. The commercial featured a variety of diverse faces - all in Hondas - driving together in one direction, six lanes across, through city streets.

“If you look at race and ethnicity as the definer, then you miss the commonalities which, in Honda’s case, are the sweet spot of understanding car culture for 18-24-year-olds,” Muse says. “You have to concentrate on the commonalities.

“The commercial was a tribute to ‘tuners’ - auto enthusiasts who tune up older cars - but gave off a halo effect on new Honda cars as well. It was a real home run.”

FINDING THE “ZONE OF COMMONALITY”

A fierce advocate of multiculturalism, Muse practices what he preaches.

Muse’s employees - 42 in two offices - comprise an African-American, Hispanic and Asian base, with language skills to match. Deeply immersed in the culture, they bring those viewpoints to the agency’s work, helping Muse reach consumers in a unique way that resonates with diverse audiences.

“When we sit down to discuss a specific project, we make sure we’ve got cultural specialists as well as professional specialists in specific disciplines like research, account planning, creative and media to sit together to define the opportunity,” says Muse.

Then the agency zeroes in on the “Zone of Commonality” - instead of looking at the differences between cultural and ethnic sets, it looks at the commonalities.

As an example, Muse points to the Millennials generation - those born between about 1982 and 2002. This group has a cultural identification that transcends racial or ethnic affinity.

“Nowhere is there a better example of that than Hip-Hop, a multi-national, multi-billion industry that doesn’t sort itself by racial design,” says Muse. “When you sit down with a 12-year-old kid, there is no distinction between race or ethnicity. It’s all about being plugged into the Internet and technology, their understanding of pop culture and urban culture at the same. There is no music differentiation with these kids like it was 20 or 30 years ago.”

WHY DIRECT IS THE RIGHT CHOICE

Once the commonalities are known, then it’s time to determine the best channels for communication. Muse says direct is probably underplayed.

“Too often clients don’t give multicultural agencies the ability to be experts on direct mail or even interactive,” he says. “But a well-crafted direct mail piece or Web site can produce wonderful results. Perhaps we, as multicultural agencies, should build a stronger expertise and demonstrate how important this tool is.”

He notes a direct mail program his agency prepared for the U.S. Army as an example.

“Our work in the African-American community pro-duced better results than it did in the Hispanic or general market. Why? I think it had to do with content and the fact that we had brilliant Army clients that were also African American. I think they had a clear feel for the messaging and steered things in the right direction. ”

“Sometimes that’s not the case and we have had to fight with clients regarding the cultural cues and sensitivity.”

Learn to connect transparently with women

BY: ANDREA LEARNED

OK guys, isn’t marketing to women just a good marketing practice in general? Of course. So why do so many companies, and even entire industries, miss the boat?

Perhaps executives aren’t really committed to the women’s market opportunity? Perhaps the whole “women’s thing” is a bit daunting for some reason? Perhaps the company dipped a toe in the water in the 1980s by painting the interior of its retail outlets mauve, and darn it all if it didn’t work? Well, here’s the key: Learning more about your female customers and how they shop is potentially more important than the product or service you are selling.

It’s all about “transparent marketing.” It’s knowing your market inside and out, then delivering products and marketing messages that are relevant. It involves a lot of preparatory research and continual interaction with your particular women’s market. So, how do companies revise their methods to more transparently connect with women?

• Narrow your focus. Start with the early adopters of your product or service. Get to know them and serve them, and their passion for your brand will attract a wider audience.
• Understand what influences women by exploring their wants and needs. Yes, this sounds a tad touchy-feely, but the results make it worth the initial discomfort.
• Communicate with women in a well-thought-out way. Women represent 2/3 of mail sorters, so target them through the mail and you’ll hit the bull’s eye.
• Understand and define your brand. The uniqueness or specialization of your brand really appeals to a woman’s sense of being “in” on a great find and it also makes them want to tell others.
• Be authentic. Women have radar for companies that say they know women, but don’t reflect real knowledge of which products women want (or how they want to buy them). Back up, with real effort, what your company professes. If you are in a traditionally male-dominated industry, build an advisory board of female customers.

A lot of what female consumers are looking for in products and services has changed with the times. So find out what they need and deliver it in a way that reflects your in-depth research and interest in better serving them.

Andrea Learned (andrea@andrealearned.com) consults, speaks and writes about the women’s market. She is coauthor of Don’t Think Pink: What Really Makes Women Buy-And How to Increase Your Share of This Crucial Market (AMACOM, 2004) and regularly posts to her Web log, www.learnedonwomen.com.

Habla de forma efectiva con los clientes hispanos

BY: LILLIAN LORENZZI

Consider this: With the U.S. Census Bureau reporting a U.S. Hispanic population totaling more than 40 million and New York-based Conference Board forecasting purchasing power among the under-45 age group alone growing from $295 billion to $397 billion by 2010, the Hispanic market is anything but a niche anymore.

Reaching this expanding demographic and getting Hispanic consumers to hit the buy button or pick up the phone is dependant on a marketer’s ability to leverage language, lifestyle and other cultural cues.

Miami-based AccentMarketing ties these cultural cues together under its trademarked Brand Fingerprinting, which defines brand perception within specific Hispanic market segments.

“As a whole, the market responds to lifestyle - how a brand will make consumers feel,” say Diego Naranjo, AccentMarketing account director for direct marketing.

Hispanic consumers, for example, have a strong sense of family and respond well to marketing that contains images of people and messages about products and services that serve the household.

Language is also important for clients seeking to achieve effective response in a market where fashion, food and music are also important. “If you distribute a piece in Spanish and have non-Spanish speaking reps taking customers calls, you’re not going to get very far,” Naranjo says. “If you solicit Hispanic consumers in Spanish, you have to deliver in Spanish,” he says.

Successful marketing, however, must tran-scend generalizations and cultural cliché. In fact, Naranjo advises some clients to create promotions that dispel internal and external misperceptions.

“There are a lot of myths about achieving the ‘American Dream’ in the Hispanic market,” he says. “We have been working with a financial lender and created a piece to demystify the home-buying process. We define and discuss the myth - in this case, the notion that it’s impossible to own your own home - and then educate the customer on how they can own a home and get a mortgage.”

The Hispanic market as a whole is undertargeted, he says. Until very recently, targeting and segmentation capabilities for this market have been poor, and the challenge of understanding the demographic and producing materials in Spanish has kept many marketers away. Hispanic households receive an average of 50 direct mail pieces per year, compared to 500 or more in the general population.

“Hispanic consumers aren’t as jaded as the general market and are much more likely to read and respond to direct mail,” Naranjo says. “Response to direct mail is far outpacing that of the broader consumer market. With sophisticated segmenting, and the longer messages that direct mail allows, we’ve found the medium to be extremely cost effective for reaching this market.”

An increasing number of companies are realizing the importance - and influence - of the market. “It’s already a huge part of the economy and is growing fast,” Naran-jo says. “If you’re not talking to the Hispanic consumer, you’re missing out on a tremendous opportunity.”

Culturally savvy marketers connect with diverse Hispanic market

BY: LESLIE WERSTEIN HANN

There really is no single Hispanic market. Certainly common cultural values unify the country’s growing population of Hispanic consumers, but distinctive segments demand different strategies with regard to language, media and messages.

Simply offering a service, product or message in Spanish won’t do. And understanding the diverse cultural values of the demographic is crucial to developing a marketing strategy.

America Online recognized this, and began taking an “in-culture” approach - based on an understanding of cultural values - back in 2003. That’s when the Census Bureau reported that Hispanics had become the fastest growing, not to mention largest, minority group in the United States. While AOL was blanketing mailboxes all across the country with free-trial CDs, the ISP’s marketers were also successfully targeting Hispanic households not only with a product in a different language, but one with a different culture.

HISPANIC CULTURE ISN’T HOMOGENOUS

“AOL is the only ISP where you can turn on parental controls in Spanish even if your kid is surfing the Internet in English,” says David Wellisch, AOL Latino vice president and general manager.

That’s important because AOL’s approach demonstrates a fundamental truth that distinguishes winners from the also-rans in the frenetic race to reach the Hispanic community, a fast-growing market. While different ethnic subgroups within the Hispanic community often call for presenting messages differently, the major divider is between English-preferred and Spanish-preferred consumers.

AOL’s solution was a parallel network - but not one that simply mirrors the English-language service. It saw the potential for growth in the “Spanish-preferred” segment of the Hispanic community - those who speak only Spanish or are fluent in English but prefer Spanish. Hence, AOL Latino users have access to everything on AOL plus comprehensive Spanish-language programming on sports, news, entertainment, financial and lifestyle topics - along with special content to improve computer literacy and other features.

Even within the “Spanish-preferred” consumer group there can be a wide diversity. In addition to offering Spanish-language versions of standard AOL features - for example, e-mail (”Bienvenidos, tienes e-mail” takes the place of the familiar “You’ve got mail”), Spanish-language customer support, and parental controls - AOL Latino provides original content targeted at a Latin audience.

With generational changes taking place, many households often contain a mix of Spanish-preferred and English-preferred consumers. Parents and grandparents within a household may speak mainly in Spanish while the children may speak to their elders and friends both in English and Spanish. While AOL recognized that Hispanics who speak English may be shaped by different cultural values than other Americans, the company found that the same offers that attracted non-Hispanics to sign up for AOL also attracted English-speaking Hispanics who comfortably straddle two cultures.

“To garner the English-dominant Hispanic market, you don’t have to do much that is too different,” Wellisch says.

CHOOSING A MEDIUM IS CRITICAL

Mail has been a critical strategic tool in reaching English-preferred and Spanish-preferred consumers. AOL has found that many Hispanics have less exposure to computers and the Internet and decided to keep direct mail of CDs as a key component of the company’s marketing strategy. In fact, demographic data suggests direct mail is the only effective medium. For example, while the U.S. Hispanic market represents the fastest growing demographic segment of Internet users, only 37 percent of Hispanics have Internet access at home, compared to 47 percent of African Americans and 66 percent of the general population. To help overcome that barrier, AOL Latino not only mails CDs with the software, but also offers a bilingual computer, with printer and monitor, for $299 plus a one-year AOL membership.

AOL also mails information about computer literacy classes the company underwrites for Hispanic parents, and advertises in Spanish media. “We give Hispanic consumers a chance to have a taste of the service and acquaint them with computers, making them more receptive to those CDs that arrive in the mail,” Wellisch says.

AOL’s success demonstrates how an in-culture approach lays the basis for an effective marketing strategy. In August 2005, 3.7 million unique visitors used AOL Latino. “The profound impact and overall numbers have surpassed all of our expectations,” Wellisch says.

That’s because they made a successful effort to understand the culture and recognized the community’s diversity.

“What makes a company powerful in connecting with a culturally different group is the ability to get into the folkways of the people, how they conceptualize their own lives and their perceptions of things,” observes Dr. Felipe Korzenny, director of the new Center for the Study of Hispanic Marketing Communication at Florida State University and author of Hispanic Marketing: A Cultural Perspective (Butterworth-Heinemann/Elsevier, September 2005).