Reaching multicultural audiences is often spoken about separately from putting spend behind media owned by members of underrepresented groups – and when this happens, brands are missing an opportunity. For our recent research report Engaging Multicultural Audiences, we found out what Mirror Digital’s CEO, Sheila Marmon, has to say about why the two can and should go hand-in-hand for advertisers.

Q: Why should marketers’ strategies for reaching multicultural audiences also include investing in media owned by members of underrepresented groups?

A: Authenticity builds trust and trust builds brand loyalty. Marketers need consumers to believe in their message and/or products. To do that, consumers need to experience authentic representation from those marketers. As diverse-owned media operators, Mirror Digital is a part of the target audiences these marketers fight to reach. Our approach to driving client and partner success is rooted in prioritizing ad campaigns that deliver both measurable results for our clients and lasting financial empowerment for diverse and underrepresented audiences.

Q: Some advertiser and agency commitments to backing diverse-owned media haven’t lived up to promises. Why is this?

A: Those advertisers and agencies choose money over mission when the fact is, they could choose both. Despite a shared responsibility, and in some cases a publicized promise, brands who never implemented a diverse audience growth strategy may not understand the value proposition, have the capabilities in-house to get it done, or in some cases, may view the idea of diverse partnerships as something that is dispensable. Without the pressure of accountability, reneging on their commitments is easy. Those same brands will be remembered for their actions or inactions, but diverse-owned media and audiences are not going anywhere.

Q: In a landscape of tighter budgets and high demands for scale and efficiency, how can committed advertisers maintain their support for diverse media and creators?

A: We have to start with educating the market on the value of multicultural creators and media outlets. Efficiency does not always equate to efficacy. As a diverse-owned media company, we have been in hundreds of rooms and on thousands of video calls informing and educating brands on diverse growth audiences and how we can effectively connect with them. We maximize every investment because we are a proven partner who consistently yields meaningful results. Advertisers should start by understanding the opportunity and pushing for campaign budgets and programs to specifically target diverse-owned media companies, audiences, publishers, and content creators. In turn, these strategies will help propel them to deliver stronger outcomes. To gain traction, agencies need to effectively demonstrate and communicate these powerful results to brand clients’ marketing teams and leadership.

Q: Campaigns that target diverse-owned media are often considered to be tests or experiments. What’s your best advice for ensuring that they last?

A: The first step is designing and investing in tests that matter to a return on investment. Often we see some agency partners make a small investment that is not able to drive any real impact. When these types of tests are meaningful and are proven effective through measurable results, they can and should be scaled. When advertisers and agencies lean into diverse media partners for their endemic expertise and connectivity to these communities, they will see the return on investment with BIPOC consumers and move beyond a test-only mentality. Media targeting for diverse audiences is still lacking, and growth depends on reallocating resources to reach the new multicultural America. Diverse-owned media and creators must also be supported with tools that quantify their impact and reinforce their role in media strategies.

Interested in learning more about multicultural marketing strategies? Download our report, Engaging Multicultural Audiences. 

Did you know Infillion was the first company to ever build ads for bilingual audiences that allow users to toggle between languages in real time? Michael Colella, SVP and Executive Producer of Infillion’s Creative Studio, gives a behind-the-scenes look at this technology, which has been honored by the MediaPost OMMA Awards and the ARF David Ogilvy Awards.

Q: What was the impulse behind building this first-to-market technology?

A: Hispanic audiences are almost 20% of the U.S. population, and over half of them are bilingual to some degree. But some of them prefer English, some prefer Spanish, and some change their preference based on what content they’re watching, who’s in the room with them, or any other number of reasons. Empowering them to switch languages in real time, without needing to restart the ad, was a way to not just speak to them, but allow them some agency in how they prefer to be reached. So when a client, Nissan, came to us with a campaign to reach bilingual audiences, we thought it was time to take on this creative challenge.

Q: What tech challenges had to be overcome to make it work?

A: We had to pay close attention to ensuring that the technology could toggling between two audio and video assets at the exact timestamp that the user hit the toggle button, eliminating any visible lag or content shifting effect. We had to engage our engineering team pretty extensively here. But with brands increasingly challenged to gain the attention of consumers, a sense of immediacy and instant gratification is a must. 

We also faced a challenge in figuring out how to incorporate closed captioning. At Infillion, we strive to design for inclusivity, and we had two options here. We could either render the closed captioning as part of the video asset, or develop a solution where we’d leverage a transcript, allowing users to toggle closed captioning on or off. We settled on developing a transcription solution since it offered us the most flexibility and efficiency to deploy creative.

Q: Ads that toggle between two languages had been built and deployed before – including using Infillion’s TrueX format – but never with a real-time toggle. Why do this? How does it make a difference for the user?

A: One study after another says that consumers like choice in their advertising, and that can extend to the language that the ad is served in. This kind of ad technology is technically challenging, but it’s worth it. But the more exciting outcome was developing a solution that could be consistent across all devices, especially on CTV. The future possibilities here are.

Q: What kind of insights can a brand gather from a real-time language toggle ad?

A: The main insights brands can gather from real-time language toggle are the nuances of users’ language preferences. Maybe they always prefer English, or always prefer Spanish, or prefer one on mobile and one on CTV – where, presumably, they might be watching with others who aren’t as multilingual as they are. By determining a user’s preferred language of communication, brands can tailor their content and targeting accordingly. Especially as advertisers look to target bilingual audiences who speak languages beyond Spanish, the possibilities are endless.

Interested in learning more about multicultural marketing strategies? Download our report, Engaging Multicultural Audiences. 

Over the years, multicultural marketing has frequently overlooked Asian audiences. Hailing from over 70 different ethnicities, Asian-Americans are diverse and frequently misunderstood. Can they even be considered a single demographic for advertisers? For our recent research report Engaging Multicultural Audiences, we spoke to S. Mitra Kalita, CEO of URL Media and publisher of Epicenter NYC. Here’s what she had to say.

Q: Marketers used to think pretty much exclusively about Black and Hispanic audiences when they thought about multicultural marketing. Was there a turning point when they began to address and cater to Asian/AAPI audiences as well? What made this happen?

A: First, it’s important to understand why marketers often excluded us. Asians have been a tiny percentage of the pie chart in polls, market research, trends reports. That kept us ignored and invisible. A few things changed: one, our population has grown; two, we are overrepresented on platforms such as smart speakers and the latest technology; and three, our community got louder and more rooted in coalitions serving all people of color. There’s #StopAsianHate, sure, but we’ve also been a part of pushes to diversify Hollywood and corporate America. 

Asian-Americans are part of the growing diverse consumer purchasing power that also includes Black and Hispanic, so our inclusion is not only a sound business practice, it is important to ensure you’re reaching a growing demographic. Some suburbs – like the one I was raised in outside Princeton, NJ – are not just so-called majority minority but majority Asian.

Finally, I think the treatment of Asian-Americans at the height of Covid forever changed our community. The businesses that “get it” leaned into supporting Asian employees AND consumers. Some good examples from Peloton, for instance, are the rides they did to center Asian culture, the donations they made to #StopAsianHate, and allowing Asian instructors such as Emma Lovewell and Sam Yo to talk about their identities.

Q: There are dozens of distinct nationalities and ethnic identities encompassed by “AAPI.” How do marketers reach them authentically?

A: We have similar narratives in the Latino community, which is not a monolith. This applies for AAPI, for hyperlocal engagement, niche audiences. In my work, I try to be clear on who I am writing about and trying to serve, and how I will make efforts to reach that audience. Sometimes, when it comes to dress or food or culture or holidays, the term “Asian” can actually be committing a form of erasure; not all Asians celebrate Diwali, for example, but an organization that has an AAPI affinity group might want to think about what it’s doing for Diwali or Eid. 

The word “authentic” can be fraught because the serving of these communities cannot be afterthoughts or “over there.” The best way to be authentic is to be honest and true to the diversity and inclusion of Asians as core to your business mission and strategy. Also, it’s okay to connect consumption and community – not everything has to see DEI through the lens of charity.

Q: To what extent should marketers be segmenting even further into addressing subsets of AAPI audiences? How would you assuage concerns that this might limit scope and reach?

A: When it comes to Asian-Americans, more is more. Segmentation can help marketers achieve deeper engagement and also customize messages appropriately. When Epicenter worked with the Asian American Federation to promote a mental-health directory, we had specific and separate strategies for Bangladeshi, Nepalese, and Chinese communities, to name a few. Another time, reaching out to a Tibetan influencer opened up a brand-new segment to us; she decided to go live on Facebook and Instagram from our table and within minutes, dozens of her followers came by. In my experience, the narrower the messenger, the more trusted the messenger. 

You need to be able to meet people where they are AND be culturally relevant. This creates opportunities to provide information that some people may not know they needed or wanted. 

Q: What’s one thing about AAPI audiences that marketers tend to think is true, but isn’t?

A: I think it’s time to retire the tropes about our community being affluent, good at math, and strivers. Sure, some of that is true, but we are a diverse population of artists and creatives, rich and poor, city dwellers and suburbanites. I’d say marketers would do best to home in on whom they are trying to reach and work backward, relying on a mix of data and on-the-ground research, instead of starting with assumptions.

Interested in learning more about multicultural marketing strategies? Download our report, Engaging Multicultural Audiences. 

For decades, subliminal messaging – the art of sending someone a message that influences the recipient even though they do not perceive it consciously – has been a hot potato for marketers. Research – most research – indicated that it worked. But advertisers didn’t want to admit they used it as a marketing tactic, which just made consumers more and more suspicious that advertising was being deployed to unwittingly manipulate their minds.

Now, in the 2020s, with the topic of attention front-and-center in the advertising industry, it’s worth revisiting the concept. Sure, subliminal advertising works in theory. But:

• Is it still as effective in today’s world of always-on messaging?
• Is it ethical to grab consumers’ attention when they aren’t even aware of it?

Let’s backtrack a bit. Subliminal advertising was a hot potato the minute it first surfaced in the late 1950s. With consumers uncomfortable with the idea they were being influenced subconsciously by marketers, advertising and manipulation became synonymous in the public’s mind. It was the Cold War, after all, and there was a general fear of brainwashing, spying and the invasion of privacy.

Despite consumer fears and distaste, in 1958 the Advertising Research Foundation issued a report entitled, “The Application of Subliminal Perception in Advertising,” which concluded that in certain instances human subjects are capable of responding to stimuli which are so weak in intensity, duration, size or clarity, that they are not consciously aware of them. Around the same time, Vance Packard published his highly influential book, “The Hidden Persuaders,” claiming that consumers “are being monitored, managed, and manipulated outside our conscious awareness by advertisers.”

But even half a century later, subliminal messaging was still a bogeyman. In the 2000s, a TV viewer triggered a media frenzy when they spotted what they believed to be a subliminal message embedded in the Food Network TV show “Iron Chef.” When a particular clip of the show was slowed down and viewed frame by frame, a McDonald’s logo appeared for 1/30th of a second. Barbara Lippert, former columnist for Adweek, explained it as “a flash frame that came up at the wrong time.” A spokesperson for the Food Network argued that it was “a technical error…definitely not a subliminal message!” McDonald’s issued the statement, “we don’t do subliminal advertising.”

The debate has long gone unsettled, as there was scarce evidence of subliminal advertising driving brand outcomes – in part because virtually no agency or advertiser was willing to admit that it engaged in the practice. Nonetheless, instances like these fed the idea that subliminal ads are happening beneath the level of real, attentive consciousness.

But consider this: a lot of advertising is processed subliminally, whether it’s intended to contain a hidden message or not. Ross Wilhelm, a prolific marketing professor at the University of Michigan from the 60s through the 80s, argued that every time we drive past a billboard we likely receive a subliminal suggestion. Each time we flip through a magazine we probably receive subliminal messages from ads we aren’t really paying attention to. And when we flip past a TV channel during a commercial break, we are probably receiving subliminal reminders. In lieu of his position, the impact of social media, feeds, reels and the like probably fit the bill too.

All these exposures beneath the surface may have a true impact. Conventional neuroscience suggests our subconsciousness takes in millions of bits of information simultaneously, while our consciousness can only deal with many magnitudes less – a few dozen bits at a time. There’s a lot of information we’re taking in and processing without consciously knowing it.

Here’s the problem today. Consumers see so many ads, at such a constant pace, that the ability to absorb a message is hampered by just how many other messages are bombarding them at the same time. So even if subliminal advertising works – and even if it works well – the landscape has changed. Metaphorically, there isn’t just one McDonald’s logo flashing in the background of our lives. That McDonald’s logo is contending with dozens, even hundreds of other brand messages that may flash by our eyes in a given minute.

But there’s more that we can learn here. What if the decades-long revulsion to the idea of subliminal advertising isn’t really rooted in Cold War-era paranoia, but in the fact that humans inherently prefer to be in control of what they process?

Infillion published a report earlier this year that walked through the spectrum of attention, proving that business outcomes for brands are strongest when consumers pay attention willingly, interact with the brand, and receive something in exchange. This type of attention, which we call “experiential attention,” seems like it would be the opposite of subliminal advertising. But it’s more complex than that. Subliminal messages lie in murky waters, stuck in limbo somewhere between disruption and continuity. They’re not nearly as annoying as a sudden pop-up ad when you’re in the middle of reading a news article. You may willingly and innocently glance at a logo, perhaps even lingering on it, totally oblivious to that logo’s ulterior motives.

For example, fast food chains often use red and yellow in their branding, because these colors are known to stimulate appetite and energy. Is that message of “Get hungry!” a true “disruption” if the consumer isn’t consciously aware that their brain is being bombarded with that signal? Probably not. But is it the most effective way to drive customer loyalty? Definitely not.

Tricking consumers into paying attention to an ad just isn’t a great look for a brand. While logo tricks are quick and fun, when it comes to genuine brand-building, “honest people don’t hide their deeds,” to quote Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights. Impactful treatment by brands comes from messaging that is delivered with real conscious attention, across meaningful time durations, in uncontroversial, privacy-compliant ways.

Want to learn more about ads that get people to pay meaningful attention? Check out our TrueX Engagement Showcase here.

There’s a famous old saying in our industry that says, “Half my advertising spend is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” It’s typically attributed to one of a handful of midcentury advertising titans – but fittingly, it’s unclear who actually said it, if anyone ever did.

That’s a far cry from today’s advertising landscape, where digital ads can be deployed with peak efficiency and tracked precisely from targeting to post-campaign measurement. You, as a marketer, know exactly which of your ads worked, and if they didn’t, what you can do to fix them.

The problem is that this efficiency has come at a tremendous cost both in terms of finances and labor. One estimate found that the average enterprise uses an average of 120 marketing technology tools. That’s a lot of software subscriptions to pay for, a lot of employees who need to be trained to use them, and a lot of headaches when one piece of software doesn’t “talk” to another. Marketers find their media dreams restricted by budget, logistics, and a lack of interoperability. The seemingly infinite possibilities of digital marketing suddenly become a lot less promising, especially as marketers find it even more difficult to balance the need to build a brand with the imperative to drive sales in the short term. Our ads are efficient – but are they effective?

At Advertising Week New York 2024, Infillion chief growth officer Laurel Rossi moderated a panel that addressed this topic, called “Consumers Have Infinite Media Choices. Why Don’t Advertisers?” She was joined by David Rusli, chief strategy officer of Wavemaker; Jinu Peyeti, senior director of audience, insights, and measurement at Albertsons Media Collective; Jatinder Singh, global head of data and AI at Accenture Song; and Amanda DeVito, chief marketing officer at Butler/Till.

“Paradoxes have driven this business for as long as I’ve been in it,” Rossi said. “Brand versus demand. Efficiency versus effectiveness.” So, she asked the panelists, what do they do to address it?

“I think the challenge we all face is that efficiency without effectiveness is like hitting a bullseye on the wrong target, and effectiveness without efficiency is like watching the most incredible fireworks show you’ve ever seen and knowing that it’s going to fizzle out because you don’t have the resources,” Amanda DeVito said. “I love programmatic, I love being able to hyper-target, I love data driven strategy – I love all that, especially coming from a media perspective, but I think we have to balance that with brand health.”

Jatinder Singh said that marketers need to start from the middle, describing the gulf between pure brand advertising and performance-driven programmatic ads as “these beautiful things that nobody sees [and] these ugly things that everybody sees.”

Being selective with the right technology vendors is key. “For me, the technology is the enabler and obviously we will work with our clients to ensure that we partner with the right ecosystem partners to put the right infrastructure and operations in place,” Singh said. “We no longer have the false binary of ‘I need to build a brand’ or ‘I need to build an ad.’ We need to do both.”

Coming from the retail media side of the business – a sector that has been rapidly adding even more tools and options for marketers – Jinu Peyeti recognizes the complexity afoot. “Figuring out what works for your business takes a lot longer than it should…We need to build an ecosystem, platforms, tools, technologies that reduce the cost of testing and get us to a point where all of our media is measured on incrementally and that is when we’re going to know what really works,” she said. “I would seek out vendors that are solving a problem that I am already currently facing. I will not just listen to vendor pitches without knowing what the problem is that it will solve for me.”

In other words, Peyeti phrased it hypothetically: “I have these problems that I’m trying to solve. How can I solve it with maximum integration and minimum number of new vendors? How does this fit into my long term technology stack and plan?”

David Rusli suggested that this can be achieved by asking the question of not just what a vendor can to do target or measure, but how that targeting or measurement can, in addition, serve the broader purpose of building a brand. “I think there’s no point of adding new tech or new tools just for the sake of adding new stuff. In fact, what we really really need is one holistic platform that connects all this different tech, all these different tools,” he said. By cutting down on the red tape and added logistics, marketers can then free up some energy to focus on the bigger picture. “We are here to build long lasting brands and to do that effectiveness has to be our number one source of truth.”

Interested in simplifying your marketing tech stack? Infillion’s team would love to chat with you.