R2 Media Celebrates ‘Old Friends’ And The Multicultural Majority

I love getting together with old friends. Last month, I stopped by the Cynopsis Media ‘First Look’ 2023 OTT Conference to support my 'old friends' and long-time partners at Canela Media. R2 Media buys media from Canela. It is an important part of many, if not most, of our Hispanic media campaigns. Canela Media was a ‘First Look’ Conference headliner, as it was presenting information on one of its more successful partnerships — its partnership with McDonalds. The presentation was excellent. It was centered around the fact McDonalds was the launch partner of Canela Music’s Rising Notes television show. Rising Notes is a television program that features up-and-coming Latino music talent. It debuted in September 2022 on Canela TV. It is quite good.

The back-and-forth between the Canela people, the representative at McDonalds and the McDonalds account lead at Canvas Worldwide was informative and enviable. At times it was a real love fest, with a lot of banter about ‘authenticity’ and ‘purpose.’ For me, Ryan Worthy, McDonalds Senior Manager Marketing Supplier Diversity, summed things up perfectly, towards the end of the session, when saying, it’s “critical that all fans see themselves reflected” in what McDonalds does. This statement got me thinking about the ‘multicultural majority’ that exists in the U.S., in general, and in many U.S. markets, in particular. It also got me thinking about the approach R2 Media takes in its advertising campaigns. (For clarity sake, McDonalds refers to its customers as fans.)

When people talk about the multicultural majority they are usually talking about age demographics. For instance, most people know 2020 was a standout year, as it was the first time that an American generation, the 1-day old - 17-year old segment, is comprised of a multicultural majority. Most people also know because of birth rate trends by 2028 the under 35-year old segment will be a multicultural majority, and by 2033 the under 50-year old segment will be a multicultural majority. Those are not dates way off in the distance. These two projections reflect rather dramatic swings in this country when talking about the entire U.S. population.

At R2 Media, we think about the multicultural majority differently. Because we are an agency that specializes in regional, local and hyper-local marketing we think about marketing, and in fact multicultural marketing, on a geographic basis. We think in terms of Chula Vista, CA. We think in terms of White Plains, NY. With sophisticated advertising technology, we have the ability to put the right ad, in front of the right person, at the right time, in the right language. And with the bourgeoning popularity of Connected TV and Streaming Audio, along with digital display, we can buy as much media as we care to against these audiences through programmatic ad opportunities.

Given the fact R2 Media is a full-serve, multicultural, agency, many of our clients have us generate creative in both English and Spanish, and have us plan and buy their media accordingly. The agency has always leveraged its bilingual skills to target the growing Hispanic and Spanish speaking audience. We not only create video, audio, display and other creative campaigns in Spanish language, we specialize in running these campaigns targeting Spanish language-first segments and advanced data targeting which serves ads in the language of the live viewer; meaning a bilingual target could potentially see an ad in English while watching ESPN and then in Spanish watching ESPN Deportes. Some clients don’t want to invest in a Spanish language version of every campaign created for them, but that won’t stop them from prominently featuring Hispanic people in their creative. At this point, all marketers want to connect authentically with their community.

The multicultural majority has arrived and is spreading rapidly throughout our society — from teens to the under-35 and the under-50 year old age segments. It is also spreading from city-to-city and town-to-town. Today, brands need to avoid mono-cultural marketing bubbles, as they are culturally dangerous. All advertisers need to be culturally literate nowadays and may in fact need to hire in-culture marketing experts to guide them. If you are not already focused on multicultural literacy you have to start playing catch up or you will risk your brand becoming disconnected and irrelevant.