Corporate America has yet to address multiculturalism, and the PR industry, which should be a leader in this realm, has been just as unresponsive.
The fact that there are few statistics about multicultural PR, alone, stands as proof of how neglected an issue this is. And while there are organizations that solely represent certain minority segments, many of them are operating without a benchmark. For example, the Black Public Relations Society of America, when contacted last week by PR NEWS, said it did not have any statistics on the number of PR firms specializing in multicultural issues.
Most major corporations have just begun making advertising inroads, much less PR inroads. And they are only starting to bring on board employees who have an understanding of multicultural distinctions.
Examples of grassroots PR efforts by corporations like Anheuser-Busch, which is highly regarded for its efforts in the Hispanic community (the company is a flagship sponsor of the National Hispanic Scholarship Fund), are rare.
Consider this:
- The Public Relations Society of America only recently approved the formation of a Multicultural Communications Section;
- Sources say major corporations spend on advertising in ethnic markets about 5 to 10 percent of what they spend in general markets. According to Hispanic Business magazine, AT&T, a leader in multicultural marketing, spent $25 million in the Hispanic market in 1996 for advertising. It's not difficult to surmise that PR didn't claim anything near that since advertising budgets in the general market easily triple what's spent in PR; and
- The Minority Markets Alert newsletter reported last year that companies like Phillip Morris, Time Warner and Walt Disney had no corporate-wide policies about minority marketing.
"The PR community has just scratched the surface," said Amy Hilliard, president of The Hilliard Jones Marketing Group Inc., a marcom firm in Chicago that consults clients about incorporating multiculturalism in their communications endeavors.
But the tide's about to turn. Several indicators signal that. They include the 1990 Census which showed that 25 percent of the American population are people of color and The National Foundation for Women Business Owners' recent survey indicating that businesses owned by women of color are growing three times faster than the overall rate of business growth in the U.S.
As a PR exec, you need to establish a rapport with the press, politicians, analysts and customers in those markets.
It's also wise PR to speak to sources; scan the Web for news with a multicultural twist; and invest in services such as the All-In-One Directory, a run-down of black and Hispanic media outlets that's published by Gebbie Press, New Paltz, N.Y.; the Asian Pacific Media Guide, with hundreds of listings broken down by language, media, circulation and region that's published by the Asian News Service in Los Angeles; or the Guide to Multicultural Resources, a listing of public and private institutions and other organizations that's published by Highsmith Press, Fort Atkinson, Wisc.
It's not enough to count on The Wall Street Journal or a mainstream trade publication to reach, for example, the Hispanic community. You should also be targeting Hispanic magazine. Case in point is the Miami Herald, which has branded two products: one for the Hispanic community and another for its core of English-speaking subscribers.
Learning The Hard Way
Without question, Texaco learned the hard way about cultural sensitivity after a highly-publicized race discrimination suit involving its employees last year (and settled soon after).
But now look at the company's Web site, http://www.texaco.com, and you'll see how feverishly it is working today to correct public-perception problems and focus on multiculturalism.
Five Rs of Multicultural PR 1. Recognition - Know that there are diverse segments and you need to show upper management why you have to reach them. |
The list of what Texaco has done to address multiculturalism is endless, but here's a glimpse of some good-faith PR deeds it's doing:
- Appointing an indepedent Equality and Fairness Task Force;
- Hiring UniWorld Group Inc., one of the nation's largest minority-owned communications companies; and
- Selecting KJS Marketing Communications Solutions to provide advertising and PR in the Hispanic market.
The company won't reveal how much it's spending on this kind of PR but Jim Swords, assistant manager of media relations for Texaco, said the company is striving to ensure that its workplace is diverse and that it's reaching a variety of ethnic customer and media groups.
Another corporation making strides in this area is AllState insurance.
One of its PR companies, Newark, N.J.-based Correct Communications, forwarded materials to PR NEWS to illustrate some of its recent multicultural PR efforts on behalf of AllState.
Those endeavors include its African American Women on Tour conference held in April in Oakland, Calif.; its ongoing "From Whence We Came, a Salute to African American Women of Triumph" recognition program; and its sponsorship of the 100 Black Men of America Inc.'s national convention held last month in Atlanta.
The lack of emphasis on multiculturalism in the PR sector is based, in part, on the fact that meshing PR and multiculturalism requires serious immersion in many ethnic markets: African-, Russian-, Italian-, Arabic-, Chinese-, Indian- and Native-American, according to Lisa Skriloff, president of New York-based Multicultural Marketing Resources Inc., a PR and communications company representing women- and minority-owned businesses as well as the corporations that market to them.
Both Skriloff and Hilliard said that what many lay people - and, unfortunately, some PR professionals - don't realize is that a PR campaign or endeavor that's intended to have a multicultural component isn't simply about translation. What it's about is understanding cultural influences and, as Skriloff said, recognizing that the minority population is becoming a majority population. (Hilliard-Jones, 773/924-9997; Correct Comm., 201/242-3305; Texaco, 914/253-4156; MMR, 212/242-3351)