Black Americans and the Internet

Author Pepper Miller recently presented the results of a Radio One/Yankelovich survey to Target Market News' ninth annual African-American Research and Advertising Summit.

Among the findings of the study were that Black Americans have caught up with white Americans when it comes to using the Internet. Pepper commented that one reason studies have shown Black Americans lagging so far behind their white peers is that surveyors have asked about computer use vs. online use. "Access tells a bigger story about who does what, when, and where online. Radio One and Yankelovich asked the better question and got it right."

Pepper is one of the outstanding Black American researchers today who knows what the right questions are and how to ask them to gain insight into the market.

You can access more from the study and her comments about it in this Ad Age article, by clicking here.

Making messages more authentic for non-white Americans

Yankelovich Monitor Multicultural Marketing Study reports that only 25 percent of all African-Americans and Hispanic consumers find marketing and advertising personally and culturally relevant.

Yankelovich has it right, but it doesn't have to be that way. Black Americans and U.S. Hispanics are looking for authenticity, not just cultural artifacts that appear to speak to them.

The weekly Yankelovich Monitor blog reports "Like all consumers, African Americans and Hispanics crave marketing communications and product offerings that reflect a deep understanding of their emotional and cultural desires. For example, among African-American and Hispanic consumers who read African-American and Spanish-language newspapers, the vast majority say they do so because they find the content more personally relevant than mass-market newspapers."

Incidently you can sign up for the weekly blog here. It's a great way to get informed commentary about a variety of marketing issues.

And, you can have your whole team learn more about how African-Americans and both U.S. born and foreign-born Hispanics view the world and what "authenticy" means to them by reading some of Paramount Market Publishing's excellent titles, including What's Black About It? by Pepper Miller and Herb Kemp and a just-released book on Hispanics, Hispanic Customers for Life, by bestselling PMP author, M. Isabel Valdes. Isabel delves deeper into the Hispanic culture by looking at Hispanics by generation and how long they have lived in the United States. You can find more information about each of these books and many more multicultural titles by clicking here.