Creative Freedom
 

It’s time to engage all your shoppers

story by Myriam Beaugé

Flipping through an old consumer magazine or newspaper is like stepping into a time machine.  It conjures up images of a society foregone—its citizens, values, dreams and fears. Alongside the articles, the advertisements are most compelling, recounting vivid stories of brands, their market positioning and target consumers. But while the editorial content might reveal the true state of evolving communities, the ads often seem fixated on a conceptually generic mainstream.
Diversity in advertising is by no means a given. Even today, when marketers are marching to the beat of globalisation, recognising shopper diversity in advertising is still considered edgy, beyond the mainstream. But going to the so-called edge isn’t as wild a trip as one would assume.  A walk in almost any neighbourhood or mall will do.
Diversity-driven advertising is about exercising a marketer’s creative freedom to acknowledge, represent and engage all shoppers. It’s also about realising that even the mainstream is anything but homogenous, and that there is worth in diversity, both for brand value and corporate finances—emerging markets, which include such demographics as visible minorities, gays and lesbians, are said to be responsible for £53 billion in collective spending in America alone.
You probably won’t find a company more mainstream than Wal-Mart, whose every move marketers closely monitor worldwide. The company, which reportedly spent £265 million on advertising in 2004 to attract consumers, has officially committed itself to diversity—not only in its hiring and management practices (this claim has been challenged by some recently) but also in advertising.
“Our multicultural merchandise mix reflects our respect for our diverse customer base,” the company states in its Diversity Fact Sheet, “and we are committed to communicating effectively through our advertising and shopping environment.”
In line with that commitment, on the 30th March Wal-Mart announced its first-ever advertising campaign geared toward the Asian Pacific American market. The company says the campaign focuses on the personal stories and shopping experiences of Wal-Mart customers and is designed to allow Asian American consumers to see and hear firsthand what the Wal-Mart experience is all about, and all this in their own mother tongue.
With the help of IW Group, Inc., a leading Asian American advertising and marketing company based in Los Angeles, California (USA),
Wal-Mart developed original television, print and radio ads in Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese and English. The ads began airing on the 1st April in select US markets, including Los Angeles, Houston, San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose. 
The TV ads, for example, feature testimonials of Asian American families for whom Wal-Mart is the retailer of choice. In one spot, three generations of a Chinese family make shopping at Wal-Mart a group outing and an opportunity to spend time together. The Kwong family describes Wal-Mart products and services that meet its unique needs—from clothing to household goods to toys and video games.
"At Wal-Mart, we understand that our customers come from communities with diverse languages, cultures and beliefs. We also know that a large segment of our Asian American customers prefer  to receive information about our company in their own languages," said Bob Connolly, executive VP of marketing and consumer communications for Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
"Communicating in the languages and culture familiar to Asian Americans reflects Wal-Mart's deep commitment to diversity and our respect for all of our customers."
According to IW president Nita Song, this strategy will pay off.
"Wal-Mart is one of the first retailers in the country to develop television ads that take into account the varying perspectives of Asian American consumers from all ethnic backgrounds," Song commented. "It is also one of few retailers to recognise the importance of reaching out to this fast-growing segment of the US population.  Asian Americans in general are fiercely brand-loyal, have the highest median household income in the country and have a combined purchasing power in excess of £190 billion."
Nowhere is such a stance more relevant than in Queens, New York, which could easily be dubbed Diversity Land—162 languages are spoken there. When Queens Center was ready to develop a new advertising campaign, marketing manager Dawn Simon turned to agency Panzano & Partners for help in developing creative that would fit the marketplace. The brainstorming sessions led them straight to the centre’s target clientele.
“The idea behind the campaign was to use the residents of Queens to tell the mall’s story,” says Gina Iannone of Panzano & Partners.
The mall used guerrilla marketing techniques to introduce the Grow Your Own Way campaign to the public, and then expanded the promo push with open casting calls, PR and highly targeted, aggressive media placement.
Iannone says hundreds of residents responded in the hope of being chosen to appear in Queens Center’s print, transit, outdoor, on-mall and cable advertising. Of them, 19 were chosen as the mall’s official ambassadors.
“Before it was over, they had become minor celebrities in their own right,” Iannone recalls, adding that the campaign was part of a multi-level strategy designed to highlight the changes occurring during the mall’s £145-million redevelopment (the centre picked up a 2004 ICSC MAXI marketing award in the Grand Opening, Expansion and Renovation category).
The centre’s new I Am campaign is now underway to expand market share following the addition of new brands, including Coach,  Guess and Urban Outfitters, among others.
For Montreal Eaton Centre (MEC) in Montreal, Canada, multiculturalism is also a reality.
“It doesn’t take long for anyone shopping at the MEC to notice diversity in the visitors who shop at the mall, or even the managers and employees who work in the boutiques,” says Zeina Barghout, marketing director. “Customers should be able to relate to the advertisements and the latter should reflect the reality of the market in which the mall positions itself.”
Three years ago, MEC launched To the Urban Beat, a campaign designed to not only position the mall as being young, dynamic and urban, but also to portray the diversity and multi-ethnicity of the cosmopolite city that is Montreal. The campaign featured models from various backgrounds, including South American, Canadian, Lebanese, Jamaican and Italian.
“Ever since [we introduced To the Urban Beat], our advertising has remained true to that positioning,” Barghout adds. “Today, we still try to reflect that reality in most of our campaigns. Our upcoming spring/summer 2005 campaign based on the theme of Desire will also embrace the diversity we evolve in.”
Racial and cultural diversity may be the most obvious place to start for shopping centres and retailers wanting to address their community through advertising. But that isn’t where it ends.
Diversity encompasses much more than that. It takes into consideration every aspect of the human experience: life stages, sexual orientation, gender roles, disability, and the definitions and representations of beauty.
Extreme examples of uniformity aside, the majority of communities contain a highly diverse citizenry. Their inhabitants are people who have families, work, play, love and shop—at the mall and on the street. Marketing to them and developing advertising campaigns that include them only makes sense.
The keen marketer’s focus isn’t on political correctness—picture an ad campaign with a few token members of emerging markets. It isn’t necessarily on niche marketing either, as many shopping centres appeal to a very broad audience. Instead, the focus is on the consumer base which already exists in a mall’s catchment, regardless of a mall’s brand positioning.
Take a family oriented shopping centre. Its marketer might be reluctant to include a gay or lesbian couple in its advertising creative because she or he identifies these consumers primarily based on stereotypical representations of their sexual orientation. Yet gay males and lesbian females have parents, siblings, partners, children and extended families. They too shop at the mall for Mother’s Day, Easter, Father’s Day and Christmas.
The Taubman Company’s Beverly Center in Los Angeles, California, is among the retail destinations that understand a need for diversity in advertising. In 2003, the trend-setting 900,000-square-foot centre came up with a tourism ad which fit its “For a life less ordinary” positioning.
The ad featured two men locked in an embrace, while a bubble above that showed the target audience their thoughts, listing the many destination stores they’d find when they visited Beverly Center. The ad’s tagline was “Embrace a Trip less Ordinary”, while the text below the photograph detailed special perks for out-of-town visitors—a Passport to Style discount booklet and a complimentary shopping bag.
On the retail front, diversity-aware advertisers include such household names as Nordstrom, Ikea and Kenneth Cole.
Nordstrom says not only does it advertise in both local and national minority publications (e.g. Hispanic Magazine and Minority Business News USA), but it is also committed to featuring models of colour and models with disabilities in at least one-third of its ads.
Meanwhile, Ikea continues to produce ads that feature homosexual consumers. One of the company’s many such ads, created for the Dutch market, shows a child in a mouse costume sitting on top of a coffee table set, while two men stand behind her—one kissing the other on the cheek. The headline reads, "My daddies are also a set".
According to The Commercial Closet, an organisation dedicated to improving perceptions of lesbians, gays, bisexual and transgenders through better advertising, the ad gets the thumbs up because it “pokes fun at stereotypes of meek Dutch, who use a gray mouse as a traditional Dutch metaphor for bland, mainstream people who don't like to cause controvers”.
Designer Kenneth Cole went a step further, taking the proverbial controversy bull by the horns in an advertisement that was part of the company’s Are You Putting Us On? series. The ad showed the forearms of two men holding hands—one of them sporting a Kenneth Cole watch and a wedding band. The text read, “52 percent of Americans think same-sex marriages don’t deserve a good reception. Are you putting us on? Kenneth Cole”.
Kenneth Cole’s target market is by no means limited to gay males. It is very much a mainstream brand in the traditional sense. But it is obviously a brand that has chosen to go to the advertising edge to deal with diversity straight on.
Sometimes, going to the edge isn’t so much about who you feature in the ads, but how you communicate with your audience.
Wyler Werbung in Zurich, Switzerland, is one advertising agency that produces creative that is anything but traditional. Among the agency’s most memorable work is a series of ads for Shoppi & Tivoli shopping centre in Spreitenbach. The ads, which were created to promote the centre’s children’s zoo and Big Turtle Show, feature animals beautifying themselves, just as a shopper would before going out for a night on the town. The creative is certainly eye-catching and it meets Ruedi Wyler’s criteria for successfully edgy advertising.
“Edgy creative has to be understood by the consumer and support the advertisement in a pleasant way,” says the principal of Wyler Werbung. “If the shopping centre’s supply and ambience goes together in harmony, the centre can be successful with an edgy advertisement.”
Wyler also says that creative should strive to inspire sympathy for a shopping centre, using memorable images to enable the centre to build its own good image in the marketplace.
The creative that DDB London produced for Harvey Nichols’ summer sale took a decidely harder edge, dramatising the lenghts to which fashionistas will go to in order to get that must-have bargain.
Titled Bruise, this series depicted the aftermath of the bargain hunt, with shoppers revealing the bruises they got during their shopping sprees.
The ads might be harsh to some, perhaps even too harsh, but to Adam Tucker they are by no means gratuitous.
“Harvey Nichols is not a risk-taker and nor are we. Because advertising is not a risk if you know the audience you are trying to reach and how to enter a dialogue with them,” says Tucker, creative partner at DDB London. “However, it does mean being single-minded and confident.”
Tucker also adds that being edgy for its own sake is pointless.
“If it is controversial but lacks intellectual rigour, then it becomes an empty gesture, like those awful ads that write ‘SEX’ in huge letters, then say, ‘Now that we’ve got your attention, can we remind you to keep your feet off the seats,’ or something similarly tedious and irrelevant.”
Rethink Communications, an advertising and design agency in Vancouver, British Columbia, has produced various works that reflect this concept. Among them, an award-winning campaign for apparel retailer Bootlegger featured creative designed for urban youth.
The Bootlegger ads don’t feature any models, just a page from a school notebook that offers a window to a student’s mind—whether he/she be a budding DJ or an aspiring world band member. Besides a student’s daydreaming scribbles, each ad also shows a Bootlegger outfit that a young consumer might dream of buying.
Again, featuring token consumers in creative and placing ads in niche media vehicles only represents a partial commitment to diversity. Better still is to extend the campaign objectives to incorporate other aspects of the marketing mix, including special events (Black History Month, Disability Week, Gay Pride Week), customer services (telephones that can be used by the hearing-impaired, or working for a school for the blind to incorporate Braille in a mall’s touch-screen interactive kiosk), sales promotions (shopping night sponsored by a plus-size apparel store) and community outreach initiatives (a community room or art gallery for youth).
That is just the approach that MEC takes, often aligning its marketing with the many cultural events that take place within blocks from its property—they range from the St. Patrick’s Day Parade to the Caribbean Fiesta Parade to the International Montreal Jazz Festival. At times MEC directly sponsors events. It also shows its support through such simple programmes as decorating the mall for St. Patrick’s Day.
“The music in the mall also conveys the multicultural market we operate in,” Barghout says. “We play music from around the world.”
The opportunity to tap into emerging markets, extend consumer loyalty and grow sales are the motivators that initially will drive most shopping centre and retail marketers to broaden the depth and scope of their advertising.
Ultimately, the decision to embrace diversity and allow it to permeate a company’s marketing strategy comes down to corporate willingness to leave the advertising time warp and step into contemporary reality—without the hang-ups.

The Diversity Checklist

1. Get Real
Revise your consumer research methodology to obtain a more accurate picture of your clientele’s diversity. An awareness of who is already shopping in your centre will help initiate the process.

2. Stay Informed
Broaden the scope of the popular media you consume. It will give you insight into the lives, psyche and buying habits of new audiences, not to mention offer ideas on how to create advertisements that will also reach them.

3. Be Sensitive
Featuring members of diverse markets is a start, but be sure not to portray them according to old stereotypes and clichés. Gay shoppers, for examples, are not all white men with a keen sense of style and a passion for fashion. In reality, they exist across all races and enjoy a countless array of interests.

4. Go for Consistency
If you truly want to benefit from diversity advertising, don’t bother with a one-off campaign. Getting black shoppers in the mall for Kwanzaa is great, but having them shop all year is better.

5. Be Free
Embracing diversity shouldn’t be a chore and it isn’t about shocking the mainstream. It’s about cleansing your creative mind of societal hang-ups so you can understand who comprises today’s true mainstream and get your target audience comfortable and excited about shopping at your centre—today and for years to come.