Music is the food of ethnic marketing. A new study from Nielsen says multicultural consumers — the one-third of the U.S. population who identify as African-American, Asian American or Hispanic — respond more positively to music in brand marketing than does the population at large. They are also more likely to be technology early adopters, to use mobile devices and streaming services, and to buy digital albums and songs. And per Nielsen, they are more likely to react positively when brands engage them with music-oriented promotions. Nielsen's report, “Listen Up: Music and The Multicultural Consumer,” notes that the multicultural population, about 37% of the population and growing, is 17% Hispanic, 14% African-American and 5% Asian American. The media measurement company, citing Census stats, says that in just four years under-18 multicultural Americans will outnumber under-18 whites. Right now, 46% of the population of Americans between 2 and 17 years of age are multicultural and half of all multicultural Americans are under 35, per the firm. They are more likely than others to pay for streaming services via Pandora One, Spotify Premium, Google Play Music, RDIO and Grooveshark. Pandora has the lion's share with 36% of multicultural consumers favoring the streaming channel, versus 34% for YouTube and 13% for iHeartRadio. On average, per Nielsen Music 360, multicultural Americans spend $7 more on music than the total population — $111 per year versus $104, or 31% of the total spent on music. And they over-index for using YouTube as a digital-music discovery channel, 36% versus 28% for non-Hispanic whites. Their top source of music during a given week are Internet streaming radio services, favored by 50% of multiculturals, versus 44% of non-Hispanic whites. And they are more musically active on social: 48% "like" Facebook posts from music artists; 43% share music through social channels; 37% comment on Facebook posts; 37% have shared a playlist; 31% repost from musical artists; 26% retweet band tweets; and 16% use "Scrobbling" to track songs. African-American, Asian American and Hispanic Americans also respond to brands that lead with musical score: 61% respond favorably to brands offering a free download of a new single; 55% respond to ads featuring music they like; 51% respond favorably to brands whose sweepstakes dangle CDs, and band-centric merchandise and concerts. Forty-eight percent respond to a brand sponsoring a tour and to brand sponsorship of concerts; 45% like brands that allow music downloads through proof of purchase. Nielsen points out in the study that technology is dissolving musical genres. "A fan can move from rap to K-Pop to rock to reggaeton with a simple click of a finger," says the study, noting that Comcast and P. Diddy's Revolt TV, serves up a stew of genre mixes. "The hit song 'Hangover,' a pan-cultural collaboration between Korean dance-pop superstar Psy and hip hop icon Snoop Dog, tapped a global audience with more than 7 million views on YouTube." The study says that multicultural Millennials over-index for R&B and Hip-Hop. The "total market" over-indexes in — you guessed it — country music. They also have a slightly greater propensity to favor top-40 and rock.
The world of business telecommunications solutions should be less about what the solutions are, and more about how they work for the people using them. With a major rebrand of its business technology services (and a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign), Sprint is focusing less on the what, and more on the who, of business services. The new Sprint Business brand, which will run with the tagline “For companies with people in them,” is built around the idea that the best companies are the ones with the most engaged employees, and that removing obstacles — by embracing advanced collaboration and mobility tools — is the best way to help drive their success. “We want to shine the spotlight on the challenges that [companies and employees] have everyday, and highlight the solutions,” Marin Martinovic, director of business marketing for Sprint, tells Marketing Daily. “We’re speaking more relevantly around them, not just shouting solution-centric messages.” The brand positioning was developed with Velocity Partners, a London-based business-to-business firm that works with technology-driven companies. The Sprint Business brand uses as a key insight that by 2020, Millennials will make up more than half of the workforce by 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor. The concept also acknowledges how the concept of work has shifted to account for more contract and off-site work happening every day, says Tom Roberts, Sprint’s senior vice president of marketing. “We see Millennials making up a much higher portion of the workforce and wanting to work in different ways,” Tom Roberts, senior vice president of marketing, tells Marketing Daily. “We want to emphasize that what we are doing is helping them work more effectively and enjoy their jobs.” Advertising behind the new brand will be distinct from it’s consumer-targeted marketing, with an “edgier” feel that shows off how the technology empowers employees. One print ad, for instance, shows 12 smaller pictures of a firm’s employees, highlighted by a larger picture of the boss, with the headline, “I work for them.” The body copy stresses, “these people carry this business on their shoulders. Every day, no matter what they are up against.” “It’s edgier than what we’ve done in the past,” Roberts says. “It will be edgy but employee-focused, mobilizing them to do what they’re capable of.” In addition to highly targeted television, print and digital advertising, Sprint Business has revamped its website to include new ideas about how to enable different ideas of work and a blog dedicated to subjects such as collaboration tools, mobile security, mobile workforce management and managing cloud-aware networks. Those subjects will be communicated through text reading, “Collaborate. Mobilize. Accelerate. Work this way.” “Two-thirds of the [business technology] sales process happens before engaging with us. They do assessments and needs studies,” Roberts says. “We think what we’re doing in content management and develop will help in those earlier stages.”
Capturing breakfast share is one of today's biggest opportunities for both packaged foods makers and restaurant chains. Two-thirds of U.S. consumers eat breakfast; the challenge is understanding the shifting breakfast landscape and what's most important to various consumer segments. Case in point: While Millennials' true level of adventurousness is often exaggerated, when it comes to breakfast, they're indeed more open than other age groups to new concepts, according to research by Datassential. In a recent survey on breakfast dishes, flavors and trends among 1,280 consumers, Millennials showed more interest in all of the breakfast trends tested, including healthier options and ethnically-influenced dishes. Nearly 65% were interested in elevated comfort foods (premium versions of traditional breakfast comfort foods like waffles and biscuits and gravy), and 63% were interested in "monster" or mini breakfast sandwiches. In short, innovative breakfast offerings are key in luring Millennials – a point clearly informing more restaurant menus, including Taco Bell's new breakfast offerings. Also key for restaurants, in particular, is that Millennials are more inclined than any other age group to skip breakfast, and to eat breakfast foods outside of traditional morning breakfast hours. For instance, 16% of Millennials reported eating breakfast items as an afternoon snack, compared to 5% of those in Gen X, 2% of Boomers, and none of the Silent Generation respondents. For restaurant operators, this means that offering breakfast foods during lunch, dinner or snack times may drive Millennial consumption, points out Datassential managing director Maeve Webster. CPG Opportunities While CPG makers are being increasingly challenged by restaurants' expanding breakfast options, 83% of consumers reported that they ate their last breakfast at home. Overall, consumers reported that time, ease, convenience and health were the most important factors when choosing to eat breakfast at home. They prefer foods that are quick to prepare and eat, while noting that cost is the critical factor deterring them from eating breakfast away from home. At the same time, 65% said that they prefer to make or assemble breakfast from scratch. In other words, manufacturers need to offer convenient, economical products that also cater to consumers' demand for healthy ingredients and preference for scratch preparation – no small feat. Datassential suggests that retail opportunities lie in convenient "speed-scratch" products that allow consumers to prepare or assemble at-home meals more conveniently, such as ready-to-use egg mixes or health and trend-driven carriers like waffle "skinnies." Flavor and Cuisine Trends Understanding breakfast flavor and format trends is of course critical for both restaurants and manufacturers. While traditional breakfast favorites like eggs and bacon continue to dominate, Millennials aren't the only ones expanding their horizons. More than half of consumers surveyed expressed interest in key breakfast trends such as elevated comfort foods, single-focus restaurants (such as ones dedicated to artisan donuts) and better-for-you concepts (like egg whites). Also, trends found on lunch and dinner menus are increasingly showing up on breakfast menus, according to Datassential's MenuTrends database. Southern ingredients like pulled pork, sweet potato and cornmeal, as well as ethnic flavors like salsa verde, cotija and plantains, were among the fastest-expanding breakfast options during the past year. Other trends showing major growth include "premiumization" of breakfast items (for example, using premium cheeses like fontina and aged cheddar) and "better-for-you" options. Healthy trends are now seen in breakfast products in supermarkets' perimeter, QSRs and casual chains, the lodging industry and foodservice venues, the researchers point out. The breakfast survey and trends data are from the first report in a new MenuTrends Keynote report series being marketed by Datassential.
Macy’s, which has been stepping up its efforts to market to Millennials and expanding its omnichannel options, just released disappointing second-quarter sales results. And that — combined with the news that all retail sales barely gained in July — has some observers nervous about retail in general, especially the crucial back-to-school season. The Cincinnati-based retailer says comparable-store sales rose 3.4%, with total sales climbing 3.3% to $6.27 billion. And the company lowered its comparable-store sales forecast for the full year to between 2 and 2.5%. (It had previously forecast gains of between 2.5 and 3%.) Net income rose to $292 million — up from $281 million in the same period a year ago — below analysts’ expectations. And the U.S. Commerce department says total retail sales in the U.S. sales ticked up less than 1% in July to $439.8 billion, after five months of smaller and smaller gains. The two reports may signal that consumers are more nervous about the economy than experts thought. While Macy’s continues to be confident in “our business strategies, merchandise assortments and marketing plans,” says Terry J. Lundgren, chairman/CEO, in its release, he adds that its expectations are “tempered with the reality that many customers still are not feeling comfortable about spending more in an uncertain economic environment.” And while the environment continues to be quite promotional, he adds that it is continuing to focus on strengthening its omnichannel efforts, including in-store pickup. Also, “our Millennial strategies have sharpened our merchandising and marketing to customers in the age range of 13 to 30. This has created new positive energy as our customers begin back-to-school shopping.” Macy’s isn’t just a financial bellwether, but is closely watched by retailers and marketers as one of the best-performing department store chains. “All told, while we would have liked have to seen better performance,” writes Chuck Grom, an analyst who follows Macy’s for Sterne Agee, the second-quarter results “were still respectable, despite missing market expectations.” He adds that it was only the second time that Macy’s has missed its targets in the last 18 quarters. And while the news didn’t affect the company’s rating, Standard & Poor’s Rating Service says it also predicts consumers’ appetite for value, on-sale items and online bargains will pressure the industry. “We believe apparel industry trends will remain relatively soft in the remainder of 2014,” it writes in its assessment of Macy’s results, “given the heightened industry competition (especially from online retailers), continuing weak consumer sentiment, and the increasing customer preference for shopping convenience and value.” It adds, however, that it anticipates that Macy’s “continuing enhancement on its omni-channel capability and ongoing operating initiatives will help the company gain customer traffic either online or in stores.”
Redd's Apple Ale is partnering with actor and comedian Omar Chaparro for the Atrevete with Redd's Apple Ale tour. The six-city tour of the southwest U.S. kicks off Aug. 20 and will feature Chaparro inspiring consumers to break their routine. The promotion is part of the Hispanic-focused effort for the MillerCoors brand. The company is supporting Redd's Apple Ale Hispanic programming with a national Spanish-language marketing campaign that includes TV advertising and multichannel programming with media partners such as Univision, Telemundo, Discovery En Espanol, AOL, ESPN Deportes and FOX Deportes. Chaparro represents the fun and lightheartedness of Redd's Apple Ale, says Ashley Kornbluth, associate marketing manager of Redd's Apple Ale. "We look forward to offering our Hispanic fans a comedic break from their daily routine with Omar and Redd's Apple Ale," Kornbluth says in a release. During the tour, Chaparro will visit radio and television stations in Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, San Antonio, Houston and Dallas to serve up a dose of comedy and dare consumers to do something fun and different. Consumers will have the opportunity to call into radio stations and tell Chaparro about a time when they chose to do something out of their ordinary routine. Consumers will also have the chance to meet Chaparro during various events and appearances during the tour stops. Crisp like an apple and brewed like an ale, Redd's Apple Ale is an apple flavored golden ale. It is also available in a strawberry flavor.
Motorcycle tourism is big business -- as people from one part of the world travel to another to do some riding, but would rather avoid the stupendous fees involved with shipping a bike and the logistical headaches involved with planning where to ride, where to stay, what to pack, who to ride with. For Harley-Davidson, tours are in the brand wheelhouse because H-D is a lifestyle and community-centric brand par excellence. While there are dozens of tour operators around the world who use Harley bikes, Harley itself has -- since it established an "Authorized Tours" program in 2011 -- expanded the program. It now operates in Australia, Europe, Canada, South Africa, South America and New Zealand -- and of course the U.S., where the focus is the mountain states, California and the Southwest. The Milwaukee manufacturer has, in fact, bolstered the latter, with a new Phoenix-based provider for its Authorized Tours program: Twisted Trailz Excursions LLC. The company, in 2011, launched the global Harley-Davidson Authorized Tours program, along with a dedicated website, and 11 independent, multinational tour operators running 150 distinct tours in 10 languages. Now the number of yearly global tours is up to 200, all can be booked as group happenings or individually. The tours are in five thematic groups: luxury, "beautiful Planet," events, short breaks, and "once in a lifetime," all of them with guided, semi-guided, and self-guided options. The guided tours include things like a guide, a support vehicle, and lodging accommodation. Harley-Davidson spokesperson Amanda Lee tells Marketing Daily that tour partners outside the U.S. more often than not tend to be private business owners, not larger tour companies. In the U.S., non-Harley-Davidson aligned providers like EagleRider, the largest touring company in the world, do tours using Harley products. “But Twisted Trailz is the first (and only at this point) U.S.-based tour provider offering tours in the southwest,” she says.
At one point on “30 Rock,” NBC’s show about a fake version of the NBC show “Saturday Night Live,” Tracy Jordan, the demented comic played by Tracy Morgan, mostly as himself, gives Kenneth -- the hyper-dutiful blue-blazered intern -- some advice. “Live every week like it's Shark Week,” Jordan tells his mentee, gravely. That’s pretty funny advice, and in any context, Shark Week gets a laugh. There’s something about combining those two crisp monosyllables, each ending with a K sound, that suggests terror and primordial mystery, all mediated by the comfort of one’s own couch and TV screen, of course. And the idea of a fake comedian using it to give fake advice for a fake show rings true, too, but we will see why later. Launched 27 years ago, Shark Week not only put the young Discovery Channel on the map, but also has gone on to become its own pop cultural phenomenon, certainly a part of the vernacular, and, most important, an annual ratings powerhouse. This year, however, along with more and bigger sponsors and stuntastic in-house promotions, there also seems to be a social media backlash (finlash? Lashnado? ) of tanker-sized proportions, aimed at the channels’ anti-science-ish, P.T. Barnum-ish proclivities. Indeed, it seems we have a veritable #Sharkwatergate on our hands; one of the popular Twitter handles is #Fakesharkweek. There’s a feeding frenzy going on, and (cue thumping “Jaws”-like music here), it is building. Before I get to the outrage among scientists and viewers who feel they’ve been duped, I’ll start with the sleeper story of the week that broke on AOL Jobs. Titled “The Truth Behind Shark Week,” it was written by Tom Siebert, who tells the story of how, as a very young and green employee of the equally brand-new Discovery Channel, he inadvertently invented Shark Week, though he has never gotten the credit for it. (Some of you might know Tom, now a communications consultant to the media and ad industries, from his days as a MediaPost staffer.) As he tells it in the piece, early in his Discovery employment he was invited to a planning meeting to fill the programming slots during the mid-August dog days of summer. “I was young, naive and aghast. I thought I was joining a TV network that wanted to change the world for the better, but I was in a room full of people who had one thing and one thing only on their mind: ratings,” he writes. Well, that doesn’t exactly blow the lid off the TV game. He continues, however, describing how he seethed at the philistine nature of the ideas brought up at the meeting. “Finally, self-righteously disgusted… I said, sarcastically, something close to: ‘Look, we know the bigger the animal, the bigger the ratings, and if it can kill you, that's the best. So why don't we just air shark shows all summer?’” And that’s how a sardonic put-down from a snide 20-something went on to double Discovery’s usual audience numbers, and year after year became a reliable ratings blockbuster. As the “The Producers” (a successful show and movie based on the idea of fake success) shows, many a money-making idea starts out as a sarcastic joke. H.L. Mencken supposedly said “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.” That goes for P.T. Barnum style flimflam, too. A lot of the controversy bubbling up maintains that the Discovery programming is too focused on inaccurate, tabloid-style sensationalism, when it could be promoting conservation and education. Most of the shows offer a distorted impression of sharks as man-eating beasts. That’s great for drama, of course, but statistically, only 3% of the 375 species of sharks are known to bite humans. But even before the massive box office success of “Jaws,” killer sharks proved to be a money-making myth that was easier to promote than any real scientific understanding of the species. And after all, mass media, and TV, is all about dark myths projected. Scientists maintain that such fakery and scare tactics lead fishermen to want to hunt and kill sharks, and take part in the morally reprehensible business of shark finning, a practice in which fisherman cut the fins off the sharks and throw them back in the water. The fins are then sold to make soup and other delicacies. The biggest outrage was in reaction to Sunday’s kick-off programming, billed as a documentary called “Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine,” about a 35-foot-long great white shark, the size of a submarine, that attacked a ship off the coast of South Africa. It was a ratings knockout, attracting some 3.8 million viewers. “Wrath” came with a too-quick-to read disclaimer that the story was “dramatized,” when in effect it was proven to be totally fake. The footage was computer-generated, and the experts and eyewitnesses and scientists interviewed were actors. Even worse, it was developed on the heels of last year’s runaway ratings success, “Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives.” What was never made clear was that the megalodon (could sound like Bin Laden, but scarier) was an ancient shark that is extinct, and the footage was also doctored. That will be rerun this Sunday, with an added hour of “updated information.” Although the ratings aren’t down, the social media commentariat, educators, and scientists are clearly growing more and more pissed off at all the deception. It’s almost as if they have all become young media employees, shocked at the desperate, lowest common denominator grab for ratings. (Shades of Tom Siebert as a callow youth!) And the irony is not lost on anyone that the idea of Shark Week was built by a bunch of human sharks circling the boardroom. (Notice I have not made “one jump the shark” joke yet.) But with the growing social media backlash, if the Discovery Channel continues to run these fake documentaries, there will be blood. My suggestion if they insist on going with the deceptions: At least make the graphics way more sophisticated, using all the latest digital innovations. Judging from the size and ferocity of the killer beasts they like to manipulate for ratings, the Discovery Channel is gonna need a bigger bot.