The stage is set for the emergence of a new multicultural market in the United States, underscoring the power of impactful and authentic marketing campaigns that resonate with diverse audiences. To understand the current challenges and future opportunities, we spoke with Jose Villa, founder and president of Sensis, a leading multicultural marketing agency. Read on for his perspective and actionable advice for building a brand's authentic multicultural marcomms strategy as the market continues to evolve.

Jose Villa, founder & president of Sensis, with clients at the Hispanic Marketing Council’s event in New York

Tell us a little about your day-to-day work. What does your role as president of Sensis entail?

My days are all very different, but I probably spend half my time as the head salesman for Sensis. This basically means I'm involved in a lot of new business pitches. I'm constantly pitching new clients or working on pitches in one way or another, basically doing very quick versions of what we do for our clients.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, in this business we win business by giving potential clients our thinking and our work for free. Since we have to do these pitches all the time, I'm always working on them.

The other part of my job is to oversee things. I'm involved in a lot of our agency's strategy and research work. Our strategy department comes up with strategic insights because our agency is very strategy-oriented. This entails getting involved in client projects and the research work that we do for clients.

Usually, I am juggling that and then a little bit of dealing with the new and unexpected things that come up every day, which range from HR to administrative and financial tasks.

How would you describe the overall state of multicultural marketing today?

In flux and in the midst of a big change in evolution.

We recently published the New Hispanic Immigrant Report (NHI). The NHI study is a nice data point or indicator of how the US market and population are changing. This has a very direct impact on what we consider multicultural marketing because immigration, by nature, brings in a multicultural audience.

There has been a significant increase in immigration to this country in the last three years, which means that a new multicultural market is emerging in the United States. Our New Hispanic Immigrant Report Study shows how this data has affected the multicultural market.

The last time we had this much immigration into the United States was the peak in the 80s and 90s. But from that, the multicultural population in the United States became much more native-born, and more cultures were being mixed in the 2000s and so on.

I believe we are at the beginning of a new era, a new movement that will be similar to what it was like in the 1980s when we saw a huge increase in immigration. Because of this, we will see different marketing in the next 10-20 years.

Can you explain what "Latino coating" is and provide some examples of it in marketing?

Latino Coating is the term we came up with with the Hispanic Marketing Council to describe the sort of tokenism we have always seen in marketing efforts to reach Latinos. It was viewed as just checking a box rather than looking at the market opportunity that lies there.

Some examples of Latino Coating in advertising would be casting Hispanics or culturally ambiguous people in ads to sort of just check it off the list or maybe translating ads into Spanish. In PR efforts, sometimes brands will sponsor or partner with a few large Hispanic organizations and feel as though that suffices, and their job is done.

It is basically a formulaic, tokenistic way of looking at the Hispanic market and ignoring the potential of it.

How can brands avoid this and ensure they are respecting and accurately representing diverse cultures in their marketing campaigns?

Brands can achieve this by avoiding Latino coating. I think part of it has to do with their perspective, and how they approach the market and their advertising efforts.

In terms of mentality and approach, it's about looking at the Hispanic market as a significant market opportunity rather than something that you have to do as a business requirement. They need to shift their mentality to the thought process of “this is actually a market growth opportunity.”

This goes along with investing the proper resources and having the proper amount of intentionality to go after the market. Essentially, making sure that you're allocating the appropriate level of resources to multicultural marketing (Hispanic marketing in particular) and being intentional about it.

A great example of how to do things right is by hiring a specialist agency or partner to reach this market and not depending on general market tactics. You have to be able to avoid the Latino coating recipe of using general current PR strategies to try and reach the Hispanic market. It’s all about having intentionality and hiring a specialist is the way you can achieve that.

What metrics should brands use to measure the success of their multicultural marketing campaigns?

Brands should use the metrics that matter most to their business, such as sales in the multicultural market, market share among multicultural consumers, and customer penetration.

Part of the problem is that many brands don't actually measure the important business metrics. That's not to say that advertising or PR metrics aren't important—those are still important.

I would probably say the biggest two would be measuring brand awareness and affinity on the advertising side among multicultural audiences and measuring engagement among multicultural audiences. This can be done best these days digitally, in terms of social media and such. All metrics are important, but the ones that matter most to your specific time of business should be primary.

What role do partnerships and influencers play in multicultural marketing?

I think influencers are in the category of earned media, more on the PR side of the house as opposed to advertising.

It is like an add-on or a supplement to existing advertising programs or existing PR programs that are reaching Hispanics or multicultural audiences. I think influencers today in 2024 and beyond really should be kind of at the center of their activities. They should be playing a big role. It's not right for every brand and it shouldn't always necessarily by default be the sort of foundation of a PR program, but I think for most brands they should be centered around earned media programs.

A brand creates content for multicultural audiences because I think that that's the most impactful way to create content in a way that's relevant and culturally engaging to multicultural audiences.

How important is community engagement and involvement in developing effective multicultural marketing strategies?

Community engagement takes a lot of hard work, rolling up your sleeves, and getting into the community. It is very labor-intensive, but it is probably the tactic that generates the best ROI, in my opinion. It is time-consuming, but it shows true commitment, so I think it's important.

It is a good indicator that a brand or a company is truly committed to the Hispanic market if they are utilizing community engagement. Incorporating this shows they've got skin in the game of the Hispanic or multicultural market.

It is daunting for many brands and companies that are starting off. They do not usually start with it just because it is very time-consuming and labor-intensive.

How can brands gather and utilize feedback from multicultural audiences to improve their marketing efforts?

I would say there are two categories of ways to gather feedback and get data from multicultural audiences.

What the first group I would describe as sort of easy off-the-shelf ways to do it that don't cost a lot of money. That would be digital and social data like social media data. In terms of your Facebook, Instagram, followers, etc., you can measure the size of your community and the demographics of your community through those types of tools. Another way to do this is by using websites and online activity – this is the data that is not hard to get because it is already out there.

Another low-effort tool would be syndicated research, which uses tools such as MRI. Simmons is an example of the one that we use quite a bit for our clients. This is basically giant surveys that reach a wide range of multicultural audiences. It is a great way to measure how well you’re doing with multicultural audiences, especially if you are a larger brand. This tactic is also off the shelf, it does not require a ton of effort or cost.

The second group would be metric sources, which I would call primary or first-party data. First-party data is a company’s data on their existing customers. Typically most companies track their customers' information, including data such as ethnicity and language preferences. Not everyone can access it, but I find first-party data is always the best source of data.

Primary research, like brand trackers, ensures a large enough multicultural sample. Forms and surveys can measure your brand's affinity for particular audiences. One way to do this is to ensure you're recruiting enough people of different ethnicities.

How do you see multicultural marketing evolving over the next five years?

I see it in flux and growing a lot in the next few years. I think there's going to be a resurgence. I see it growing and evolving, and two dominant trends are driving that.

In terms of growth, I see a resurgence in multicultural marketing and that's again due to the increase in immigration that we've seen in the last few years. Depending on the estimate anywhere from 10 to 25 million new people, new immigrants, have moved into the United States in the last three years. To put it into perspective, that's like the size of some small countries.

This is equivalent to the kind of immigrants we had in this country in the 1980s. I can see that there's going to be a lag effect before you start to really feel and impact this in multicultural marketing, probably within the next couple of years.

Multicultural marketing is going to grow because there is a big market there that wasn't there before. It is evolving because there was already a large multicultural population in the United States before all the immigration. This is because of the emergence we have seen of the bicultural, multicultural and mixed-race population. In the most recent Census, we can see that the percentage of people who identify as more than one race has reached around 20%. The numbers are crazy and the market is evolving because it doesn't fit as nicely into the same little boxes. The market is becoming cross-cultural and the demographic trends are going to grow and evolve the market.