Do you have good Cultural IQ?
Marketers are finally becoming aware of how they may be (are) deficient in CulturaliQ. Good CulturaliQ is having a fundamental understanding of the social behavior of a society, specifically where various ethnicities are concerned. Trends of late note how various companies lack of CulturaliQ is becoming more exposed. Cultural missteps online by companies like IHOP, Taco Bell and Dave & Busters, feature slang filled tweets that are not “on fleek.” Rather, they are offensive, and misrepresent key insights at the core of their targeted audience marketing efforts. Advertisers are not the only ones who can benefit from increasing their CulturaliQ.
The Sony email leaks, and most recently Campbell-Ewald, besides being racially insensitive — also point to a broader lack of understanding of various target markets and their relation to the companies revenue model — people of color make up 40% of the movie ticket buying public. There are even a multitude of mobile apps, in a tech industry beleaguered by it’s lack of cultural diversity, which are focused on reverse targeting urban communities in order to ‘avoid’ them.
Personal perspectives and cultural cues shape how one views people, places and ideas. As marketers, checking yourself for unconscious bias should be the rule, not the exception. Unconscious biases and missed cultural nuances are responsible for more underperforming campaigns than poorly allocated media spends or ad inefficiencies.
— — — -
Contact Denitria Lewis at CUSPData to find out how your organization can increase CulturaliQ within your branding, or within your company. Follow #CulturaliQ on twitter.com/dnyree for daily news and insights in the space.
Originally published at www.linkedin.com.
