Inclusion and Marketing

customer acquisition is a core parts of any brand strategy and that's why it's also core to inclusive marketing but even though acquiring customers is foundational to growth too many brands struggle to reach and convert the people they most want to serve here's why they take a passive approach it's the build it and they will come mindset but today's consumers especially those from underrepresented and underserved communities don't show up where they haven't been invited think about it do you just show up to places where you haven't been invited for instance my uncle always says my parents you're always welcome to stop by my house but my parents never do but the moment my uncle invite them over for dinner they gladly go and they have an amazing time the same holds true for your customers avail all our welcome isn't enough people need a clear invitation and that's where most brands miss the mark so if you wanna grow you've gotta be intentional about inviting people to be your customers so in this episode i'm sharing seventeen proven customer acquisition strategies that you can use to win more customers including those from communities that are way too often overlooked we're gonna get into those seventeen strategies that are broken down by five key categories after this short break hubspot makes impossible growth and impossibly easy for their customers and here's the perfect example and i'm really excited to bring this example to you as an h graduate because this one is from more house college which is also an h more house college needed to reach new students with fresh engaging content but with a massive and nine hundred page website even the tiniest updates took thirty minutes to publish breeze hubspot collection of ai tools helped them write and optimize their content in a fraction of the time the results thirty percent more page views and visitors now spend twenty seven percent more of their time on their site which i like to think means that there are more visitors who are considering going to more house this h ready for more impossible growth like this visit hubspot dot com okay so the first bucket of customer acquisition strategies is all about visibility and ensuring that the ideal customers you've identify that you want to serve know about your brand and that it is indeed for people like them so the first one is influencer marketing that reflects the community it's all about working with people who are trusted by the communities you want to reach to introduce your products and services to them i recently got caught up in the love island usa season seven craze and two of the stars of the show who came out as a couple nick land that's nick and have been hired as influencers in campaigns for nick's professional makeup colon ken that's a line of swimwear and au i know i personally hadn't heard of colon keen or au fear prior to seeing the social media posts and promos promoting the brands from nick and el land accounts now i now follow both colon kin and appear as a result and have been peru their product lines so focus on choosing influencers who have the audience that includes one or some of the identities that your ideal customers want to reach the influencers you partner with don't have to be mega influencers either you just have to work with people who have and engaged audience of people who were parts of the ideal communities or have the identities of the people that you want to reach alright the second approach in this category is all about strategic partnerships and collaborations and specifically partnering and collaborating the people who are relevant to your ideal customers is also a very smart way to acquire new customers so keeping with the nico example cosmetics brand next professional makeup collaborated with them to launch the nico land lip combo consumers who bought the combo were able to get access to an exclusive live virtual fireside chat with the duo where they could ask their questions live in that nick lip combo sold out and just five hours so i believe that nick's cosmetics is very happy with their strategic partnership and collaboration and helped them acquire a whole heck of a lot of new customers as a result levi's also collaborated with mega entertainer beyonce for a series of campaigns around this time of her cowboy carter album and tour the third customer acquisition approach is targeted media placement it's another really smart way to get visibility in your journey to acquiring new customers and i specifically want to highlight media placement with minority owned media minority owned media has a really unique place in the hearts and minds of people who are parts of underrepresented and underserved communities and it's a smart way to reach a very targeted audience of people who have the identities you want to reach toyota corolla did this recently when they partnered with son a latino focused media company to create a sponsored podcast series targeted to reach latino consumers there's so many forms of media these days and it isn't only about reaching general market audiences anymore from radio to podcast podcasts to youtube in so much more take the opportunity to experiment and find different forms of minority owned media that align with the identities of the consumers that you want to reach consumers really love seeing the brand's investing in their communities so when you place your media and channels where your ideal customers are already tuned in they will certainly pay attention i personally pay more attention to brands that advertise on black owned media channels i watched the podcast the other day it was baby this is k palmer and i distinctly remember that it was sponsored by airbnb that kind of recall does not happen often with me but i really respect the fact that airbnb took the time to invest on that minority owned platform alright another customer acquisition approach that you can take is creating inclusive and localized content no one likes feeling like an afterthought and also people have a really hard time connecting with content that doesn't feel like it was made for them and their specific identity or their are specific needs that's why creating content that is inclusive and feels like it is designed for the specific identities you want serve because it is actually designed for them will increase the likelihood that they will see it and consume it and move them forward and taking the next step with you in the journey to become your customer hubspot implementing multilingual ling content strategy to reach consumers who have the problem their brand solves but part of their identity is that they speak a different language this has enabled them to acquire a significant number of new customers in different markets around the world alright and the last example in this category is all about user generated content from the community and specifically leveraging it a couple of weeks ago i was on tiktok and i saw a video from a mom who was instantly calling out or should i say calling in pampers for their baby wipes and how their functionality wasn't practical for many parents who are holding or stabilizing a baby with one hand while trying to change a diaper with the other now this involves of course trying to pull out a wipe with one hand from the package now with pampers pulling out one wipe meant pulling out five or more wipes which definitely wasn't ideal the comments were filled with parents agreeing and sharing in this creators frustration you know who else was also in the comments of that post the brand ras they make baby wipes they leaned into the content from this creator who only has like fifty thousand followers on tiktok and they leverage her video to make more content of their own they use it to do wet her original video which now has more than twenty four million views and they made a series of other tiktok on the same theme showcasing that their product does exactly what she wanted the pampers product to do and what she was calling that brand out to address eventually the brand collaborated directly with that creator as an influencer as she effectively evaluated and reviewed the products that they gifted her it was a beautiful and organic moment that this brand totally capitalized on purely from a user generated content and they want a boat load of new customers as a result i mean i'm not even sure if i'd even heard of ras before this but based upon their usage of user generated content to show how amazing they are i would seek them out if i ever have the need to use baby wipes in the future lead hard into user generated content as a way to bring attention to your brand and acquire exactly the kind of ideal customers you want to reach alright so the second category of customer acquisition that you should be leaning into that does a really great job in inviting people to be your customer is about community and culture and it really helps you build trust in a sense of belonging with the communities that you're trying to reach so the first approach on this category is all about elevating communities stories brands who engage in this customer acquisition approach really take the time to uplift the communities they want to reach which is especially meaningful to marginalized communities in doing this brands are intentional about telling nuance stories to bring to life positive and perhaps unknown stories about specific communities and finding smart ways to connect those stories to the brand smart brands elevate marginalized communities as the hero of their stories rather than the brand and as a result of doing this brands are able to instill an even greater sense of pride nostalgia and wonder about their communities and educate other consumers who don't share those identities in the process ralph lauren has done this recently with two special edition collections the first was with naomi glasses in which the brand highlighted the rich weaving traditions of native american tribes in the us they did it again most recently with the ralph lauren oaks bluff collection that even had an accompanying documentary but highlighted the rich history of the oaks bluff community on martha's vineyard and its place in american history and black history and culture as a result of this campaign i saw so many people on tiktok talking about how they wanted to go and visit oaks gloves how they wanted to send their kids to oaks bluff and in particular how it reign ignited an intention for them to pay attention to what ralph lauren was doing and to buy some of the clothes in the collection alright the next approach you can take is sponsoring community events and being present locally in the communities that you want to reach a lot of time consumers and especially those from underrepresented and underserved communities will feel that brands don't really care about them they feel like brands are just doing the bare minimum or just giving a bit of a engine so consumers will just buy their stuff so a great way to combat that they don't really care about us point of view is to demonstrate that you actually care about the people you want to serve and their identities for instance sponsoring local events local sports teams like little league teams volunteering for local charities and causes all those types of things go long way to establish your presence participation and support and uplifting the community i had a client i was working with a while back that was trying specifically to reach a certain ethnic group and one of my recommendations for them was to show up in the community and participate in be present in and engage in the culture as a result of doing that a lot more people within the community that they were trying to reach became aware of the brand and they became their customers as well alright another approach that you can take is acknowledge heritage and cultural celebrations there's no shortage of elements that are core to different people's cultures and even official types of celebrations that are standard on the calendar for different communities to observe when brands acknowledge the heritage of the people they want to serve in meaningful way it is a natural invitation from brands to the customers they want to serve sprinkles cupcakes does this really well at different times of the year the brand introduces special edition cupcakes that have names and flavors unique to different cultures they have ko cupcakes in december giving a nod to puerto rican culture they introduced vietnamese coffee cupcake and a cuban coffee cupcake featuring flavors that give a nod to heritage especially at its time when other brands don't acknowledge it causes consumers to take notice and into feel seen welcomed and invited into your business ikea also acknowledged cultural celebrations with a line of products where consumers could use for their dew wall celebrations and i've seen a number of videos of people flock to ikea and showcasing there dew wall ikea halls as a result of being invited in by the brand okay so the ninth customer acquisition strategy that you can use is all about standing up for causes that matter to the communities you want to serve increasingly consumers are making buying decisions based upon their values one study showed that eighty two percent of consumers want to buy from brands that share their values so make it clear what your values are and then live your values proudly in what you talk about the type of activism you engage in and even the causes you support and work to make a difference in ice cream maker ben and jerry's is very vocal in terms of identifying the causes that are important to the brand and then taking clear actions to educate consumers about those causes offer ways to support even taking very clear action to make a difference in those causes i know people choose ben in jerry's ice cream solely because of their values and how they live them to be clear i'm not recommending performative activism what i really wanna make sure that you take away here is don't be shy to speak about the causes that are important to you that are related to your values the people you want to serve won't know about your values and how you live them if you don't let them know about it and the people who are aligned with those values will flock to you as a result of what it is that you're taking a stand on alright so the last customer acquisition approach in this category is responsible marketing now one of the tenants of responsible marketing which is a component of inclusive marketing is solving real problems for communities you want to reach solving a real problem that is unique to a particular identity or community is a tremendous way for you to invite them to be your customer because you're are basically helping eliminate specific barriers that they have that other consumers don't that prevent them from achieving success at the same rates as other people mastercard true name card is a great example of this by allowing transgender and non binary customers to use their chosen name on cards they moved a barrier for consumers who wanted to use a credit card to make a purchase where their visual identity didn't quote unquote necessarily match the image that's a person comparing the name might have thought it would solving that real problem was an invitation not just through words but through action alright so after this short break we're gonna get into the remaining three categories and the remaining customer experience approaches associated with that oh okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it's the ops authority hosted by natalie gin and it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professional each week on the ops authority you can discover actionable strategies to move your business forward and transformational stories of powerhouse business owners who value operations whenever you are thinking about making your marketing more inclusive and confusing inclusive marketing into the way in which you operate just on a daily basis your operations are going to be an important part of helping you do that consistently i highly recommend that you have a listen episode number two hundred and seventy seven how i have cultivated a remote team that stays listen to the ops authority wherever you get your podcasts okay the next category of customer acquisition methods you can use is all about products and customer experience and how you're conserving consumers in very real and meaningful ways so the first approach is all about designing products for them this is one of my favorite customer acquisition strategies especially when it comes to inquiring consumers from underrepresented and underserved communities it's all about designing products and services specifically for them it is the ultimate signal that a brand is for you because it took time to design products with you in mind of course that doesn't have to be the entire product line but something that communicates we see you over the weekend me and my family we went to a restaurant cooper's hawk for my aunt's birthday and when i say the gluten free menu was extensive it was extensive i told my husband that we needed to go there again and probably again and again again because they have so many delicious gluten free items on the menu this isn't an exclusive gluten free restaurant but the fact that they took the time to create so many many items and bread like really good gluten free bed for the table standing ovation the abundant gluten free menu is definitely a strong customer acquisition lever the brand pulled and it's working game maker's mattel did it whenever they made their games including uno color blind accessible those accessibility features were a clear invitation to the color blind community to come and be their customer another customer acquisition approach you can take is defining experiences that are tailored for the specific communities that you want to reach this one is similar to designing products for them and that it helps you divine specific experiences with your ideal customers in mind and in particular people from underrepresented and underserved communities who might need different things to achieve success at the same rates as other people walmart did this by implementing sensory friendly hours in all its stores across the us and puerto rico from eight to ten am every day they adjusted the environment for the store to accommodate people with sensory processing disorder so they could come in and shop in a calmer environment similarly some check cheese locations offer sensory sensitive sundays on the first sunday of every month where they open at a specific time solely for families and children who have autism and other special needs by providing them a less overs stimulating environment during that time period alright so the next customer acquisition approach is all about personalized outreach and experiences now i've have joined a few programs over the past few years because a person running the program reached out to me directly to invite me to be a part of it one was a paid mastermind another was a mentorship program now perhaps i would have joined on my own perhaps i wouldn't have but the personal invitation made me take a harder look at the program and consider if it was right for me more so than just reviewing their marketing materials on their own would have done depending upon this type of product or service you have when it's the right fit do the same reach out to consumers you already have some type of relationship with when you genuinely feel that something that you are offering is right for them and can help them solve a problem you know they want to address alright so the next category of customer acquisition tactics is all about representation in voice and so the first approach that we're gonna talk about in this category it's all about employee advocacy and representation and we know representation matters and it matters more than most marketers think it does so whenever you have the opportunity to represent people in your visual imagery you put forth throughout your customer journey it quickly sends the signal and communicates an unspoken invitation to the people that you wanna serve that i see you you are welcome here please come check us out a wi a video marketing platform has done a really great job of using their own team members who have a variety of different backgrounds and identities they include them in their educational videos trainings and ads the the cross section of identities makes w ideal consumers from a broad range of identities if you like the brand is for people like them another approach in this category is all about c creating with the community if you invite me to create something with you are much more likely to participate in the c creation and then of course support what we created afterwards c creation with the communities or the people who are part of the communities you want to reach is best practice and inclusive marketing as well as in customer acquisition for one it helps you create a product that meets the unique needs of a community in an authentic way and taking the time to get it right by involving them in the process shows a degree of respect and that you are taking the time to include the community in what you produce for them it clearly signals that the brand values the opinions and lived experiences of the community now hair care brand got to be does this they have an advisory council of beauty influencers with different identities and from different communities that they use to c create marketing promotions with and to get ideas about specific product offerings alright and so the last category of customer acquisition approaches that you can take to invite people to be your customers is all about incentives and like very specific things that help improve conversions the first one they were gonna walk through in this category is all about offering relevant incentives recently luna started kindergarten and on the first day of school as we were leaving the school complex a store manager from chick f a walks in the middle of the line of a long line of cars handing out free coupons for free breakfast sandwiches now a new chick f a store had just opened up about a mile or two from the school complex it was a really smart move to give an incentive for parents and caregivers who are going to be in the area frequently drop off and pick up their kids to stop in the store the manager gave us three coupons that day now both jonathan and i are both gluten free and can't eat any of those breakfast sandwiches otherwise we would have used all of them which of course would have resulted in us buying even more look for opportunities to provide tangible incentives the people you want to be your customer to give them a little push to check you out and the last customer acquisition approach that we're gonna walk through today is it's all about proactively answering identity based questions this really does goes a long way from an seo standpoint to help you acquire more other people that you want to serve this customer acquisition strategy is really overlooked but it's one that will really help you reach people who are part of underrepresented and underserved communities particularly those that have specific needs that need to be accommodated for instance people who have mobility issues such as being in a wheelchair will often want to confirm before going to a place that it is wheelchair accessible and they will be able to maneuver the way that they need to too many brands don't have that information readily available and easily accessible online so taking the time to answer those types of questions with content you create on your website answering questions on your google business profile or even blog posts videos can help you acquire your ideal consumers who need to get confirmation a few things before moving forward to being your customer remember your ideal customers need to quickly and clearly have this question answered for them before moving forward with you will this product service and or experience work for someone like me taking the time to proactively answer questions that demonstrate people like you are welcome here will help you acquire more of the people you want to serve so there you have it seventeen proven customer acquisition strategies to help you win more customers especially those who may have felt overlooked in the past now before you wrap up i wanna give you one additional reminder the smartest brands don't just do these strategies they also make sure they're working that means measuring how much it actually cost to acquire each customer tracking which strategies bring in the people that you want to serve and optimizing along the way so as you put these ideas into practice make sure you have all the systems in place whether that's a crm analytics or referral tracking to measure learn and keep improving that's how you'll maximize the roi of each approach that you try to bring new customers in if you are enjoying the show i would so appreciate it if you would leave a rating and review for it and your podcast player of choice it really does go a long way towards helping more people discover this show and i like to think that helps more people be inclusive and helps more people feel like they've long another quick question for you are you getting the inclusion in marketing newsletter if not what are you even doing each week i send news resources what's happening in culture commentary and other goodies to help you attract and retain a bigger more diverse and fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up until next time remember everyone deserves to have a place where they belong let's use our individual and collect the power to ensure more people feel like they do thanks so much for listening talk to you soon

most brands are losing customers before they even start marketing to them why because they skip a very important step it's the one step that makes every other marketing effort work harder to reach the right people if you don't do it you'll spend more convert less and watch your competitors scoop up the customers that you wanted that step it's all about getting crystal clear on exactly who your brand will serve not just in demographics but in culture values and lyft experiences when you do marketing becomes magnetic to the people who matter most now this is the first episode of the new rules of customer acquisition and we're starting with rule number one a step that also happens to be the foundation of inclusive marketing so after this short break we're gonna get right into it hubspot makes impossible growth and impossibly easy for their customers and here's the perfect example and i'm really excited to bring this example to you as an h graduate because this one is from more house college which is also an h more house college needed to reach new students with fresh engaging content but with a massive and nine hundred page website even the tiniest updates took thirty minutes to publish breeze hubspot collection of ai tools helped write and optimize their content in a fraction of the time the results thirty percent more page views and visitors now spend twenty seven percent more of their time on their site which i like to think means that there are more visitors who are considering going to more house this h ready for more impossible growth like this visit hubspot dot com as a marketer it's important to know and understand that your ideal customers are both subconsciously and consciously looking for an answer to this fundamental question whenever they are considering buying from you that fundamental question is will this product service or experience work for someone like me and as a result your job is to quickly and clearly communicate to your ideal customers that yes this whatever product service experience is for you now there are a number of ways that you can do that and we'll cover some of those today and we can go more in endeavors if you like in another episode but ultimately because this fundamental question needs to be addressed by your brand it is absolutely critical that you are clear about defining who your ideal customers are in other words you have to be crystal clear about who the identities associated with quote someone like me are so that you can effectively answer the question in your marketing mix and customer journey so let's examine this a little bit more for each component of the marketing mix now one of my favorite examples for the products aspect of the marketing mix comes from the technology space specifically let's use smartphones as an example i have an iphone my husband jonathan has a samsung phone i use my phone in english he uses his in spanish each of these brands decided in advance when they were creating these phones that their ideal customers included people who spoke different languages so whatever psycho graphics soc economics or other factors might be associated with the consumer being a great candidate to buy your product not these phone companies they had that profile but they also knew that that meant that many of their ideal customers would speak different languages so the brands have baked the ability to customize phone usage by language into their product design as parts of their marketing mix my daughter luna had a play date with one of her friends and her mom was showing me something on her phone and everything was configured in russian which is her primary language the brand is making intentional decisions about its marketing based upon the various identities its ideal customers have both that first finding that their ideal customers speak various languages and live in various countries these cell phone companies ability to acquire customers would have been limited to only one language alright so let's look at the price part of the marketing mix and then is another way that brands can communicate whether or not a product is for quote quote people like me pricing at lower price points make sure product more accessible to a broader range of people payment plans also make products priced at higher levels accessible for a broader range of people and higher price points communicate who a brands ideal customer is as well i mean there have been plenty of times when i've looked at products that i've been interested in wondering if it was for someone like me and then how to look at the price tag and realize nope this isn't for me at all alright the third component of the marketing mix that we're gonna examine is promotion so with regard to promotion this is a really big one of how brands communicate whether or not a product is for people with a specific identity and this becomes even more relevant when the distinction in product and price are less obvious now i can't tell you the number of times that i've been in a buying mood like ready to go credit card in hand only to look at a brand's promotional materials and see no one who looks like me and then second guessing or canceling the whole thing i personally need to see people like me having success with the product to feel like it can work for me too representation is a big aspect of answering that fundamental question through promotion another way that brands can answer the fundamental questions through promotion is by creating specific campaigns designed to see feature an uplift certain communities kit kat canada did a promotion for the muslim community during rama to show them that the brand is indeed for them as well they combined promotion with a limited edition kit kat bar that was a big hit that enabled the muslim community to feel seen also promoting to different identities doesn't always need to be about specific campaigns sometimes it's about creating messaging that makes it clear that people from certain identities feel seen supported and like they belong i remember i was looking at google reviews and i came across one where a person was reviewing a product that was a software and the reviewer mentioned that it was easy to use for someone who isn't tech savvy like me so messaging that clearly and quickly speaks to the non tech savvy person in this instance works well to answer that question and that goes for other identities as well alright so let's look at this last component of the marketing mix which is place and that's where your distributing your product plays a very large role in helping your ideal customers recognize whether or not something you produce is for them earlier this year there was a live in person conference on the topic that i was very interested in however i did not have any interest and getting on a plane or even in my car to travel to the conference now i was really excited when later on i saw virtual tickets were being offered that sent through replay of all the conference sessions that i could watch from the comfort of my own home on demand i did not hesitate to make that purchase because that choice made it clear that this conference is for people like me and in that instance people like me was people who were interested in the topic but did not want to or could not travel to attend it live alright so after this short break we're gonna continue further along in exploring the number one rule of customer acquisition okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it's the ops authority hosted by natalie gin and is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals each week on the ops authority you can discover actionable strategies to move your business forward and transformational stories of powerhouse business owners who value operations whenever you are thinking about making your marketing more inclusive and in confusing inclusive marketing into the way in which you operate just on a daily basis your operations are going to be an important part of helping you do that consistently i highly recommend that you have a listen episode number two hundred and seventy seven how i have cultivated a emo team that stays listen to the ops authority wherever you get your podcasts okay so now that we see how answering the fundamental question could play out in different ways in your marketing mix and why it's taking the time to choose which identities you will focus on answering that question for let's get into where brands struggle with this so let's talk about what happens when your customers don't get an answer to the fundamental question is this product for someone like me basically it causes friction it makes people hesitate in buying from you and it encourages them to explore other options if the brand doesn't answer quickly and clearly that this product is for someone like them they'll go elsewhere or keep what they currently do as a gluten free person i can quickly see by looking at a menu whether or not a restaurant is for me or not but in other purchase decisions it might not always be so easy i did some user testing research one time with a gay man and he told me that when it came time to book hotels for a vacation he often needed to spend some extra time exploring whether or not hotel was safe and welcoming for people like him people who are parts of the lgbtq plus community one hotel that we explored didn't really have anything on their website and this is where some lgbtq plus friendly messaging would have been great to have to communicate clearly and quickly at the hotel was for people like him eventually he saw some posts on the hotel instagram account that showed them at a pride parade so he got his answer that hotel was for people like him however you should not expect that consumers are going to go through all this effort to find the answers that they need that's why it's important to clearly and quickly let consumers know whether or not whatever it is it's you're offering is for people like them or not another consumer i interviewed was looking at an instagram profiles of photographers and within fifteen seconds and it might have been sooner she knew the photographer was not for her because she didn't see anyone who looked like her on her profile which was full of clients and she was not going to spend any more time trying to find out if perhaps deeper in their profile she could have found someone like her in her customer portfolio what she saw in that first fifteen seconds was more than enough for her to make a decision to go elsewhere so if your goal is to acquire more of your ideal customers focus your efforts on making sure that you communicate to them clearly and quickly the your brand is for people like them when you do that you will acquire more of the customers you want but here's where brands fall short in doing that because i fully believe that in their minds many marketers and brands do feel like they've taken the time to define who their ideal customers are but in reality most of them have not done this job sufficiently enough and as a result their marketing and their customer acquisition efforts are nowhere near as effective as they could be so once you create a profile of the type of person you want to serve for your brand go one step further and write out the different identities of the various types of people who fit that ideal customer profile so let's say that you are a hotel and you want to do a better job of acquiring women travelers between the ages of twenty four and thirty five that covers a number of different identities it covers solo travelers people traveling with a partner people traveling with friends like on a girl's trip people traveling for work people traveling with kids people who are pregnant people who were part of the to lgbtq plus community smokers pet owners people who speak different languages people with dietary restrictions women with different body sizes and types women with disabilities women who have different religions women who are grieving meaning they may not be traveling for a happy occasion and the list goes on and on and on alright so if we know that these are the various identities of the different types of people who have the problem that your brand solves and they are your ideal customer i'm not saying that you have to embrace all of these identities and answer the question for them if you want to do that great go for it by all means do it but if you only have the resources to really focus and and support five of these identities select those five and then figure out what you would need to do for each of them throughout your marketing mix and customer journey to make them see clearly and quickly that your brand is indeed for people like them and when you do you will be so much more effective at acquiring more of these customers quick disclaimer for you though the other identities that you don't focus on doesn't mean that they aren't welcoming your business or that you don't want to serve them rather it just means that they might not see those clear signals in your marketing mix and customer journey that communicate and demonstrate that your brand is for people like them so rule number one of customer acquisition is make sure you identify and choose the different identities of the ideal customers you've chosen to serve and if few signals throughout your marketing mix and customer journey that clearly and quickly communicate your brand is for them you'll see a much greater return on your marketing resources whenever you do so i'm super curious have you already done this for your brand when you think about who your ideal customer is or if you think about your buyer personas that you have for the different types of consumers that you want to serve have you gone down and really define this by identity to ensure that you were able to communicate to them in a manner that speaks to them and makes it clear that your brand is for people like them as you're going through your marketing mix let's have a chat about it i'd love to hear more send me an email sonia at sonia et thompson dot com or let's continue the conversation on social lauren the dms i'd love to hear how you are thinking about this for your brand another quick question for you are you getting the inclusion and marketing newsletter if not like really what are you even doing each week i send news resources voice of the customer and lots of commentary and things that are happening in culture to help you attract and retain a bigger more diverse and fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up also drop a link for that in the show notes for you so you can visit sit easily until next time remember everyone deserves have a place where they've belong let's use our individual and like power to ensure more people feel like they do thanks so much for listening talk to you soon visit

ai usage is on the rise especially in marketing data from hubspot ai trends and marketing reports showed that seventy four percent of marketing professionals use ai for their work and with so many marketers using ai it's important to acknowledge and solve for its known limitations particularly the biases that are baked into it now as an inclusive marketing strategist and consultant my eye is trained to see and recognize bias when i come across it whenever i'm reviewing materials and campaigns for clients one of the things i'm evaluating is whether or not bias or culturally insensitive or inappropriate messages have creeps into the communications but most of the marketers i've come across either don't get have this skill set or actively working on developing it many often don't pick up on biases ai produces which could prove detrimental to marketing efforts and brand reputation if published in the market so to help you use ai more responsibly and effectively today as you ups upscale and cultural intelligence i've created some prompts to help you cut out any extra bias that exists whenever you're using ai so after this short break we're gonna get into it alright so hubspot makes impossible growth and impossibly easy for their customers and here's the perfect example and i'm really excited to bring this example to you as an h graduate because this one is from more house college which is also an h more house college needed to reach new students with fresh engaging content but with a massive nine hundred page website even the tiniest updates took thirty minutes to publish breeze hubspot collection of ai tools helped write and optimize their content in a fraction of the time the results thirty percent more page views and visitors now spend twenty seven percent more of their time on their site which i like to think means that there are more visitors who are considering going to more house this h b c ready for more impossible growth like this visit hubspot dot com but before we get into the actual prompts it's useful to ensure that you are grounded in the fundamental question consumers especially those from underrepresented and underserved communities are asking as consumers are evaluating whether or not your brand is right for them they're seeking either consciously or subconsciously to answer this question is this product for someone like me every part of your customer journey serves as an input to producing an answer to this question so if any aspects of your customer journey including your ads headlines visual imagery which is of course photos and video and other content you create has any sort of bias in it it sends the signal to the people that you want to serve this product isn't for someone like you week now in most instances that signal isn't one the brand is intending to send so let's focus on how to use a eye to help you send the this is for you message for the people that you want to serve now what we want to do is focus on how to use ai to help you send this is for you message for the people that you want to serve joanne boys is an inclusive ai x expert and founder of include ai a tool that helps marketers with inclusive communication she told me that it's helpful to think of ai as very well trained puppy she explained it's like someone has already house trained the puppy and they're going to give it to you and you're going to customize it to your home customizing your well trained ai puppy means training it to ensure it communicates with your customers in a way that draws them closer to you rather than pushing them away because of any bias you can have a listen to my full conversation with joy and voice on episode number ninety five of this podcast navigating the effective use of ai for inclusive marketing i'm also gonna drop a link to that in the show notes for you so you can access it easily alright so let's get into the prompt so you can use ai to help you identify and remove bias whenever it's doing its thing alright so the first thing that you need to do is give it the right context the first step of course in using ai to help you identify and remove bias in ai is to give your tool the context with which it will be reviewing your content tell it specifically who it should be showing up as and the lens with wish it should be reviewing your content and providing feedback so right from the beginning i like to tell my ai collaborators that it is a highly skilled inclusive marketing strategist that works from a general standpoint for reviewing content on the whole and for broader audiences however if you want to be even more specific about the type of feedback you are looking for tweak the context for that point of expertise for instance if you want to understand whether or not an ad has any bias from the perspective of consumers over the age of fifty it's helpful to prompt your ai companion to review the content through the lens of a marketing expert who has expertise in that customer base as an example i asked ai to review a webpage page about anti aging products now i gave it the context that it was a marketer who specializes in marketing to consumers over fifty and that set the foundation for the lens with which it was able to give feedback so in that article the headline was really just anti aging products and then it kinda went into a lot of other different details about the specific products that it was looking for and so here is the first part of the feedback that it produced about language that wasn't inclusive in this particular web because it is so ai says potential red flags for fifty plus consumers number one overuse of the term anti aging and then it gave two bullet points some consumers see this as age negative implying aging is something to be fought or fixed and the second bullet is consider language like age well or healthy skin at every age skin renewal or pro aging instead if i haven't given that context it wouldn't have given me this type of feedback and so here are some of the recommendations that ai gave for how to improve the copy to make it more inclusive it suggested some inclusive messaging that resonates it says a firm natural aging while promoting skin health such as skinny vault with you next it said celebrate wisdom and beauty at every age rather than glorify youth and then the last thing it offered up was focused on results not age shame such as highlight texture tone hydration and barrier supports the goal of course is to prevent publishing content that has bias in it however there will be times we you'll need to reevaluate and improve on something that is already in the market so here's a prompt to help you win creating new content and one to help you improve what has already been produced so the prompts for creating you can say you are a copywriter that specializes in marketing to consumers over their age of fifty please brainstorm ten headlines for this care webpage that delivers on our product goals while making our ideal customer including people over the age of fifty feel seen supported and like they belong with our brand in a prompt for reviewing existing content as an example you are inclusive marketing strategist that specializes in marketing to consumers over the age of fifty please review these headlines and let me know if there is anything i should be aware of that would rub consumers who were interested in the product the wrong way i'm particularly interested in anything that would be offensive culturally inappropriate or just not inclusive okay so the second thing that you should do to help eliminate bias from your ai is to give it specificity about your consumer one of the challenges that many marketing communications have when it comes to being inclusive is that the brand hasn't effectively defined who their ideal customer is for instance a brand might say they are targeting women from twenty five to thirty four who are looking to advance their careers however even though there is specificity about age gender and even aspirations there's still so much context missing that could influence the way the consumer receives messages you create for them as such whenever you're working with ai where possible steer clear from treating it like it's talking to a general market audience instead give your ai companion additional details about who you want to communicate with doing so will help it better tailor the messages it has for the audience you are targeting so instead of saying you're creating landing page copy for women who are twenty five to thirty four who are looking to advance your careers add in details about their identities that will support your ai companion and crafting messages that have a less bias in them based upon your audience some of the identity based details about your ideal consumer to include in your prompt could be something like racial and ethnic makeup sexual orientation religion family status such as married whether or not you have children economic status where they live because racial differences can impact word choice somebody who is from australia speaks differently from someone who is from the uk speaks differently from someone who's from canada speaks differently from somebody from the us right and one other thing to consider is whether or not this includes people with disabilities and neuro divergence so given all this context a prompt to draft copy for a landing page could look like this this is a prompt to create the audience for this landing page includes women twenty five at thirty four who want to advance their careers this includes black latin latino and asian women some are married some have young children at home all have at least a bachelor's degree and they live in the us canada australia and mexico and thirty percent of them are neuro most of them don't yet own a home please drop the landing page for them that takes their identities and needs in mind and it prompt for reviewing could be please identify anything in the copy of this landing page that would prevent people with in an whatever their identities are from feeling seen supported and like they belong with you oh in that particular prompt don't forget to add the context of who they are are they inclusive marketing strategies for instance so they're making sure that they're looking at this content with that lens alright so after this short break we're gonna get into the third example of prompts that you need to be using things to help stamp out bias and the ai tools that you're using okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it's the ops authority hosted by natalie gin and is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals each week on the ops authority you can discover actionable strategies to move your business forward and transformational stories of powerhouse business owners who value operations whenever you are thinking about making your marketing more inclusive and in confusing inclusive marketing into the way in which you operate just on a daily basis your operations are going to be an important part of helping you do that consistently i highly recommend that you have a listen episode number two hundred and seventy seven how i have cultivated a emo team that stays listen to the ops authority wherever you get your podcasts okay the last area that we need to focus on is being direct about the type of bias you want to stamp out there are a number of entities the consumers you want serve can have and there are also several aspects of inclusion that you should be on the lookout for when it comes to ensuring that the marketing you're producing makes the people that you want to serve feel like your products and services are for people like them that's why it's important to give your ai tools some guidance as to what type of content you don't want to include when it comes to identifying and removing any biases that exist when i'm doing audits for clients brands from an inclusion standpoint some of the things i'm looking for include inclusive language power dynamics representation stereotypes and identity based friction in the customer experience so being this specific is especially important because if your ai tool is just focused on one area it can make it easy for them to miss out on other areas that are problematic in this example i asked the ai tool i was using to evaluate a blog post for cultural bias it missed some problem areas i would have flagged and when i asked it why it didn't pick up on those problems here's what it had to say so i wrote do you have any ideas on why you didn't pick up on that phrase initially so the ai responded that's a really thoughtful question and you're right to flag it here's why i likely didn't pick up on that offensive phrase initially number one high level summary versus line by line audit when i reviewed the article i focused on the overall framing such as lack of a eight v attribution over simplification rather than doing a detailed line by line linguistic sensitivity check that phrase is subtle but very telling and it deserved more scrutiny here's the next thing that ai said it said subtle racism often slips through in quote unquote neutral language phrases like as the black speak which was an actual phrase that was included in this article that i was questioning the ai tool about are written in a way that may appear formal or neutral to an un critical reader even though there's steep and outdated object language it's an example of coded or institutional bias that hides in plain sight and the last reason that ai gave for why it didn't pick up on that term as the black speak as offensive initially whenever i asked it i'd flag anything that was problematic it said automation trade offs the initial scan prioritized structural analysis in parentheses who's being centered what's missing over harmful syntax and phrasing especially when content is accessed through a technical summary layer such as versus full human parsing but ultimately this was a blind spot and it's on me to call it out when it matters so based upon the specific type of communication you are having ai help you write be sure to include in your prompt specific instructions key things that you'd want or don't want it to include as it is creating and reviewing alright so here is a prompt for whenever you are creating says here your ai tool and this is of course assuming that you've given the appropriate context about who your ideal customer is as well the prompt could be please create some images we can use for this social media ad that are reflective of our ideal customers ensure adequate representation of the different identities of the consumers we serve that is free of common stereotypes and cultural biases on the prompts for reviewing work that's already been created ai or otherwise could be in this ad please highlight any areas that would be considered problematic from an inclusion perspective take into account inclusive language such as is there any aa included in aa is african american for vernacular english are there stereotypes associated with any of the images we are highlighting the better you can focus your ai can companion on how to design or evaluate the assignment you are giving it you'll make it more likely to get the outputs that aren't filled with bias alright so it's time to get rid of the bias that is built into your ai the sooner you retrain your ai tools to work in a manner that is in keeping with your brand and the different identities that you want to serve the sooner you'll convert more of your ideal customers if you are using more and more ai in your day to day work i would love to know how are you working to get rid of some that bias that's been baked into the tools already how are you working to reach train your ai puppy so that it picks up the good habits that you want it to have that are in keeping with your brand your tone and how you want to engage with your customers let me know let's him continue to have the conversation i want to hear all about it tag socials send me an email slides my dms let's have a conversation another quick question for you are you getting the inclusion and marketing newsletter each week i send news insights resources voice of the customer and also serve other goodies to help you attract and retain a bigger more diverse and fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up until next time remember everyone deserves to have a place where they belong let's use our individual and collect power to ensure more people feel like they do thanks so much for listening talk to you soon

american eagle recent campaign featuring actress sydney sweeney sparked a firestorm critics called the great jeans and great jeans word play eugenics coded accusing the brand of leaning into white super supremacy messaging and supporters dismissed the outrage saying it was simply a pretty women in jeans i covered very important lessons for marketers regarding this campaign in episode one hundred and seventy four i'm gonna link to in the showed so you can have a listen just in case you haven't already tuned into it but since i published that episode american eagle has responded to all the controversy all the backlash all the chatter and they doubled down on their original message in an instagram post in it it said sydney sweeney has great genes is and always was about the jeans her jeans her story we'll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their ae jeans with confidence their way great genes look good on everyone now consumer reactions on the post itself were mixed some praise american eagle for not vowing to the pressure and not apologizing one supporter wrote never been the need to the mob we're gonna get into what those reactions were to american eagle response along with what the most important takeaways from this saga after this short break hubspot makes impossible growth and impossibly easy for their customers and here's the perfect example and i'm really excited to bring this example to you as an h graduate because this one is from more house college which is also an h moore house college needed to reach new students with fresh engaging content but with a massive nine hundred page website even the tiniest updates took thirty minutes to publish breeze hubspot collection of ai tools helped write and optimize their content in a fraction of the time the results thirty percent more page views and visitors now spend twenty seven percent more of their time on their site which i like to think means that there are more visitors who are considering going to more house this h c ready for more impossible growth like this visit hubspot dot com alright so consumer reactions on american eagles response to this whole sydney sweeney campaign controversy those responses were mixed some praise american eagle for not bow to pressure and not apologizing one supporter wrote never been the need to the mob once you do the apology tour never ends another added i'll be buying more american eagle jeans in another qui i'm so tired of everyone being offended by everything those who didn't like the campaign committed to stop shopping there altogether one person wrote not the doubling down i could appreciate you saying it with your chest now we know where to not shop ge y'all didn't learn anything from target or starbucks another person wrote yeah this is beyond a disappointing response as this ten credit card holder i'll be closing my card and shopping elsewhere and another person added didn't think the response could be even worse than the ad but it somehow was with the mountains of commentary it can be hard for marketers to know what they should learn from this whole thing so to cut through the noise here's where you should focus your energy how consumers respond to the controversial campaign and the american eagle response to it all comes down to one thing values consumers who share american eagle values see nothing wrong with the campaign and response and actually see it as reinforcing values they believe in people who do not share american eagle values are more likely to find the ad problematic like it or not values are becoming an increasingly important part of how consumers make decisions i've loved and shop at target for years but my values don't align with their recent rollback of their diversity inclusion stand so i don't shop there anymore the brand i buy my beauty products from each month has values around transparency ethics and sustainability which are essential to the values i hold around clean and environmentally responsible ingredients the data backs this up as well one study from two thousand twenty two showed that eighty two percent of shoppers prefer our brand's values to align with their own the same study showed that three quarters of shoppers reported parting ways of the brand due to a values mismatch and earlier global study from two thousand eighteen showed that sixty four percent of consumers will buy or boycott a brand solely based upon a social or political issue the study also show that values like communications were just as likely to influence purchase intentions as product focused messaging values are lived rather than just statements everything you do communicates your brand's values including actions experiences products and communications now because values based purchasing is becoming even more prevalent it is more important now than ever to ensure you communicates consistently not only what your values are but the various ways in which you live them if inclusion is one of your brand's values let consumers know that then demonstrate how inclusion is infused your brand through your team your customers your product and of course your marketing for instance one of the brand values for pinterest is put pin first which they define as we are relentlessly focused on pin diverse means so that all our product business and policy decisions are centered on their well being that specific value comes to life in various ways including through a creator inclusion fund the creator code which serves a code of ethics and kindness for how to interact with others and even product updates like inclusive ai and search refinement tools whatever the values are for your brand prioritize letting consumers know what your values are and how you live them through how you show up each day alright so hopefully we can put this whole american eagle sydney sweeney thing to bed once in for all so after this short break we're gonna talk about something else that's been in the news quite a bit another fun topic that has a really important lesson for marketers as well my okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it's the ops authority hosted by natalie gin and it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professional each week on the ops authority you can discover actionable strategies to move your business forward and transformational stories of powerhouse business owners who value operations whenever you are thinking about making your marketing more inclusive and in confusing inclusive marketing into the way in which you operate just on a daily basis your operations are going to be an important part of helping you do that consistently i highly recommend that you have a listen episode number two hundred and seventy seven how i have cultivated a remote team that stays listen to the ops authority wherever you get your podcasts already owned and operated media is an important component of your strategy to reach consumers from underrepresented and underserved communities and it should be a staple of your marketing mix the media frenzy after season seven of love island usa provides further proof of that for the past few months fans have been r with season seven of love island usa this installment was the most watched ever and it led the pack for streaming original programs for several weeks online engagement for this season was also at an all time high with drove of fans making videos of their own takes what was happening during the season i i haven't even seen a single episode of the show and yet i feel like i've seen much of the season from the clips and commentary from social media even brands got on the action from a social media standpoint by making comments and memes about what was happening on this installment of love island usa following the finale of the show a number of contestants who were fan favorites began doing interviews on different news outlets and podcasts including access hollywood the caller daddy podcast the vial files and others stars cart and shelley be who are both black recently appeared on the vista is k palmer podcast hosted by actress geek palmer the episode had more than one point two million youtube views in its first twenty four hours becoming the most watched episode on the channel overall that episode even outperformed all the other interviews thus far with these season's cast members with the exception of the features on the call her daddy podcast the pair shelley chose that platform to go to while declining to be guests on other popular podcast outlets and fans noticed and appreciated it one fan wrote i'm so glad k gave these two black women is safe place to speak about their experiences as black women and the double standards they receive against their counterparts on the show she was the perfect platform for them to feel comfortable speaking on this issue another viewer added on the promo video on social media for the episode she wrote a safe space where they will be seen heard and keep it real like none other and several other people commented this is the only interview i want to see now all of this really just underscores a super important point for you as you think about your marketing strategy that minority owned media matters now more than ever it's a great way to reach a very targeted and engaged segment of the people that you want to serve as consumers grow increasingly more diverse it's becoming even more important for brands that want to grow to win customers from underrepresented and underserved communities of course you can reach them from general market channels but you'll be much more effective and targeted with your approach when you engage them where they are and are comfortable besides the impact of advertising with minority on media is greater on an emotional level with those platforms for those consumers than general market campaigns because consumers appreciate it when a brand is supporting media from their community now i did watch the k palmer interview with shelley anna land and i remember that the primary sponsor of the show was airbnb as a black woman i appreciate that the brand sees and values this type of platform as a way to reach me and my community as consumers another reason why adding minority owned media to your marketing mix is important is it demonstrates that your brand understands and even though the people your brand wants to serve have the same problem your brand helps them solve there are parts to their identity that cause them to have different experiences that can have an impact on their degree of success as a brand acknowledging that identity impacts consumers experiences equip you to proactively build a customer journey with your brand that supports them and eliminating any barriers and or friction that makes it more difficult for them to succeed supporting media that is a part of the communities of the consumers with identities you want to feel like they belong with you is a smart way to do that one other reason supporting minority owned media is beneficial is that it helps you further support the communities you want to reach advertising on media platforms and with creators who are part of specific communities can be viewed as investments in those communities consumers will feel you are more genuine in your desire to serve them when you invest in their communities rather than when you put your marketing dollars elsewhere it will also signal that your goal isn't to just extract from the community in your quest to make them your customer which nobody wants to just feel like they're being attracted it from it needs to feel like a win win situation bottom line investing in minority owned media is a win win for both underrepresented communities you want to serve and for your brand i wanted to make sure that you got this point because not enough brands are doing it unfortunately minority owned media only accounts for like five percent of overall media that brands invest in for their overall media budgets that really just pale in comparison to the percentage of people from underrepresented and underserved communities who are part of the overall population much more than five percent it's nearly half right so this really should be something that you are being very proactive and intentional about investing in it'll may definitely make a difference in the eyes of your consumers whenever they're thinking about you and your brand as well as you will see a higher return i'm sure of it alright if you like the show i would love if you would share it with your friends colleagues in your network if really does go a long way towards helping more people discover the show and i like to think that it helps more people practice inclusion also quick question for you are you getting the inclusion and marketing newsletter each week ge send news resources voice of the customer and all kinds of other goodies to help you attract and retain a bigger more diverse and fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up and i'll also drop a link to it in the show notes for below until next time remember everyone deserves have a place where they belong let's use our individual and collect the power to ensure more people feel like they do thanks so much for listening talk to you soon

the internet buzzing with lots of thoughts and emotions on the newest campaign launched by retailer american eagle featuring actress sydney sweeney well there are definitely some consumers who love the campaign the backlash from the campaign is what is dominating the narrative there are several complaints with the campaign some consumers are trouble that and ad marketing women's jeans has a sexual tone so we're gonna get into what those complaints are as well as five lessons that marketers can learn from this whole saga after this short break you don't become the world's most valuable women's sports franchise by accident angel city football club did it with a little help from hubspot when they started data was housed across multiple systems hubspot unified their website email marketing and fan experience in one platform this allowed their small team of three to build an entire website in just three days the results nearly three hundred d new sign ups a week and three hundred percent database growth in just two years visit hubspot dot com to hear how hubspot can help you grow better okay so there are several complaints with this american eagle campaign with sydney sweeney some consumers are troubled at an ad marketing women's jeans has a sexual tone that seems to be targeted for the straight male gaze another issue is that there seems to be a disconnect between the cause the brand is connecting to a butterfly motif appears on the back pocket of the sydney gene representing domestic violence awareness because sweeney is passionate about in addition a hundred percent of the proceeds of the sydney gene will be donated to crisis text line a non nonprofit offering twenty four hour mental health support to anyone who needs it however the sexual nature of the ads in the campaign appear to be at odds with the community the brand is aiming to align with and support yet the biggest controversy of the campaign comes from messaging many are touting as being rooted in white supremacy the text of the primary ad includes a play on the words jeans with a g and jeans with a j which for many feels like is a lot more than just selling genes the text of the voice over says jeans are passed down from parents to offspring often determining traits like hair color personality and even eye color my jeans are blue now the visual for the ad is a pan over of sweeney wearing only blue jeans and flashing her blue eyes at the end i'm gonna drop a link to this campaign in the show notes for you so you can have a look if by chance you haven't already seen it another visual from the campaign shows a billboard of sw in blue chains with the copy sydney sweeney has great genes with a g later in the ad as sydney lookalike alike crosses out the word genes with a g and writes genes with a j critics of the ad feel that because the play and usage of the word genes with a g it is implying that having a type of genes sydney sweeney have are great superior and preferred to other types of genes that aren't like sydney's a thin white woman with blonde hair and blue eyes on one reddit thread one comment to wrote i mean it's a direct homage to a pretty vile calvin klein ad that sexual a fourteen year old brooke shields but the main reason people don't like the ad is that it has some pretty nasty racial implications are either of these sweeney fault no but i can think the ad was in poor taste and blame the idiot marketing team another person wrote it's a bad look for a classically attractive blue eyed blonde haired woman to brag about how she has good jeans and quote unquote good jeans implies the existence of bad jeans on tiktok commoners had even more pointed negative responses including nobody is getting their pants from their parents this is a direct eugenics ad as in your face as you could get another comments are added i'm trying to work out whether or not the sexism is more prominent or the white supremacy genuinely who let this happen as marketers around the world are watching the backlash unfold i wanted to make sure that i gave you some important lessons to keep in mind from the saga that will help you increase your effectiveness so the first lesson is all about embracing the golden rule of marketing inclusive marketing is all about acknowledging the many ways in which consumers are different intentionally choosing who your brand will serve and then incorporating those consumers throughout all areas of your marketing mix based on the ads in the campaign american eagle doesn't appear to be practicing inclusive marketing that is totally it's right to do so no brand has an obligation to serve every identity like inclusive marketing smart customer acquisition also requires a brand to be judicious about choosing which types of consumers you will serve from this sydney sweeney campaign it appears that american eagle chose who they were targeting white men and women while brands have every right to choose who they want to serve they also need to be repaired the reactions to people who are being excluded intentionally or not while american eagle may win some customers with this campaign they are also losing a lot of customers in response to some of that new campaign posts on instagram one consumer shared my ae order just arrived today i'm heading to the store tomorrow to return the whole thing this campaign is a warrant another rope y'all my faith place to buy jeans won't be shopping here anymore and another commented i've been wearing nothing but ae jeans for fifteen plus years but this campaign is so off i'll find other jeans to wear now here's the key lesson for you choose which identities your brand wants to feel like they belong with your brand but also you need to accept that consumers you don't choose to focus on may decide to spend their money elsewhere just gotta be prepared for both sides alright so the second lesson is use your power for good marketing has much more power than just getting consumers to buy your product marketing also has the power to influence the way people feel about both themselves and other people a few years back unilever recognize recognized that power and decided to remove the word normal from all packaging and campaigns from all their beauty and personal care products the brand recognized that people who needed products that weren't labeled normal were negatively impacted by that experience us if you are a person looking at the new american eagle campaign and you don't have some of the genetically handed down quote unquote good jean traits of sydney sweeney that can negatively impact the way you view yourself along those same lines calling specific traits of genes could could also cause people to look at other people who don't have those genes in a lesser light so what's the key lesson for you marketing doesn't exist in a vacuum the messages you communicate both directly and indirectly have power that goes well beyond how people respond to your product responsible marketing supports your brand's growth so lean into it alright so after this short break we're gonna get into other three key lessons for marketers as a result of this whole saga okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it's marketing against the grain hosted by kip and kirin flanagan and it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals so if you wanna know what's happening now in the world of marketing what's ahead and how you can lead the way then this podcast is for you i listened to an episode a while back that i love so much i sent it to some friends in a mastermind that i'm a part of and it was all about how to rank number one when ai is taking over featuring ross simmons definitely worth a listen if you like cheese may like i do you might wanna have a listen to the episode where they covered did hubspot lose eighty percent of its blog traffic here's what actually happened in another recent episode that looks super interesting that i wanna make sure that i take some time to listen to is how to rank number one and chat gp results ai seo strategy listen to marketing against the grain wherever you get your podcasts alright the third lesson for marketers from this american eagle sidney sweeney campaign backlash shouldn't be a surprise to you if you've hung out here for any period of time and that is that intent isn't the marker for success at this point we do not know the intentions of the american eagle team when they made this ad i reached out to a spokesperson for comments and have yet to hear back from them but what we do know from a post from ashley shapiro american eagle vice president of marketing media performance and engagement is that the campaign did have a double meeting behind it in a linkedin post celebrating the team's efforts for what they created and giving a peek into the creative process and decisions shapiro wrote the star power of sydney and the double meaning behind the campaign has a cultural shaping power beyond anything i could have ever imagined being a part of just check your social feeds now we may never know with certainty what the intent was with the double meaning referenced unless american eagle tells us generally when campaigns have this level of backlash and official apology comes which often includes the sentiment our intention wasn't to offend whether or not that happens it is important to remember that intention is never the marker of success how the campaign is received is the true marker marketers should judge their effectiveness by and while there are consumers who love and appreciate this campaign there are many who hate it and feel it causes harm so what's the key takeaway for you focus on impact not your intentions if what you produce doesn't land the way you intend then there is opportunity for improvement alright the fourth lesson is to not guess about how your campaign will be received okay so at this point in time it isn't known if american and eagle tested its campaign concept or any portion of the campaign with consumers before making such massive investment to make sure it gets seen most commentary and news about the campaign is entirely focused on the controversy surrounding it there are questions swirling around wondering how our brand could have produced a campaign that would garner such a strong negative reaction shouldn't they have known that this would be the case smart marketers don't leave the success of campaigns they are heavily investing in up to chance good marketers take the time to not only get feedback from a broad diversity of their ideal customers get an understanding of how they respond to campaigns but they also take the time to understand how the campaigns might be perceived overall even outside of their ideal customer circle if the intention of the campaign was not to offend then included in the development process should have been voices to offer culturally intelligent insights or at the very least to weigh in on how the campaign might be perceived by the masses once it's live so the key takeaway for you is include people who have the identities of the ideal customers you were trying to reach in your creative process from start to finish also test your campaigns with your intended audience before you launch it and the last takeaway is responses and in crisis situations should be thoughtful rather than rushed in the midst of all the backlash around the sydney sweeney campaign american eagle published a post on instagram showcasing a racially ambiguous model wearing a pair of jeans with the caption denim on denim on denim on denim ae has great jeans the brand also removed the video campaign that received the most complaints from their social media accounts now it's unclear if the brand posted this to appear as if including a model with different jeans was a part of this campaign but for many people the move just feels rushed and like the brand is trying to cover its tracks given the accusations around race with the core of its campaign to make matters even more confusing the caption features lyrics from a beyonce song titled levi's jeans and beyonce currently has a campaign with american eagle competitor levi levi's which makes this caption even weirder one consumer responded referring to this racially ambiguous model does she have great genes like sydney's sweeney too or is this just damage control another vote this move was actually worse it looks like an afterthought putting a band aid on a gus wound so what's the key takeaway for you don't respond to crisis with hasty moves you might make the situation worse especially if your response appears ina authentic also the use of racially ambiguous models often doesn't have the intended impact brands think it does alright so those are the key takeaways i have for you with regards to all the drama surrounding this campaign and i am super curious to hear what your point of view is do you think hey this is no big deal people are over reacting are you appalled are you shocked what are you hearing what are you thinking what are you feeling let's continue in the conversation on socials tag me in the conversation i wanna see what you're feeling and what your network is feeling you wanna have it privately we can do it over email as well or slide into my dms another quick question for you are you getting the inclusion in marketing newsletter if not quick heads up each week i send news resources if commentary voice of the customer all kinds of goodness designed to help you attract and retain a bigger more diverse fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up i'll also drop a link to it in the show notes for you until next time remember everyone deserves to have a place where they've belong let's use our individual and collect a power to ensure more people feel like they do thanks so much for listening talk to you soon

alright so while i was living in buenos aires often enough when i was out eating at restaurants the waiter would bring over an english menu most often because they heard me speaking to one of my friends in english now just in case you don't know the official language in buenos aires in argentina on the whole is spanish now the outback steak steakhouse in az asia which is the international airport in buenos aires they even went as far as to print their menus with three languages spanish portuguese and english because those are the most common languages of the passengers going through the airport so we've got a number of restaurants who've got a separate english language menu and then you've got a outback state house who has all three languages on one menu let's contrast that with observations from the us i live in florida where twenty two percent of the population speaks spanish as their primary language and i'm super hard pressed to think of a single restaurant that i've been to that offers a spanish language menu i even remember one lunch where i a random customer had to step in as a translator for a spanish speaking couple because no one on staff spoke the language now i find this as a really interesting contrast among my experiences in these two countries in particular and this isn't just a restaurant and hospitality issue or even about language it's a business issue it's a marketing issue it's a customer experience issue and these are all issues especially for brands who want to grow why because if we look at things in the us the latino community isn't just growing they're reshaping the market one in five people in gen z are latino when we look at jen alpha the generation after gen z it's one and four but most brands are still missing the mark when it comes to authentically showing up for this powerful audience so in this episode i sat down with claudia rom ed ceo and founder of the we are all human foundation who shares eye opening findings from her two thousand twenty five hispanic sentiment study and what they reveal about where brands are falling short and how they can do better when it comes to engaging the fast growing and super powerful latino community you will hear my conversation with claudia after this short break you don't become the world's most valuable women's sports franchise by accident angel city football club did it with a little help from hubspot when they started data was housed across multiple systems hubspot unified their website email marketing and fan experience in one platform this allowed their small team of three to build an entire website in just three days the results nearly three hundred and fifty new sign ups a week and three hundred percent database growth in just two years visit hubspot dot com to hear how hubspot can help you grow better hey claudia thanks so much for joining me today how are you i'm great it's so excited to be with you oh my pleasure i'm so excited for this chat alright before we get dive in let the people know who are you and what do you do oh i'm claudia aroma ed i'm the founder and the ceo of the world human foundation hispanic star and a i'm a social entrepreneur and an entrepreneur getting ready to launch a so brand which is the next week thing after with tequila na very cool very cool i know a lot of people are gonna be interested in learning more about that one of the things that we i wanted to talk to you about today is that you and your team just published a report that you all presented the results at the can festival a couple of weeks back and as i was looking through the report one of the things that it said like in the opening was that you talked about the most significant growth opportunity for brands over the next four decades and i was like wow talk about like a show stopping headline can you talk about like what is this opportunity why is it the case why do brands need to be paying attention absolutely so what we're talking about is the results of the hispanic sentiment thirty twenty twenty five this is a consecutive survey report that we do starting in twenty eighteen so we've been we've been able to measure the sentiment of the us hispanic population from twenty eighteen and start actually comparing it this year we were able to include the opinion of non latinos about latinos so that we can start measuring the sentiment about latinos of latinos okay the incredible headline is that this is a four point one trillion dollar opportunity that represents growth over the next four years and i'm gonna break it down and i'm you know that's a statement that i'm not saying because i'm a super at a statement because it's back on data right four point one trillion dollars is the size of the economy that means if if you take the us hispanic population which is compounded by twenty six different national approaching whether you are argentinian mexican colombia all of us are called latinos or hispanics or latin by the way we don't care about how you wanna call us as long as you pay as ball that's fine but so this group if you put it as a stand economy would do be the fifth largest economy because the ice of the economy that we produce is four point one trillion dollars so that's a fact okay and then we say about that in the next four decades because of the age of latino so seventeen is the most common age of sixty five million latinos in the country so if you start looking at median mode and average average is twenty seven years old twenty six years old that's a decade younger than the rest of the population but the most which is the most common the most common age of sixty five million latinos which represent twenty percent of america today is seventeen years old that's a shows stopper but then you compare it to the mode meaning the most common age of non latino whites and that's sixty three so the seventeen to sixty three is four decades four decades of growth four decades of people that are gonna be able to pay taxes that are gonna be able to buy products that are gonna be able to go to work so so that's why we're saying this is secular growth the firm growth for the next four decades and today is the size of four point one trillion dollars as an opportunity that it's untapped and outperforming in whatever industry you are so we're like went to the can advertisement festival this year saying like okay latinos are on top outperforming and ready for love so this is the size of the economy and it's gonna be secular for four decades yeah it's it's an exciting opportunity whenever you like you said like you're looking at the numbers and understanding it i am particularly close to this in because my daughter is a right and i want to i consider her as a part of this group of what you're calling the new latin latino of course she's young but you talking about how this is an overall very young population can you talk a little bit about what is the new latino at you as you all have referenced senior report and how should brands be thinking about it like is there a shift in the way that brand should be thinking about this younger generation of latinos versus how they might have traditionally thought about this community absolutely and your daughter is a perfect poster child of what i'm gonna say so latinos were young right i just said the youngest cohort in the entire country twenty percent of the gen sea that everybody wants to reach is latino twenty five percent of alpha the younger you look the more latinos you will find so that's the that's a distributor number one okay but and that has been the case right like that has been the case and you have been seeing it the projection of population growth what is new is that these latino this this group of sixty five million people are all of a sudden awake they are self aware of their own power so these dramatic awareness race that we have seen in the hispanic sentiment story that in twenty eighteen was only fourteen percent of the latino population that had a clue of how many we are how young we are how much we produce how much do we have a power in the voting and in the elections this group has grown their awareness about themselves but also about their own influence from fourteen percent in twenty eighteen to forty two percent in twenty twenty three and this year in twenty twenty five seventy seven percent that means seventy seven percent of latinos are understanding their own power and we don't have anymore the distorted mirror mh east which was looking at ourselves so small because media and everybody was telling us like oh yours you're you're you're not very powerful you're weak you're small that's already understood through the election that we are through the election and through the work of organizations like mine and through the awareness racing that we have about the power of latinos we realizing by seventy seven percent that we're influential the problem here if you're a brand is that and your daughter's is perfect for this example the problem is that you don't see that others are seeing it that the people in power are seeing your influence or reflecting your influence so you're starting to wonder not starting to wonder you're really peaking on on how whether brands and media are reflecting your values and are reflecting your influence the way that they have and that is pretty much i think that the message we want to come to say which is this is an untapped and outperforming opportunity with a group that all of a sudden is a new latin latino because he's self aware and empowered and he's going to start making choices because what is clear is that there's a disconnect between our influence and our external representation and we don't see our values reflected by big brands and media and we're gonna start taking action against that yeah that was gonna be my next thought was how do you feel that brands are doing and maybe what is a data show about how brands are doing with engaging authentically this community from where i sit it's still feels like it's very stereotypical but i'm i'm curious to see what your thoughts are and what the community has to say about it i'm gonna give you a big graph right okay how you speak for like to tune that's a way in which we're growing population economically socially the the number of people that are graduating the amount of jobs that we are able to create the latinos are growing this way our awareness of ourselves has actually started going this way what is not going that way is how brands and media are portraying us representing us and investing in us and that is this these two contradicting grass is what's causing a recession and i'm not talking about an economic recession i'm talking about that recognition recession where we feel that a brands have actually decreased their interest and the reflection to us where we're seeing less latinos sin where we're seeing less representation at the higher level so while everything else is going up this number latinos spill ignored in trust in brands pulling to fifty four percent to just thirty two percent in two years so twenty points drop in two years means that latinos again this contradiction of like wait a second i am saying clearly now and now i can see that how ignore i am and this recession that i was talking about this recognition recession truly we don't wanna get into a recognition prices because that would bring a breakup up and if there's one thing that latinos are one is that were many two we have a purchasing power that is of the size of three point eight trillion dollars that went from one year to four four point one trillion dollars that means the size of our wallet is increasing by the minute every time we're buying and we have a purchasing power that is higher ten years ago we were the most common product that we bought was oil today lipstick so we're we're going from basics to more locks luxury and then in the future but the one piece that happens when you have a breakup when you let a recession get into a crisis is trust and loyalty right and those are the pieces that latinos have traditionally living being rated at when you're a brand loyal like we are because we use the creams that we saw from our hour lead right like yeah i i keep on actually using the pieces that come to me because i'm loyal to my brands i'm loyal to my employer i'm i'm loyal to the pieces i do but when you break up with someone then you are gonna allow for latinos to be exercising their purchasing choices which is what's happening right now we see on the data from the hispanic sentiment study that from sixty six percent to now eighty two percent latinos are saying i'm gonna start making sure that my purchasing choices are reflecting the investment that brands having my community yeah so every time more this new latino that is more self aware i'm empowered is gonna start making new choices and that is why we're calling the attention for brands and companies to start acting and investing in latino in what matters to was us in our priorities and the pieces that are gonna be intimate to us in the community we don't care so much about the you know like external fan safari i said that what we care about like having companies and brands accompanying us in advancing in our future advancing in the cost of living fears that we have advancing in the health care issues the safety issues the or the priorities for latinos yeah where would you recommend that brands get started if they're saying alright i'm looking at the numbers i see that this is a community that we should not be ignoring or putting on the back burner any longer is it in representation is it in other parts of their overall marketing mix like where do they need to be thinking or pod focusing their energy in a way where the community can feel it so there is this incredible pushback against diversity inclusion happening corporate paralysis is a reality wait and see all these things and at the end of the day i think that while those corporate efforts might be stopped the latino consumer is not diversity getting inclusion the latino consumer is gonna keep on consumer we're gonna keep on buying toilet paper we're gonna keep on going and so my first advice to everybody's is like don't confuse terms don't get parallel paralysis where you don't need it this is all about business growth and a business opportunity and the reason why a known for profit activist like myself is talking to brands and two companies is not to make sure that they increase their bottom line is to make sure that by engaging in the latin latino community in what they care about they're gonna be able to grow and that is going to be a triple bottom line a wing win win because latino communities need that investment in their schools where they operate in the communities where they are and because latinos don't want charity latinos what they are looking for is opportunities the most trusted institution for latinos he's not media is not government is not even the church she's my boss and my family so employees have a dramatic role to play when it comes to the latino community so brands need to recognize and companies need to recognize that your community trust you only because you employ them or because you know like you're talking to them so don't confuse terms this is not a a diverse inclusion invest in the market and invest in a way that is relevant to latinos in their priorities so we don't need to be again we don't need to be doing things you know like out of context but you need to be looking at culturally relevant growth loyalty and cultural leadership that is focused on our priorities i would say culture for campaigns real stories of resilience entrepreneurship board mobility latinos with this imagine that we're not asking ourselves whether we're working anymore we wanna know where is that worthiness is coming from we wanna know that other people see us as worthy so everything that you can tell on storytelling positioning latinos as an integral part of the team as opposed to someone that is bench is going to be important particularly if you if you start looking at the data that indicates latino don't wanna be isolated we want to be part of the mix right like so when you're looking at ads when you're looking at investment in the communities it's it's just we don't wanna say like give it to us and not give it to anybody else it's just like we're part of the mix so i i would say that keep on investing taking small bets is like you take out what you put in right like if you're like doing little investment that's what you're gonna from this community so i think that even the numbers i would just say trust the data dig into the data start looking at numbers like seventeen is the most common another number that i always wanna make sure that brands didn't understand when what they're looking at market an investment in the market and the consumption is the lifespan value of consumers right like so if you start looking at the lifetime value of non latinos is thirty eight years so a brand has a consumer for thirty eight active years in which it can start say like you're gonna start buying and then you're gonna end buying from me and i wanna have your loyalty for thirty eight years yeah for latinos because we start earlier and then we am there earlier because we we don't have no choice right it's fifty so that is twelve years added that you can have one consumer you can have sonia sonia daughter as your consumer for fifty years which is twelve years younger than the rest so i would say for brands get the data get the insights both cultural go authentic go community very cool very cool the numbers don't lie and they tell a very compelling story okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it's marketing against the grain hosted by kit button are and kieran flanagan and it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals so if you wanna know what's happening now in the world of marketing what's ahead and how you can lead the way then this podcast is for you i listened to an episode a while back that i love so much i sent it to some friends in a mastermind that i'm a part of and it was all about how to rank number one when ai is taking over featuring ross simmons definitely worth a listen if you like cheese may like i do you might wanna have a listen to the episode where they covered did hubspot lose eighty percent of its blog traffic here's what actually happened in another recent episode that looks super interesting than i actually wanna make sure that i take some time to listen to is how to rank number one and chat gp results ai seo strategy listen to marketing against the grain wherever you get your podcasts i'm curious because i've seen brand struggle with this as well is the whole concept of language and how they should be using language so often i've seen whenever brands are thinking about the latino community their default is old that means we need to translate content and my personal view viewpoint is it's so much more than that but i think that people are getting kind of hung up with the idea of language should it be in spanish should it be in english should it be in span right like what advice would you given what is the data say about what consumers want and expect it's so interesting what's happening to language and in language it's fabulous and the data is is incredibly rich sophisticated making it complex and right making complex but just like let's put data around there's five hundred and seventy seven thousand at seven million people that speaks spanish in the world there's more than fifty seven million spanish speaker in the countries eighty percent of latinos are bilingual thirty percent of latinos do not even speak spanish so it's already a you know like a complex right but vast marked if you start looking at that is like fifty five million people that i could be talking to talking in spanish what is interesting is number one there's a trend to latin that there's a reclaiming latin latino that trend so people despite all the political migration attacks and and people are feeling a bit scared they are scared about their safety not about their identity so nothing is gonna shake up you know like nothing no one is not gonna feel proud of being latin latino know like that's done what is happening is that there's a push from people like your daughter to their parents that maybe accumulated if you're fifty years old the likelihood is at your parents if you were like first or second generation told you mi hit don't spanish like a age agent like try to me like everyone else so you didn't learn the language and your kids are pushing you and so there's a retro latino movement that is making duo other platforms explode right like there's there's an increase from twenty eighteen the usage of language as a tool that brands can use sixty six percent to seventy six percent to eighty five percent this year so people are like talk to me tell me tell me that you love me in esp right like there's there's that there there's a sense of that is something that connects me with my passion number two is how it is almost like a cultural piece as opposed to it's like cultural not not so much bilingual but by cultural as well and so that means that for example people that are spanish big are more optimistic we saw it in the data that people that were only one language were less optimistic about the american dream or spanish speakers that are more optimistic about the american dream so if you start taking that as an inside you're like wait a second so i could i could be talking to you in different times and in different moments and i could actually appeal to different emotions to you yeah which is quite interesting so i think that language overall and then there's also the other piece which is the non latin latino learning spanish where you have me model being the number one beer are sold in the country not because latinos are drinking more is because it's trust sending the latino valley trust sending you have bad being the number one you know like in the top charts where he's spanish speaker and people willing to go there so there's something cool about language and being latinos that is only not only transcend not only latin latinos but transcend sending into mainstream so the entire concept of language and when and how and where is super interesting for example for us we definitely are english based with a spanish touch okay and we do most of the things that we produce with it in two languages understanding that for some people it's a matter of time it's a matter of moment it's a matter of emotion where they're gonna be using the different tools yeah for me i think it just means for brands they have to be much more strategic and have a lot more cultural intelligence it's not just oh flip the switch send this off the translation which that wasn't the right approach before i think it was a much more lazy approach but it it just means that their need to have a greater degree of intimacy with the people that they wanna serve to understand how they should communicate and how they should talk to them in timothy intimacy is a keyword that we saw in the hispanic sentiment study going again and again that's why we're like triple indexing in reddit because it's intimate those kind of conversations and platforms where we are like loving it and and feeling that we are able to be like the times in which you could just like splash google translate all ami going into anything that they were doing with poly political or you know like a brand are gone and people need that yeah but you need to be in culture and you need to be intimate i think that those are the key towards yeah what recommendations do you have for brands to get into culture of the let latino know in the us so we and again the organization that i leave the world human foundation with the initiative the hispanic star has for eight years now has been collecting data insights collecting shared share best practices for more than three hundred and fifty companies so wow pretty much i think that i would say join organizations like hours that are on network of networks where you can get insights where you can get data come to events like the hispanic leadership summit that happens at the end of october so that you can start not only getting access to strategic partnerships as to start to strategic information data and insights but also to the network of the people that are making making a difference right now everything in the latin latino community is growing so absolutely fast but it is very important actually to be in touch yeah a culture is part of the road map that consistently has been anchored in values and preferences right so latinos scare dramatically about their family at like values and what are the latino values hard work responsibility this year responsibility and i was authenticity where the two values at latinos are are spiking the most contrary to honesty which was something that you know like is going on sliding down in the area so the care about the values of responsibility so anything that is related to hard work to optimism them to being able to have ambition to buy a house for my no she she gave me so much through my mother and now i wanna pay it back so everything that is looking forward is on on value that is related to responsibilities one i think that on values family matters we over index and we'll will continue to do so in social media consumption and social media sharing so anything that you know like anything that is related to us being a better member of a family and connecting and and and gathering people around and and understanding that at work for example it doesn't mean that we're social is a bad thing social is a great thing when you are latino because you're gonna be able to lead like a mother right like not let anybody else get out so you can you can start leaning towards those those values and i think that the other piece that is related to it's this culture which is sports music food we're dramatically proud of our language as i said before so if you start looking at that that's a road map talk to me about the things that i care about invest in my community and go with my passions which are related to my culture and the pain points that you can help me solve are related to in are related to the barriers that i have in order to continue progress which is really the one identifier of everyone not language not religion not political affiliation what really unify sixty five million people today is our desire to get to the american dream wow wow one other quick question for you before we switch gears you mentioned earlier that it's twenty seven countries represented among latinos in the us and i've heard brands thinking like oh this is too like we can't we can't talk to this many different people these different mini segments isn't it necessary for brands to think about talking to different are are they should they be thinking about individual communities or are they thinking about a community as a whole or does it matter on whenever possible should they be segmenting based upon like a community that's in a local area you're so good i mean like you're literally asking the inside questions after like okay i know no alright look so that's pretty much the reason why it started the world human foundation eight years ago was because i saw a hyper fragmentation of soft cultures that were not only the twenty six different countries of foreign but also the vast diversity that is contained in the latin latino community as a por that would never allow for anybody to access anyone at this time and being you know like a humanitarian and worker care or like oh my god if there's pandemic or if there's something that happens as an emergency there's no way that you can really send a message and take action for so many people there's a fragmentation that is a a achilles heel of this community and i'm gonna work on unifying okay and so i started looking at it's not only twenty six different countries of origin is that you know within the latin latino community you have every form and every caller at every point twenty two percent of the latino community identifies as lgbtq well in every four latinos east native american there's more than seven million latinos there's more than seven million latinos in within the community so you can see whoever all of it and there right right there there's asian latinos a latinos latinos the columbian and so that fragmentation is hard if you don't find the common ground mh that allows for you as an organization and as a company to be able to talk to them otherwise you're gonna be saying like okay so i'm gonna do a campaign for puerto ricans from nova york which is different to puerto ricans that are in miami which is very different yeah impossible so what i started doing was to elevate the sense understand why if someone is poly us latinos why are we not taking it what does it mean and why people not want to latinos and how do we elevate and create a brand of it and like leader platform that is convenient to us and it does it it was twofold that one it was the peer to losing roots so if you're a mexican from v and you're live in new york you wanna keep your and origins because you don't wanna betray your your family and you're are little are there by becoming american and i'm being being latino and so on but the number two is that it's not convenient like being a latino is punished in this country because you're seeing as low you're seeing a stake not maker you're invisible and not visible and you're negative and not positive so it was about changing the question and say wait if we make the brand of latinos as positive contributors to the country as stars then it's gonna be easier to address us to unite us and to be working together and i think that the hispanic sentiment studies has showed that from twenty eighteen to twenty twenty five latinos are by far more unified by far more to be latinos by far less less conflicted about understanding that we can be a two hundred percent of a person or a three hundred percent of a person i can be mexican and i can be yeah latin and i can also be american right like we can be that and that i think that that sense of maturity of the identity something that is not new to this community has gone you know historically through there and so i would say right now for brands i would appeal to the positive side of latinos which is uniting us in our pride the way that back bonnie in the way that culture and music is doing it he's not talking only about one group is talking to us as a culture and we pride and do it understanding that the pieces that disconnected us from that are our our fear to lose ground with our roots but also that it was not good to be latino and when brands talk about like what is good for latinos is good for america i think that you gonna appeal to everybody yeah very cool very cool i've learned so much during this conversation so much really wonderful data i wanna switch gears a little bit and find out from your perspective as a consumer can you tell me about a time when a brand made you feel like you belonged well i mean like i i've been involved the i've been involved so many brands in the creation of so many brands that are like connected to community and too good i'm gonna say for example product and i was obviously biased because i think that that's a set of brands but the idea was to provide the consumer with a choice between one brand the other between one product and the other one is gonna do good but not only do good to someone else it's gonna make me feel believe that i belong to the champions of the world if you know what like yeah oh wow if i buy if i buy this t shirt top gap that is red or if i buy those that phone of apple that is red then i'm gonna be part of bon and chris martin and you know like a bunch of great guys that i admire the the the good guys of the avengers of the world so i think that that's the the idea of belonging that red was able to create and i was able to create to me as well yeah very cool and it also kinda helps you feel like you're you're part of the solution like it's values a very values aligned type of type of yeah approach where can people find you if they wanna learn more about you and your work and all the resource that you've done and if they wanna come to the hispanic leadership summit at the end of october and come to gala october thirty where celebrating the owner of cirque sole who is latino i i knows he's our gala in cirque sole so where can they find me at spanish star dot org or we are all human dot org and my handles in every social media outlet are claudia and rom ed oh very cool i will drop links to all that initiative so people can access it easily any parting words of wisdom for marketers and business leaders who wants to do a better job of tapping into this opportunity but you said the most significant opportunity over the next four decades of really just doing a better job of engaging this latino community i would just repeat the same the latino community is an on untapped outperforming and with higher demands market segment with a new latino that is self empowered and at risk of entering a recession mission recession waiting for your loss so the time to act this now take the bit bet i know that there's a lot of challenges out there but just keep calm and live with latinos very cool claudia this has been so fantastic thanks so much for stopping by you're amazing thank you so much thank you claudia had so many interesting things to say in some really really fascinating and noteworthy data points i'm curious are there any data points in particular that stood out most to you that may ultimately have an impact on the way in which you view the latino community in particular as a consumer group that you want to serve for your brand let's talk about it i wanna continue this conversation it was just so fascinating to me and i just wanna hear how it's landing on you and the way in which you're thinking about it if you enjoyed this show i would so appreciate it if you would leave a rating and review for it in your podcast player of choice it really does go a long way towards helping more people discover the show and i like to think it helps more people practice inclusion helps more people feel like they belong also are you getting the inclusion and marketing newsletter each week i send news resources stories voice of the customer information all kinds of good lessons and takeaways for you to help you attract and retain a bigger more diverse and fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up i'll also drop a link for that in the shown notes so you can access it easily until next time remember everyone deserves to have a place where they belong let's use our individual and collect a power to ensure more people feel like they do thanks so much for listening talk to you soon

customer experience is in linked to include of marketing you can't do one well without the other however customer experiences are notoriously under for people from under underrepresented in underserved communities oh i've got stories for you most of the time those experiences are cobb together and very much feel like an afterthought no bueno so one of the ways i recommend marketers and business leaders increase their capacity to consistently deliver experiences that make the people they serve feel like they belong is to diversifying their circle of influence this is one of my five seas of building an inclusive brand and it's all about being intentional about gaining experiences and tuning into sources that are outside of the traditional ones you are accustomed to so in this episode i was thrilled to sit down with patrick fa a behavioral scientist and data psychologist who spends an entire year doing one new experience each week we had a really lovely and fascinating conversation and while you don't need to go to the extremes that patrick did there's definitely lots to learn from his experiment so after this short break you're gonna hear my conversation with patrick you don't become the world's most valuable women's sports franchise by accident angel city football club did it with a little help from hubspot when they started data was housed across multiple systems hubspot unified their website email marketing and fan experience in one platform this allowed their small team of three to build an entire website in just three days the results nearly three hundred fifty new sign ups a week and three hundred percent database growth in just two years visit hubspot dot com to hear how hubspot can help you grow better hey patrick thanks so much for joining me today how are you hi sonya thanks for having me i'm very good thanks alright well i'm i'm really excited to chat with you you did a really cool i don't know if experiment does the right word for a year but before we get into that because it's it's super juicy tell people who are you and what do you do so i am an applied behavioral scientist so my day job like say turn minds into money meaning i take the academia and the science of psychology and think about how to actually use it to make adverts more effective websites get people to click on that buy button that kind of thing so that's what i've been doing for my career which is okay yeah i mean it's not the most soul nourishing job i have to say as much as i to enjoy parts of it but one client that i had was i did a project on experience marketing and what makes experience is psychologically effective and that combined with some research i did for a book made me realize just how powerful experiences can be so the book was about brainwashing and how not to be brain and like c author kind of forced me to go to sort of c in the woods for a weekend which was very interesting and i was dread it a lot but actually it was great and i suppose pretty much people do say that but it was great and it was really transformative and it just made me realize especially coming out of lockdown downs and and spending some time on a screen it made me realize just how important experiences are yeah and so that kind of inspired me to do this experiment i think experiments definitely the right word where i did one new thing for every week of the year like i went to a my different pony convention i went bungee jump in i went to the middle east for the first time i my first fab and all sorts of other things and it was very illuminati and kind of life changing in some ways i can imagine i can imagine okay i wanna i wanna dig into this more this experiment but i'm curious about applied behavioral science that we said it yeah are there any sort of i guess core learnings i guess you would say from from some of this work that you feel like maybe not enough marketers are using or in their marketing to be more effective so the the key kind of learnings from behavioral science are that we're all cognitive mis meaning we will have limited brain power we're paying attention to the world and engaging with experiences we're not really paying attention we don't really care about brands most of the time yeah and so you have to make things yes very simple but also emotionally engaging yeah and there are certain techniques you can use to make them more persuasive so for example if you say something is yours people are more likely to then buy it or or take it up because they feel like they own it already and yeah if you say something popular people are more likely to do it i think a lot of marx are somewhat aware of these techniques where they could very much improve i think in understanding their audience specifically the psychology of their audience i don't think brands in my experience are the best at that i mean a lot of time when i do an audit for a client and i ask or can you share the research you've done so far they're like we we haven't every search we've done nothing yeah so they i don't think they've really understand that audiences as well as they could and that's very important for designing experiences right when it comes to designing experiences have you found that that's based upon different identities that people have you know there's a broad diversity and there's so many dimensions of diversity right yep but because there are so many different identities that many brands have as part of their customer base is it necessary that have you found your work to sort of adjust for those different identities and the experiences that brands are designing yeah absolutely identity is interesting so i tend to look more at psychological features like personality of course they're very much tied to identity but funny example that goes around a lot is if you take prince charles or kin charles i and oz has born the prince of darkness on paper identity wise they're quite similar and that they're both the same age they're both from england they both yeah live in the castle they're rich famous they have two adults married twice two kids so in some ways they're very similar but psychologically they're i mean i don't know them obviously yeah but they're probably very different so oz one's is probably more disagreeable more of a dark personality king charles is probably more organized i would guess less open to new things more conservative and so how you would talk to them would be very different if you design experience for them and that is the kind of thing i i do advise clients on is how to create experiences that are tailored for yeah different identities a different psychological groups like if we have some people who are really social and outgoing you need to have an experience okay yes it's more social it's a bit obvious but also has brighter to warmer colors that influences them by saying something's popular whereas if you have say an older or more organized or more kind of serious type of customer then you would influence them more with commitment nudge or familiarity nudge and you would have more sensible symmetrical traditional aesthetics etcetera etcetera yeah fascinating stuff i i think we could probably go down a bet a bunch of different rabbit holes about like all the different things but what i love this in just the title of it is it's a science right if we think about this more is like science of how do we learn more about the different people that we want to serve so that we can better deliver experiences that make them feel like they belong to help them achieve the success that they're looking for that would make us all much more effective in the work that we're doing alright so i wanna switch gears a little bit it's very much connected what would you say is the role of having these new experience like you have fifty two new experiences for a whole year how did that change you in your perspective at all well it made me poorer number one because i spent a lot of money on them but it it changed a lot i mean one thing is that i now endeavor to do something new as often as i can and get out of my comfort zone mh even if it's just going to bird world with my family mh my wife and kids for the weekends just make sure i get out the house and do something new because yeah it's so important for productivity yes but also mental health and mood and happiness and that's that's what life is when you look back on life it's not really about months and days it's about events you know weddings parties going to birth wealth whatever it might be and so i do that i also learned a number of things about myself for example i had a health issue with my mouth i had kind of a tingling and numbness in my tongue sometimes mh i spent a lot of money or private doctors and he told me i i said to him i have a weird feeling in my mouth and he said that i have all anesthesia which means weird feeling in the mouth so i i of plants three hundred pounds gross but then for this experiment i went to an ac and he said that i have a hot mouth too much fire energy and i need to drink more water and he was actually right about the water i drank more water and it's kind of gone away so there all these kind of little things i learned from unusual sources just from getting out of my comfort zone and engaging people i might not have otherwise yeah yeah also and it's probably something will come back to what made me a lot more empathetic because i went to kind of groups of people that maybe i had a two d kind of superficial view of and i actually got to meet them as real people and see what they were like and understand their motivations in their fears and their dreams and whereas i may not have kind of agreed with them before i may have you know my little pony is a goods example over to my little pony convention where which is full of what's called bro and peg sisters so adult fans of this children show and in my mind i kind of saw them as a two dimensional joke if i'm honest yeah but then like meeting them all are they're real people it and so i kind of find it a lot harder to view people in that two dimensional way now i just think i'm a lot more aesthetic and open which is good yeah yeah no i one of the things i have a a framework on how to build an inclusive brand of five c framework and one of those c's is diversifying your circle of influence right just because i find that so many people have a very limited view of the world mh or the or and or if there's people who aren't like them they have that to d sort of experience and perspective so if we start putting ourselves in different opportunities to try new foods you know go to different types of events eat different learn from different types of people like an ac punch versus a doctor right like yep it sort of expands our view and it helps us like you said be more empathetic which is extremely helpful from a marketing perspective to sort of put your self and shoes of someone else i'm curious if this experiment has changed the way that you were have have have you been able to translate any of your learnings from that into your work yeah it i would just also add to that as well i know that vr r and have really interesting tools from this kind of empathy perspective we're getting to know your customer mh they've been used in research for social campaigns so for example people empathize more with refugees if they see their life through a through a via headset but i know that some companies do that for brands as well so you can actually like live your customers life and actually get know which i think a lot of brands kind of struggle with because we all live in a public of sorts but you know marketers tend to live in cities and tend to be like educated etcetera etcetera so they're they're in kind of a bubble and yeah this technology can help them get out of it but absolutely with respect to your question yeah i developed a model of kind of business useful things that i learned from the experiences that i call smile as an for alternative slime but i think i'll i'll go a smile for now and the these are things that i learned which make experience kind of effective a matter basically so s really interesting one s is for struggle which is about the fact that a lot of the most memorable and transformative experiences were really difficult or or awkward upwards so for example i went to a cuddle workshop or i had to for example hold a strange man's face in my hands and staying his eyes for a minute so i'm an introvert but i absolutely hated it but yeah it was it was transformative it was very memorable my wife also says it's the funniest one so far of the ones i've written up so yeah if something was awkward or difficult or i have to put everything in it was it was more impactful and there's psychological research behind that the effort justification effect where people have to put effort into something they actually value it more afterwards is so from a business point of view i think there's a case to be made here that a lot of brands and tech companies try to make our lives easier all the time but maybe actually making it a bit harder in some ways through experiences just making people actually do something or feel some friction they can actually be some positive benefits from a a brand perspective because it will be more memorable valued more the m was for min shy which is about how a lot of the experiences what made them special was quite small things so for example i went to see my first sunrise or or watch my first sunrise rise yeah it's not really that bigger deal you know it happens every day but i'd never done it before right but what me it really special was the little details like i was crunching my boots in the ice and i i saw a lonely pheasant and i saw these birds kind of flirting and dancing with each other there's very small things actually made it stand out in my mind so yeah and in psychology there's something called the daily uplift theory where small positive boost like a complement or the weather being mice these can actually have a big psychological effect so as a brand it's not necessarily about making huge brand experiences though there's are effective of course but also it's just the small things often that count an innocent a great example of this where they have this fun copy on their package sometimes so innocent drinks on the bottom of one kart and it might say if you look at it it says stop looking at my bottom these kind of small cute things can actually be quite powerful yeah i buy something just because it's said that right so like like it lights a little smile at the end right they they had huge success actually so i don't know if you have innocent in the us it's a fruit juice brand but they had huge success putting like little wool hats on the bottles oh that's cute yeah a very small thing but that had a big effect it was like three hundred percent sales increase i think so the i for illusion which is about the fact that experiences even they weren't all that authentic even if they were a bit crap they was still good often and sometimes it was at lack of authentic authenticity which made them special like for example i met psychic and she asked me do you know someone called george who's died recently and i was like i have a friend called george but he's not dead as far as i know that he didn't look very well last time i saw him but no i don't think so she said no he's going through some bad times i said he's not but a different friend is and she said yes yes that's the one so she was well i don't think she was authentic but she she likes the ac she gave me actually some good advice about my friend and about business and so even though it wasn't authentic it was still quite powerful and so we know in psychology there are cases where and imagined fear for example is as powerful as an experienced fear so it's not always about being authentic and real but just kind of creating a bit of an illusion is still powerful yeah and i think from what you're saying like it feels like the different experiences allow you an opportunity even if the initial promise of the experience isn't what you might have thought or what you were expecting yep there's still something to be gained from it because the experience itself might cause you to reflect or to have a different point of view on something that you prior previously thought of differently absolutely yeah and i would say yeah i don't have it in the framework but reflection actually is a really important part of wool because yeah i'm writing all of these experiences up to release once week just do stuff dot c dot u uk yeah and actually reflecting on them and writing them up has made them part of my self identity and my narrative in a way yeah i think that's something really powerful as well as if you're doing these experiences you're meeting new people to to to be more inclusive actually reflect on it maybe write it into a story or something so you integrate it into your life narrative it's like and it helps you process it and it works within your frame right your framework is smile and now you're just smile alert or slime slime they both work they both work absolutely and then okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it's marketing against the grain hosted by kip and kieran flanagan and it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals so if you wanna know what's happening now in the world of marketing what's ahead and how you can lead the way then this podcast is for you i listened to an episode a while back that i love so much i sent it to some friends in a mastermind that i'm a part of and it was all about how to rank number one when ai is taking over featuring ross simmons definitely worth a listen if you like cheese made like i do you might wanna have a listen to the episode where they covered did hubspot lose eight percent of its blog traffic here's what actually happened in another recent up episode that looks super interesting that i actually wanna make sure that i take some time to listen to is how to rank number one and chat gp results ai seo strategy listen to marketing against the grain wherever you get your podcasts the the l is for love which is and i'm not really kind of breaking any boundaries saying this but social experiences were way more memorable and transformative than once by myself and there's later search showing this for example some research shows even chocolate taste chocolate when you're eating it was at someone else so oh experience is general just more effective and i found yeah bungee you're jumping for instance you think it would sound really cool and memorable but i just got pushed off ledge and that was it really whereas some the cuddle workshop was far more interesting because of the people involved and under this is also a strong degree of empathy as i said meeting new people going to to new situations isn't actually getting to know them and seeing the world from that point of view i think that was probably the most transformative part of the whole yeah experiment for me and then the final one the e is for escape which is that it's not always about what people going into with the experience but what they're running away from and so i really found this in a flotation tank where i was left alone with my thoughts for an hour problem being my thoughts were horrible and they're were kind of like anxieties and stress yeah but facing up to them was was good for me yeah but i think a lot of people when they're going to an experience is potentially because they're they're looking for escape and distraction and so something to remember what it's not just what you're creating for people or what they might be trying to escape that's true like i think sometimes as marketers we try to compartment minimize people a little bit like we're only thinking about the people that we're serving in the context of the problem that we're trying to help them solve mh but there's so much other things going on right in their lives and the background and so and sometimes like you said those things they might need a bit of an escape from and so while they're getting you know the thing that you're helping with them from a brand perspective if it also provides that escape that can be super beneficial transcend for people in terms of like really helping them develop up a deeper degree of loyalty with you so i did an interview with someone a couple weeks ago and he said that the leaders who were the most effective at leading diverse teams and engaging inclusive leadership are the ones that did something very similar to you who have intentionally put themselves in scenarios that made them uncomfortable because they were different they were outside of their quote unquote norm mh in i'm curious if you have any thoughts on i know we talked about empathy but are are there other recommendations that you would have for leaders in particular on how intentional discomfort or stepping outside of your comfort zone might be beneficial to sort of maybe it's a pattern interrupt maybe it's just one that just helps them like are there are there any things that you would say or observations that you've had in your reflection about how this might impact people in terms of their ability to do better work yeah absolutely i think the philosopher nietzsche said that nick that doesn't shed its skin will die meaning if you don't like you you have to try new things you have to break out and and grow otherwise you're not gonna go anywhere yeah and so yeah empathy is part of it but it's so key to to do new things if you don't step out of your comfort zone you're always gonna be in the same space and you're never going to growth so it's actually it's completely necessary for growth i think to to get out of your comfort zone and be uncomfortable there's also the concept of anti fragile where you have to kind of stress test and break yourself a bit if you want to grow you know if you go to the gym and you lift weights you're kind of breaking your muscles a bit so they grow back stronger yeah i think it's the same for leadership or anything really but you need to kind of testing break them push to the the limits so they've come back stronger and that's all about getting uncomfortable yeah and then finally pattern interrupts is really interesting we're putting it as well so i know from my research on brainwashing there's this technique called disrupt and frame okay basically you bamboo or people a bit they're more vulnerable to new ideologies okay this is why for example army spouses tend to be a bit more likely to go for pyramid schemes because they're constantly moving location they have they're less kind of settled and anchored likewise naomi klein has a work called the shock doctor about how even on large scale countries are more likely to go for a new ideology or something if they've just been through a pandemic or a war or financial crash but on a day to day basis yeah if you can get out of a your habit or thinking if you can break that pattern just kinda shake yourself up a bit you're more than able to build something in the new so this just kind of old easter esoteric principle called dissolve and be built so if you want to build high you have to dig deep that kind of thing you need to break stuff apart before you can build it again so yeah growth is all about breaking things down so then you can rebuild it stronger and better and that'll comes from being uncomfortable i think love it i think that's a really smart principle that not enough people follow right like it makes sense but and people understand it in the realm of the example that you gave like lifting weights and fitness but i think it's just something that feels different and harder in and other parts but it's the same principle that we need to make sure that they're applying it and i i really love it in a i'm mental total agreement so it's great to know that this is backed by science as well so humans must notice is from your podcast trying to grow the audience you my limited experience extremely difficult but growth literally growth and new comes from trying new things trying new channels strength things you haven't done before it right yeah yeah absolutely so and figuring out like what works and sticking with it and then trying something new so it doesn't get stale and stagnant so yeah yeah all things that are applicable on a lot of different parts of running a business what if somebody wants to kind of engage in these new experiences diversify their circle of influence try new things to step outside their comfort zone are there things that you would caution them against like are there are there any watch outs that you would say for people who might be thinking about doing something like this well i mean often and obvious you know don't do anything that's gonna hurt yourself or others other than that not really i mean nothing but i did and i did some quite out there things nothing had a a negative impact on my life okay i would just save if you want to do it which i i'd very much recommend don't feel overwhelmed because obviously there's infinite things you could do yeah if you could start a list you could do it very small it doesn't have to do one new thing a week it you could be one a month or it just be one new thing for stuff yeah so you can just start small but just give it a try i would say yeah well what was interesting about what you just said is that the risk involved with stepping out of your comfort zone to do these things seems smaller mh right and i think maybe sometimes people don't do things because they feel like it's risky to do something that's uncomfortable but it sounds like as long as you're not doing something that's like dangerous there isn't necessarily an inherent like catastrophic risk associated with with doing it yeah and so one of the things i really wanted to do but logistically is difficult is good cage diving with sharks because i'm terrified of sharks is my biggest fear but i think if i can do that i should be able to do anything in life i have no excuses and actually it's strange but i take cold showers now sometimes that's as much as i should but just before i'm about to plunge into the cold shower i'm thinking i'm kind of thinking with this stuff that i haven't in life that i might want to do but i haven't you know with work and those frustrations and i just think okay if i can go into a cold shower i can do those things as well so i think training yourself to just immediately like just do it just do that stuff that's difficult currently follow through then positively and all sorts of other areas yeah very cool this has been fascinating patrick let's switch gears for a little bit i'm super curious about your answer for this given all the work that you've done in experience can you tell me about a time when a brand made you feel like you belonged no no not really actually i had a so i did a piece of work for media company while we were looking at the pillars of the human experience and it's quite similar and one of them was social and when i was presenting that they had a question of which pillar of brands the worst that and i do think it's social i think brands are very bad at connecting people and making people feel like they belong and you know all i can really think of is coca cola share a coke campaign or something or some kind of social media tag a friends campaign i i you know maybe there's like harley davidson not for me but for some people you know feel part of the harley davidson tribe or something i think there's examples of few of far between and i think people actually have a lot less attachment to the brand than than we think they do yeah so i yeah i can't really think of a time where where brand maybe for i've belong which sounds bad but i actually i think it's a huge opportunity france can get it right yeah is this something that you feel like can be they can use the principles of behavioral science to help them with yes for sure i mean understanding your audience would be the key thing so who are who is your target market and what are the like psychologically and then using that to design things that resonate with them so there's all sorts of resonance variables that depend on audio psychology like if they are extroverted your your audience or extra are very reward focused so they respond better to positive language and positive imagery whereas if your audience is creative they're more tolerant of ambiguity so you can ask more questions you can have jazz and real art or whatever so it's all about understanding the kind of psychological dna and then designing things that resonate with that very cool very cool where can people find you if they wanna learn more about you and your work and see these write ups of all these experiments that you've done and see like what their your full list was yeah absolutely so just do stuff dot c dot u uk is where i'm releasing these stories every week last week i went twenty four hours without using any screens at all mh and this coming week i wrote a letter to a serial killer although he didn't respond i guess probably for the best so that's just do stuff dot c dot u k and for a more commercial point of view if you're interested in using behavioral sites or doing psychological research you can find me at patrick fa dot c dot u uk i will have links to all that and shown notes so wait have you completed your fifty two weeks of different activities or you're still in progress well i've done them all but i'm now releasing them each week got it gotta gotta it got it alright patrick any parting words of wisdom for marketers and business leaders who wanna do a better job of delivering remarkable customer experiences to the people that they're serving you have to have the customer in the room so to speak so make sure you understand them and and live their lives as much as you can and get out of that marketing bubble and yeah yeah have a look at it from a psychological point of view how psychologist like me ideally me specifically but un pick with dna psychological of audience i think is key thank you patrick this has been super eye opening and insightful and so happy that you're able to step like likewise thank you so much i love this quest that patrick went on and i just wanna encourage you to wherever possible be intentional about stepping outside of your comfort zone to embrace new experiences points of view and people to learn from it'll open up a whole new world for you and really it'll have a great impact on expanding your perspective and will help you do a better job both as a leader and as a marketer if you like this show i would so appreciate it if you would share it with a friend's colleague and network it really does a long way towards helping more people discover the show and i like to think that helps more people practice inclusive marketing and while you're sharing i would love it if you would also leave a rating and review for the show in your podcast player of choice another quick question for you are you getting the inclusion and marketing newsletter each week i send news resources insights voice of the customer and other hot topics all designed to help you attract and retain a bigger more diverse and fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up and i will also drop a link to that in show notes for you below until next time remember everyone deserves have a place where they belong let's use our individual and collect a power to ensure more people feel like they do thanks so much for listing and talk to you soon

a core principle of delivering both authentic and effective inclusive marketing is c creation c creation with the people who are part of the communities you want to reach is a best practice in marketing inclusive but unfortunately not enough brands are doing it and definitely not as part of their core marketing approach that's why i was thrilled i mean i was really thrilled whenever i learned about the hair care brand got to be leans really hard into c creation as a way to better engage with the people that they want to serve i always love it when i have opportunity to bring you a chat with a marketing leader who is in the trenches with inclusive marketing so there's so much to learn from the experiences in trial and error of others that will hopefully help shorten their learning curve for you so in this episode i sat down with luis val senior brand manager forgot to be at the global level so after this short break you're gonna hear my conversation with luis you don't become the world's most valuable women's sports franchise by accident angel city football club did it with a little help from hubspot when they started data was housed across multiple systems hubspot unified their website email marketing and fan experience in one platform this allowed their small team of three to build an entire website in just three days the results nearly three hundred and fifty new sign ups a week and three hundred percent database growth in just two years visit hubspot dot com to hear how hubspot can help you grow better hey louise thanks so much for joining me how are you good how are you i'm doing well i'm so excited to chat with you i knew from the first time that we met i wanted to have you on the show because the work that you and the team are doing is really wonderful so before we get into all of that tell the people who are you and what do you do sounds good so i'm luis val i'm working at the got to be international team so i'm a senior brand manager and i'm responsible for color collaboration and master rent topics maybe somebody else from my side so i was born and raised in mexico city and relocated to germany seven years ago so since then i'm i've been working from this country that it's now my chosen new home and maybe also something that i've learned with the and humanity that i'm now try ever so often to do is to acknowledge my land so yes i'll give it a try so my home back back home in mexico was a land of many pre hispanic cultures one of them being the culture which is in mexico city so and this is a a land that was conquered in fifteen twenty one so that's my country where i continue oh wow i i know this is something that's very common that teams do in canada not so common here in the us but i do need to go and investigate because it is a really wonderful practice to just acknowledge where we are in that like you said atlantic acknowledgment so i'm gonna go and investigate on florida end i'm curious i know your homeland is in mexico for an race in mexico city yep what is it like working in a completely different continent a new country branded everyone speaks english but like outside you're dealing with like what what is it like it's a big cultural difference i imagine definitely so i think in germany you find a lot of moments where people are open and also able to communicate in english but for a proper integration you do need to learn german and it's not a language that i started to learn since i was little so it took a bit of effort but i it's not impossible and slowly but surely i've managed to to find ways to communicate i wouldn't say i'm one hundred percent fluent or able to to operate yeah four seven in german but i found my way and i think it really helps to be in the country to have opportunities to practice and and to also stay curious watch tv listen to to radio and in the language so i'm i'm getting there yeah yeah as someone who is imperfect fluent in spanish and i speak spanish every day i can't imagine working in spanish like that would be something that would be a completely different it's a whole new level so kudos to you and so many fronts alright so what does inclusive marketing mean to you i would say it's marketing that aims to touch the lives of as many consumers as we can with full awareness of their diversity of lyft experiences so i think that the aim of every brand we want to reach as many consumers as possible but the moment when you plan this thinking about those different paths of lives yeah and what can entail then it it's that's to me in terms of marketing who what would you say is the states of inclusive marketing today in the consumer packaged goods industry wherever where you work i think in our industry we have made some progress when it comes to that to inclusive marketing and i think in some sub subcategories we are further up within our inclusion intuition journey mh but i think a facilitating factor is definitely that contrary to other industries where you have maybe digital services or or a service provider here we give tangible physical goods and i think that allows in its own possibility to have physical interactions to think inclusive design or to also do communication narratives that are depicting different characters and different people so i think that really makes it easier for our industry but i wouldn't say it's we're fully done we're on a journey but i'm i'm positive for where we stand in our industry i'm curious if consumers are more and more being vocal i've seen a lot of different things on the beauty industry and i know when it comes to things like makeup consumers have a lot of increasing expectations around inclusion are you finding that it's that same way in hair care as well yes i would say it's it's a similar phenomenon in hair care and concrete completely in her styling for forgot to be but it's also to some extent similar to sustainability i i think it's being democrat amortized it's almost as if consumers expect brands to take into consideration i don't think it's any more a differentiating factor or or maybe it is but not for the reasons we hope it would be into both but i think consumers face inclusive marketing with a with a positive reaction and and and then on top up comes the added benefits from from what the brand brings to the table for sure for sure yeah okay so how do you currently work to infuse inclusive marketing into the work that you do for your brand it got be so i think one way we do it is with the acknowledgement of what we don't know so the global team where i work not everyone has the lived experience of the communities that we are trying to serve yeah so i think the first step is we are humble and not enough and honest enough to acknowledge when we don't know when someone is not a member of the lgbtq plus community or at textured hair consumer it's okay it's just about acknowledging and then also getting curious and eager to learn about what that community needs and that's where active listening opens up and that's where you start to to gain more awareness on those topics and i would say secondly our brand values are very strongly cemented on so it comes very organically forgot to be our tagline is for whoever you want to be yeah in its own it gives you a a very big springboard to them foster inclusive marketing so those two reasons i think it's what helps us to infuse inclusion in rd yeah i think that's a beautiful way that acknowledgment is super important and i'm curious if this was part of the got to be brand values from the beginning or was this something that you all evolved to include more of over time i would say it evolved we are as with every brand we've gone through our our our communication eras for lack of a better world or or or relaunch and if you look back to where it got to be started and where we are right now we were more in an aspirational kind of position where we wanted to be that brand that edgy revel brand that people would strive or or hope to be and and you would see that in in the way we would depict our consumers and the way we would interpret this for whoever you want to be and then at some point in time that i i wasn't even part of the team something clicked or maybe we looked into what was happening in the world that we realized we had a brand that could serve that higher purpose of of being more inclusive of depicting different lifestyles of of celebrating self expression and then we gradually move to where we are right now as a brand so it's not something that happened from the beginning and and the launch of the brand we have been learning and evolving throughout the years yeah one of the things that i really enjoyed about the work that you all doing we've got to be is your commitment to c creation can you talk a little bit about that in terms of why you arrived at this place to lean into c creation which i've always say is the best a exclusive marketing best practice right so can you just talk a little bit about your journey to c creation and what the impact it has on the brand i think for many years we've called ourselves trend setting brand and i think we realized or we we acknowledge that if you want to set the trends or if you wanna jump into a trend you need to listen to the people who are asking for this trend or initiating it and there where c creation came into place because yeah it's not sufficient to only get together as a group of market tiers and try to understand what would a gen z consumer want for hair styling it's easier to go and ask them and that's where where c creation came into place and it was in actually in twenty twenty one where the brand started to foster this this practice and we started in one form of c creation and we've improved through iteration through various workshops with the with the c creators that we work with and i think it has really taken the brand to places we we didn't think we would get and and being really leaders in in in certain categories within styling that that we are we are very proud of yeah are there any specific lessons learned that you would say that you all have discovered as you've been going through this process over these last four years i would say for sure staying consumer centric and trusting the process because a lot of times as brand owners you get very strongly opinionated and you want things to happen your way and you have a vision for the brand and you know where you wanna take your brand so there have been sessions local creation where you realize that the audience and the consumers don't necessarily see it the way you do and then it's that moment of letting go of maybe your own personal agenda and then leaving the the space for what the consumers want for the brand yeah and i think it requires the tremendous exercise of humble miss of of of really thinking that it is in a way at democracy and it's the voice of the majority of your consumers and it shouldn't be your own decision on where you want to take the brand and that's where i think creation has taught us a lot yeah i think it's a beautiful practice and i'm thinking about a question that might be in the minds of marketers because again we recommend c creation in a lot of instances but the way you all do it it's not c creation with just one identity of consumer you're doing c creation with multiple different identities can you talk a little bit about how you're balancing that or is that that democrat amortization that you had just mentioned no i would say it actually goes back to when the concept was embraced by the brand so we built a c creator squad okay which was a representation of who the got to be consumer is so okay these are not influencers they are not models they are they are our consumers they are brand lovers they are a theme to got to be to our values they are either impactful stylus or there are also creators of habit that just want to self express and recreate whatever look wanna do yeah but we started with a a set of of creators and then the more we scrutinized it the more we realized we are not representing as many lift experiences as we should and this is where it has evolved so it's like a an entity that never ends to to change and we shape it and we bring new faces to not only to refresh it but also to to make it a broader representation of our consumers and i think there is where we have we have untapped i don't know products or trends or topics that we have disregard for several years to name an example textured hair yeah but at the beginning we didn't have as many creators as we have right now who are type three type four so i think that's just one example where we are we are i think getting to places where we should with the c creation squad yeah very cool yeah what would you do you have any advice to marketers and brands who are like oh this quotation thing like maybe we should give it a try what would you what advice would you give them to sort of get started our best practices that they need to keep in mind as they're starting to embark on this journey i would say trust the process because as i said it takes it it moves away from the usual way we do marketing in marketing needs very much as i said our own ideas our own vision and then we go and test and with c creation you start from the very beginning bring into the equation the consumers and the and and your the ultimately the people who will be buying into your product so my biggest tip would be to not be afraid and trust the journey because it really pays off in the end but you'd need to go through it fully from the beginning of the execution of of the idea yeah have you ever found in your c creation process that once you've adapted the ideas of the team and you you know working with your internal team that the broader market had like other thoughts or opinions that differed a little bit you mean out of the c creators spot that mh yes yes we we've also experienced that and maybe that speaks to the to the notion of we have a a limited representation no of the product audience so it also opens the the room for questions like are we having too narrow of of a target audience when it comes to age or or other variables so we don't take this as a as a failure let's say case it's rather it it triggers questions on how we can further improve yeah yeah continuous improvement is like a core tenant and i think so there's always things that we can be doing better in learning so i think it's a it's a it's a wonderful learning practice okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it's marketing against the grain hosted by kip and kirin flanagan and it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals so if you wanna know what's happening now in the world of marketing what's ahead and how you can lead the way then this podcast is for you i listened to an episode a while back that i love so much i sent it to some friends in a mastermind that i'm a part of and it was all about how to rank number one when ai is taking over featuring ross simmons definitely worth a listen if you like cheese may like i do you might wanna have a listen to the episode where they covered did hubspot lose eight percent of its blog traffic here's what actually happened and another recent episode that look super interesting that i actually wanna make sure that i take some time to listen to is how to rank a number one and chat gp results ai seo strategy listen to marketing against the grain wherever you get your podcast okay you are not necessarily in inclusive marketer by training right this is something that you've been leaning into and i hear a lot of marketers we want to do a better job of marketing inclusive but sometimes they just feel like you know what i this is not my competency i don't know where to start i'm afraid of making mistakes and that fear kind of keeps people suck a little bit and i i would love it if you could just share a little bit of your journey to ups skill and and deepening your degree of confidence in inclusive marketing alongside your your skills overall from you know managing brand i think once again i have to to acknowledge the brand because got to be allowed me to have the platform to then go deeper into inclusive marketing so within within our our company we are a brand that is at the heart of of of inclusion so we as i said stand for for whoever you want to be so when i joined this role it also came with this passionate side hobby of being an inclusive marketing ambassador for our organization so there i i think the company allowed me to have a platform to upscale to learn and then at the same time as you were saying i was immediately facing certain even personal drawbacks of hesitation on am i using the right language should i express myself in this way and at some point i just realized it's just okay to ask i mean what's the worst that can happen that you make a mistake but then the next time you won't make it and i think finding that bravery within myself made it very easy to go deeper and deeper into into learning more about inclusive marketing and then at the same time it it had to come with a personal curiosity so i think it it is part of my my values how i grew up so the moment i had a chance to go deeper into that path then i i didn't hesitate twice to say yes and and it's been very rewarding and i also see how much impact i can make through my brand so yeah it's very cool very cool what has been your biggest surprise about leaning into inclusive marketing as just kind of the way which you all practice marketing it got to be i think i've reshaped my critical eye and also as i said the level of confidence in curiosity so it has unlocked this eye this critical lens in the sense of i'm not saying all the time nothing is okay or everything is bad but rather what else can i do or or where can i have a an non untapped potential that i can look into and i also have encountered polar opposite with the people that i work with on one side people that are also very eager and very curious to learn about it and also people that question why does it matter why do we bring more complexity why is this important so yeah it's open for debate and and and discussion and i think that's for me the the biggest surprise that there are those polar opposite views but at the same time that i want and i'm willing to go into those conversations and and and exchange with people yeah i think that just kind of further reinforces that it's a transformation and it's a transformative process that's not like you flip a switch overnight and we go from we weren't practicing inclusive and now we do you know it's it's a journey that everyone within the organization has to take to be able to get there over time are there any other recommendations i there's this phrase that i i picked up that's kinda stuck with me a years ago from someone that i follow online she's like i'd rather you learn from my battle scars rather than having to get your own and i'm curious if from like being in the trenches with c creation and you know leaning more heavily into inclusive marketing are there any wash outs that you would have for other marketers who are you know at the beginning journeys at the bin bidding phases of their journey here yeah i think this notion of low hanging fruits or quick quick wins i would encourage everyone to stay away from those concepts because that's not the way that you should treat inclusive marketing so i'm not saying we did this but if i look at the work that we have done year on year with our pride campaigns and with the work that we're doing in that territory as an example now it's a very consistent cohesive manner in which thought is doing it across various touch points outside of priorities and so throughout all year long and we are we're even not there yet so there's much more that we can do as a brand as an activist brand and this only works as we always remind ourselves that we are not doing it for for a performative action or because it's a quick win is because we really believe that it's at the heart of the brand value so i would say that's that's the the the mistake that i think many brands do and if i look at the work we have done we were not doing it perfectly at the beginning we're getting only better and i would encourage other brands to think in that way and other people who are managing the brands yeah very cool very cool alright i wanna switch gears a little quick real quick as we i'm start to wrap up can you tell me about a time when a brand made you feel like you belonged yes actually one brand comes to my mind and now i'm going to disclose my age but i'm a millennial and so i went through the time where there was this abe chrome fit h hype and i wanted to to have access to that brand i think everyone had this aspiration to be able to buy it it it was it was a trend and it was very hip but i physically didn't feel represented by the brand and i also couldn't find the clothing that fit me i was not as tall enough i was not as fit enough or a slim enough though i didn't feel represented but at the same time there was this frustration of i want to have access to that brand and maybe now i reflect and it being more being older but if i think of gap for example that brand was always there for me and i always felt like okay i cannot access this brand but there's gap and i felt save i felt happy i always found the clothes that make me feel comfortable it fit my needs so it's very funny that i only wreck i only think of the brand like this after the years went by i mean and we and we saw what happened with abe cro and the documentaries and then how they they learned from from their marketing practices right with for me interestingly it would be gap and maybe i'm not even sure if gap is doing it on purpose or we're doing inclusive marketing but in my particular case it it touched me in that manner no said yeah yeah yeah i i talked to someone who used to work at gap yeah and and marketing years ago in europe and i remember her saying that that was some intentional choices that they've had made so i'd be curious to see is that part of their a through line that they been doing for years are they still doing it today so i'm gonna go and investigate that thank you so much for sharing luis this has been really cool any parting words of wisdom well before we do that are there anything that you want people to pay attention to specifically that the got team is doing that you'd wanna like hey like you know check this out i would say i mean right now we're in the midst of our our global pride campaign so stay tuned it's it's active in in around fifteen markets and then beyond that there's news to come beginning of next year think it's always like new new launches that we are doing and i said we we want to continue to be that brand that creates a space for everyone to be safe proud and themselves whoever they want to be so we'll continue doing that and and i'm super proud to be part of that brand nice nice luis this has been great any parting words of wisdom for marketers and business leaders who wanna do a better job of being inclusive with their marketing i would say we see a lot happening in the world and in many different outlets and as brand owners we have platforms to to touch consumer's lives so i think there is an eager as in a willingness from from the world to receive positive messages and with the brands you can create narratives you can do storytelling you can touch people's lives so i would encourage people to to try and find those moments where they can use the brand platform amplify positive messages because consumers don't forget and i think they will remember those times that you stood behind them but you will besides them but you will they will also not forget the times that you turned an eye on them so i think that would be my my my two cents for any listening saying too very wise words very wise whereas those two cents are worth a lot thanks so much luis for stopping by this has been a lot of fun and super insightful thank you tanya luis had so many cool things to share and i hope you took some really great insights from what he shared that you can apply directly for your brand if you are enjoying this show i would love it if you would share it with a friend colleague and or your network it really does go a long way towards helping more people discover the show and if you're feeling extra generous please do leave a rating in review for the show any your podcast player of choice that also helps more people discover the show and i like to think it helps more people practice inclusive marketing well which leads to more people feeling like they belong other quick question for you are you getting the inclusion in marketing newsletter if not like really what are you even doing each week i send news resources insights voice to the customer in and all sorts of goodies to help you attract and retain a bigger more diverse fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up i will also drop a link for that in the show notes for you as well so you can access it easily until next time remember everyone deserves have a place where they belong let's use our individual and collect the power to ensure more people do like they do thanks so much for listening talk to you soon

inclusive marketing perm through every single part of your marketing mix i've been convinced this fact for a very long time when i love it when i get the chance to sit done with experts who continue to prove the point brand partnerships is this topic of the day and of course there are ways to make your approach to brand partnerships even more inclusive so to dig into that i sat down with jake sc berger head of brand partnerships at bee h and we talked about how some brands are going about using a more inclusive approach to brand partnerships to reach a broader diversity of consumers so after this short break you're gonna hear my conversation with jake you don't become the world's most valuable women's sports franchise by accident angel city football club did it with a little help from hubspot when they started data was housed across multiple systems hubspot unified their website email marketing and fan experience in one platform this allowed their small team of three to build an entire website in just three days the results nearly three hundred and fifty new sign ups a week and three hundred percent database growth in just two years visit hubspot dot com to hear how hubspot can help you grow better hey jake thanks so much for joining me today how are you i'm good thanks for having me excited to be here totally my pleasure alright so i'm excited to learn from you today before we dig into our subject matter tell the people who are you and what do you do i'm jake i currently work at dia i run our ad solutions team so anything that relates to advertising monetizing a newsletter i work and cover those products we have a sales team we have a product team and an engineering team and then on the side i work on a this is new sonia i don't think we've talked about this but or over email but i run a community called urban iron basically like in a very nice race challenge similar to like hi rocks or or tough mud wow very cool i've done a few no iron that's not the same thing as a triathlon i'm much more extreme wait wait you so you've done triathlon i've done a few like mini triathlon right but i think they call them sprint triathlon yeah but yeah it's spend some time but yeah you know it's definitely not on the same level as iron ironman no no yeah the the urban iron it's like a it's an eight mile race modeled off of a triathlon okay we just use the name iron because it was kinda sounds hardcore it is it is all of it all of it alright so i wanna make sure everyone is on the same page what are brand partnerships in the context of what you do and how you're helping creators and the brands that you're working with yeah so what bee is just to set the stage there bi is a platform that enables publishers newsletter writers media companies to write and produce and monetize email in newsletters very similar to like a sub or a mailchimp we just have a little bit more of a robust platform what we do with brands is we'll go to an advertiser or an advertiser comes to us and they say hey we're looking for a new channel to advertise our solution or to get our product in front of the right people most of the time they've run a lot of ads on meta or google or they've worked it's like the sci or morning brew mh yeah they're trying to they're trying to open up a new channel and they want to try out newsletters as a channel what we do is we help those advertisers basically sponsor a thousand different newsletters that are on the platform so they can do that scale don't have to talk to each and every one of those thousand newsletters and do all that back and forth so the partnership is really us as a technology making that connection between the advertiser and the right newsletters at the right time so we can help them drive their business and also on the publisher side help these publishers that might be an individual writer who has a hundred subscribers yeah first dollar on the internet or it could be a time magazine who's running their newsletter with us who wants to fill their ads ad slots yeah yeah i so i just recently completed a course all about building newsletter oh because i'm i'm leaning hard into my inclusion in marketing newsletter and in the course we have the course creator recommended behind and so a lot of the people who were in my cohort were using bee hive and they were just starting out and they were like oh my gosh i just got this you know big name brand advertiser who you know wanted to sponsor their newsletter and they were talking about it and they were talking about all the i just made my first two dollars i mis made my first ten dollars and like just the joy that people had with being able to experience that not only getting like you said their first dollars with their newsletter but also feeling seen i guess you would say by some of these bigger brands who they might have felt were out of reach so i love that what you all are doing are sort of breaking barriers that might have been or felt like barriers to entry for a lot of people that that happens a lot we see in the marketplace so very cool that you all are doing that yeah i think there's actually there's two things there one is like breaking the barriers enable enabling like newsletters that are just starting out to monetize and partner it's a big name brand like a roku or netflix i'm not sure which one we're referring to but we just launched both of those and then there's also the legitimacy c factor so one i think one aspect that the publishers that we work with especially the publishers that are just starting out kind of forget it's not a bad thing it's just easy to forget when you're so close to the newsletter is that when you're reading a newsletter the readers of the newsletter don't know how many other readers there are yeah and there's no reason why you would read a newsletter and be and have the mindset of like oh this is a new newsletter it's not that important or it's not that valuable and when we're talking to these publishers and helping them monetize sometimes publishers don't want to run an ad because they think it's too early they think they're a little small mh what's there's a missing i think i'm missing piece or i've busy like logic there where if you do run netflix as an ad in your newsletter and you have fifty subscribers those fifty subscribers see your newsletter is being sponsored by netflix which yeah completely legit your newsletter yeah hinges the perspective that you might have and the readers might have of your newsletter yeah i think it's a it's a wonderful psychological boost for both the reader as well as a newsletter operator it's it's really it's really a beautiful thing i i feel like we're alluding to it a little bit but i'm curious on how you would say that brands can use partnerships as a means to reach a bigger and more diverse audience yeah i'll try to answer their question like broadly and then also like what we're doing but sure so i think of one of the issues that brands typically have is kind of what i actually alluded to earlier was that brands come to us and they say we run with meta we run with google around with morning brew not their fault but they're constantly looking for the most efficient way to do something mh they just don't unless they have a team of a hundred people they're not gonna be able to go out even if they wanted to work with newsletters that were extremely diverse themselves or just like a diverse set of newsletters yeah they're probably going to act like water and just go to the process that is most efficient yeah the reason why i think it's important to have a layer like what we're doing what we're building is because it evens the playing field what you were saying earlier it evens both for that brand if the brand comes to us and they say this is what we're trying to do then we can then make it very easy for us to open up access to all of these five hundred or thousand or ten thousand newsletters and we can make sure no matter who that newsletter is reaching they're getting access to these advertisers and these advertisers are able to sponsor and work with them yeah so i guess there's like if there's an advertiser that wants to create partnerships that kind of touch more and more groups but they don't have the resources to do it having a platform that enables them to do that and cuts out the concern of efficiency yeah that shouldn't be a reason why a brand isn't inclusive that is ridiculous yeah it just comes down to like don't have enough people to do it right and having a platform that enables it makes it really easy it takes a lot of the like you said it takes some of the excuses out for them there's this concept in the world of marketing as well as specifically inclusive marketing all our diverse owned and operated media and a lot of times what we'll see is brands who want to engage specific communities they'll do it with a big platform such as meta or other media properties where the funds aren't necessarily going to the people who own the audiences or the platforms that they're trying to reach right so if i'm creating content on instagram i'm not getting any of the ad revenue or anything from from access to the people who are going to instagram specifically to see my content or whatever but this one helps brands do a better job of investing in media that's owned by different communities particularly diverse owned media because they're tapping into audiences that the individuals have created and a lot of times those audiences will be like them in some way shape or form so i think that this is a really innovative way for brands to tap into at scale more diverse owned media and giving the investment directly to people who've built these audiences in these communities and who people already have a strong relationship and trust because kinda like what you said oh netflix is advertising in my favorite newsletter about i don't know gluten free food i would like netflix cares about us in this little community like it it just kind of feels like it gives a different impression even of the advertiser that they are speaking to these different communities and identities and not only sticking to the big names that we might all be accustomed to totally yeah yeah yeah i think there there is a big difference between like on a feed based platform like a meadow or an instagram or tech tiktok i don't know tiktok well at all i don't have it i can't really talk about it else prices and it does make sense but if there's content creators that you follow on instagram and then there's ads slot it in between those you're right like those content creators have done all the work to create the content that brings the audience and the advertiser pays in instagram instagram yeah profits and the advertiser gets to be in front of the right audience because of what the creator ad has done in this case with newsletters yeah the the business is directly between ga advertiser and the creator and the creator is directly benefiting from like continuing to to hone and craft aircraft and to build their community and that's there are ways where like there are platforms that help by creators that are on instagram or podcast are similar to newsletters to work directly with advertisers and we support publishers in that way as well i know i alluded to that technology layer that kind of distributes yeah versions but yeah those platforms that help advertisers work directly with publishers they they support that creator directly as well very cool what would you say from your perspective is the state of the industry of brand partnerships as it relates to inclusion or is it like on the cutting edge is there a lot more to go or you know how would you rate the industry as a whole i think it depends on the medium so i think brands are always looking for new channels they're always looking for new ways to do things that are easy that's the annoying part and i think slowly things are getting a little bit as like more and more platforms like the platforms i mentioned that make it easier for content creators to work with brands mh the reverse come becomes true as well like brands have a much easier time compared to like five to ten years ago finding content creators to work with directly that align to their goals of if they want to be a little bit more inclusive in their marketing it's much easier now for them to find publishers or creators content creators of any kind that kinda fit those goals yeah been it five years ago it's not the easiest i think it's still the ar for what like inclusion means still falls on the brand at the moment which i don't know if it's a good thing mh i don't know if we as a platform should be that ar out either but right now it definitely is up to the advertiser or the brand to decide like how do we define inclusion or diversity and then let's go out and use one of these platforms to by these publishers that represent what that definition is yeah the the part of that equation which is like the search and find those folks that is easy and that is definitely solved in a certain way the definition part is not yet so okay i think what has been solved also is measurement so unfortunately like all brand partnerships they fall under advertising advertising even if it's branding advertising somebody is measuring like is that working and is it driving business results that has been solved and so it's very easy for a brand to say like hey we we tried this new angle let's see if it actually worked if it did something yeah and with that with like search with measurement it's very easy to tell like okay this this new approach is actually working really well but i think still needs to be solved is like that i don't know if ar is right word but like helping a brand understand like what does inclusion actually mean and what does it mean to brand and how can you do it in a way that's really genuine to who that brand is yeah so okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it's marketing against the grain hosted by kit and kieran flanagan and it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professional else so if you wanna know what's happening now in the world of marketing what's ahead and how you can lead the way then this podcast is for you i listen to an episode a while back that i love so much i sent it to some friends in a mastermind that i'm a part of and it was all about how to rank number one when ai is taking over featuring ross simmons definitely worth to listen if you like she's made like i do you might wanna have to listen to the episode where they covered did hubspot lose eighty percent of its blog traffic here's what actually happened and another recent episode that looks super interesting that i actually wanna make sure that i take some time to listen to is how to rank number one in chat gp results ai seo strategy listen to marketing against the grain wherever you get your podcasts so with what we were talking about before a lot of what a wonderful benefit to your platform is it takes away like this these barriers to entry right so these big brands can advertise on a lot of different newsletter platforms no matter their size right and that's a real benefit and what we've also talked about is like the creators are getting the direct benefit of their audiences our brands able to say oh like i think part of what it works is there's these industries but are they able to say oh this audience is heavily gen z or this audience is heavily asian and i want to make sure that i'm reaching this particular marketplace or these particular you know eyeballs that are reading these newsletter are we able to do that or not yet or is that where you were talking about with like being the ar yeah on newsletters not yet okay right now we have proxies so at least on bi we see what all the publishers write about and we try to build like some profiles of like who do we think this this audience is yeah and then what we will start doing is building out like standardized polls so newsletter writers they constantly just like send polls and questions to their audience to try to who they are so they can serve them better we haven't yet standardized that so we can understand as a whole across like the twenty thousand newsletters who is reading what type of newsletter yeah but we're slowly starting to do that the content that folks write about that's enough to get us to like maybe level one yeah levels we need to yeah we're not there yet with newsletters you can do that on like a facebook meta google etcetera mh the i i we need a better word than ar with the ar equipment was like more thinking through that step where an advertiser decides hey i want to reach a more inclusive audience how do we define what that means like do we want to okay reach more gen z or gen yeah like what is the answer to that question that could be because they actually built built a product that solves the gen z problem or they just recognize that they don't have that much brand awareness within like this age bracket but helping like a brand to really define what that question is or what the answer to that question is and then transferring that answer to the platform is i don't think it's been so got it got it okay what mistakes have you seen brands making when it comes to trying to reach a broader diversity of consumers just specifically as it relates to brand partnerships yeah it always comes that the answer to that question always comes down to the creative so like the actual ad and like what the copy is and what the image is they think like hey if we're trying to be broader they make something that is really just like static and boring and doesn't like doesn't like capture the hearts and minds of any of the groups they're trying to get in front of yeah and so they have even if a brand has done so much research to answer that question we were just talking about or really understand who they're trying to get in front of and they come up with ten different groups than when it comes down to creative they don't invest in that and that's a problem because that's actually what the whole the whole coin to the partnership is and if you could yeah people at the right time with the wrong message then nothing's gonna work yeah that happens quite a bit and what especially and maybe it's because newsletters is a channel and this is where i see most of this it's kind of new it's hard for a brand to justify investing in a test on a new channel yeah but what they'll do is just say like hey this worked on instagram or worked on tiktok so let's just see if it works on newsletters yeah and that's where that whole equation breaks down yeah no i totally get that because like if you're trying to market to gen z for instance you find these newsletters that are great fit but you're creative very much weeks of older millennials it's it's not gonna be it's not gonna resonate so much like who are these people for sure for sure what recommendations or best practices do you have for brands who wanna use partnerships as a way to be more inclusive and reach a broader diversity their ideal customer yeah if i guess two ways if you're working if a brand is working directly with the creator so one on one doing kind of like the research to what we just talked about like really understanding either really understanding what is the content that the creator creates and building your copy and creative in your message in your campaign that aligns to how that creator creates or just saying like just take all creative freedom give the creative freedom to the creator the creator yeah so much work to understand how to build their audience that's what their aircraft is that's what they're really and people follow them because they like what they talk about yeah that creator actually doesn't really need the brand to help them share the message if the brand just provides the platform provides the message says like this is what i'm trying to do talk talk to your customers and the way that you feel comfortable and you think would resonate that's yeah powerful and it's also the most empowering for the creators and i think it'll ultimately result in the best results for the business if you're working with a platform like us where you're doing something a little bit more scaled talk kind the same answer but a little bit more like lean on the platform invest in the creative invest in the actual whole end to end of the campaign yeah and don't take the easy way out of just like taking whatever work on instagram and slapping it on the new channel you're trying yeah no i love that i love that basically it just met like you said matching the message to the audience and yeah and basic marketing principles well that's one of the things that i kinda get whenever i'm talking about inclusive marketing i feel like i always need to remind people that it's really it's just marketing right like it's just good marketing so if you apply the same type of principles there it really does go a long way in increasing your effectiveness so you're just talking about they do basic good marketing practices which works in different channels right so really exactly yeah those creators have i've already done all the work to understand like how do i talk to this audience you don't need as a brand you don't need to do that unless you already have that expertise and right understand that audience lean on the creator that's why you're working with them yeah yeah and which is part of the benefit of working with investing in diverse owned media right like it's it's by design it's you know gonna speak to these particular communities that you've identified that you wanna serve alright well let's switch gears a little bit tell me about a time whenever a brand made you feel like you belonged oh wow i'm trying to remember this exact ad it was a mother's dad ad i think it was in the olympics okay does that general of memory is it wasn't nike maybe shoot i might have to come back to this question during the olympics i think it was in an olympic ad it was either like oh i know what you're talking about i do i do do i do basically they were showcasing like all the olympia who were winning and they would go up and show mom and they would show all the sacrifices that their mom made to help get them there is that right yeah it was was either that there was also like there was the olympia was about to like perform some thing at yeah they were doubting themselves and then they had a flash home just saying like just keep doing it just keep going yeah i it's the bad answer to the question because i don't remember where the brand is i'm pretty sure it's nike but i just remember that moment i was it was like he has just been mother's day i was thinking about like what should i get my mom what should we do for mother's day and they weren't like selling me a product they were just selling me like the relationship of like yeah on the son for me yeah and just like really digging in that like this is an important bond and it's really special and you should cherish it and you should do something about it especially on mother's day i think that was like that was really nice that clearly like the message resonated yeah and it was less so around a specific product or service that was fine well i've been talking about this with a a couple of different people lately and just how sometimes with brands in general trying to market to different consumers they focus so much on the brand and the core brand messaging that they've they in the core brand messaging doesn't always have that emotional connection so what you're talking about is that emotional connection that just really resonated with you and it stuck with you right all these years later and if you can connect your brand to that that's wonderful but just a brand message alone isn't always going to to do that which is why as you mentioned linking it and having those creators do it in the way that resonates with them it kinda adds that level of emotion and connectivity because we already understand like you said who it is that we're talking to so like full circle moment it's all come of back they're linking together where can people find you if they wanna learn more about you and your work i'm relatively active on twitter or x somewhat active on linkedin and then company is bi so b dot com sweet two eat two eyes spelled like a start up i'm gonna link it all in the show so people can access it easily and follow along any parting words of wisdom jake for marketers and business leaders who wanna do a better job of connecting with more consumers from underrepresented and underserved communities yeah i'll kind of go back to what we had talked about earlier especially because i'm coming from like the creator landscape in the creator world as a brand just doing a good job of really understanding what communities are trying to get in front of and finding the folks that have done a good job of doing that already and allowing them to have their freedom on a building creative building the right messaging because they've already done that work they understand it it's their world and that partnership will be really smooth if you allow them that creative freedom very cool thanks so much jake this has been really a lot of fun and super insightful yeah no worries thanks for having me that's it for today's episode if you are enjoying the show i would love it if you would leave a rating and review for it in your podcast player of choice it really does go a long way towards helping more people discover the show and i like to think it goes towards helping more people practice inclusive marketing and more people feeling they like belong quick question for you are you getting the inclusion and marketing newsletter if not bailey what are you even doing each week iceland send news resources pop culture word on the street what consumers are saying and other good tidbits to help you attract and retain a bigger more diverse in fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up i'll also drop a link to that in the show notes for you so you can access it easily until next time remember everyone deserves have a place where they belong let's use our individual and collect power to ensure more people feel like they do thanks so much for listening talk to you soon to

one of the most important elements in your ability to market inclusive is your team the actual marketers who are working on the products services communications and experiences you deliver to the people that you serve and want to serve but having a team and having a team that is actually able to be effective with inclusive marketing are two different things it doesn't happen automatically that a team is able to tap into the various of identities to be able to deliver a better product to the people that you want to serve and understand their needs effectively many leaders and as a result their teams struggle to create the kind of psychological safety and culture that create an environment for people especially those who underrepresented in underserved communities to let their voices be heard and if people feel like they have to assimilate to be accepted on a team they are even less likely to speak up no bueno not because this is such an important topic i sat down with john graham an authors scholar and employer branding strategist and consultant to weigh in on this topic this is more of just a really good chat conversation between john and i on a topic which i've had a lot of questions about i thought about it a lot john recently had a post on linkedin about this and a lot of people i a lot of people had a lot of comments about it in particular i'm gonna link up to that post that sparked the reason why i wanted to chat with john today in the show notes for you because i definitely highly recommend that you have a look so after this short break you're gonna hear at my conversation with john graham the two thousand twenty five inbound conference is coming up i'm gonna be there and i'm hoping that i will see you there as well it's september third through the fifth at the mo center and san francisco not boston it's gonna be in san francisco this year come and get actionable insights so you can implement immediately to grow your business also you can join a community of forward thinking professionals who are shaping the future of business i was at the inbound conference back in two thousand twenty three and i gotta say it was one of the most if not the most inclusive conference i have ever been to this year you will be able to engage with a broad diversity of industry leaders like marquez brown lee dominique k amy poe and others who are breaking barriers and creating new path to success across technology culinary arts and entertainment you can engage with san francisco diverse tech community that's working to ensure ai development reflects and serves all communities demonstrating how inclusive technology drives innovation and market growth visit inbound dot com slash register to get your ticket today hey john thanks so much for joining me today how are you oh sonia in the moment i'm well says thank you so much for having me how are you totally i'm doing well i have to say i think this conversation has been a couple years in the making we've been meeting to talk and the other day i saw a linkedin post that you posted a week ago and i was like wait a minute wait a minute it stopped the presses like we have to talk about this now yeah it got that kind of reaction from a list yes yes so before we get too deep into this let the people know who are you and what do you do oh my gosh who i am i am a husband a father an only child but a brother to many i am a brand builder founder entrepreneur consultant i'm i'm a lot of things i do a lot of things but i'd say at at minimum i'm a connector as well as a community dia community center brother trying to trying to help restore our prominence i totally get it well we're thankful for you and work that you do i know okay that part of the work that you do day to day is helping brands build employer brands and i am curious well i i love if you could just explain for people who don't know what or who may even have a different like not fight the right understanding of it what is an employer brand yeah well i think it's a great question i think first of all there's no curriculum for in any college university or b school right so when you think about your traditional marketing marketing or branding functions for consumer products or services and so forth that's really to amplify or a spouse or express the the value of the brand or the product or the service right well employer branding is the same thing but specifically focused on the employers culture the value proposition and benefits of working with said employer versus their competitor another in the industry and leveraging all of the tactics of traditional marketing but specifically applied to the talent and recruitment marketing space so yeah and then you have sort of the employer brand element of it so that's the narrative the aesthetic of the culture of a of a company any other the recruitment marketing aspect which is the tactics used to express or amplify that brand to attract engage and retain talent okay given and we're in the us and i know there's quite the environment that we're in right now which is changing the face of recruitment and a lot of a lot of things i am a product of a diverse recruitment function i went to an as we were talking before and whenever i graduated with my mba i like there were brands who were coming companies from all over the place i had a number of internships etcetera under my belt why because these companies came to our school that had i believe lots of top notch talent right but they came to find us because it helped them fish were the fish were so to speak right if they wanted to diversify their base is that type of thing still happening is it still relevant is it still legal like you know is it a way for people is it still a reliable way to kinda fuel recruitment or strategies for for brands yeah yeah so there are i'll say this is is sort of the umbrella statement and then i'll drill in at highest level what i see is that companies are still doing the things they're changing how vocal they are externally about it okay and they're repositioning how they're speaking about it right okay so so certainly a volume turned down a little bit right yeah a lot of bit in some cases if you're a government contracting corporation yeah but then even the rebranding of the work that they were doing and now softening it redirecting it with different words that don't yeah trigger right certain responses from certain government entities so yes they are still in partnership and recruiting from no they're not going full throat in the marketplace saying they're doing this yeah so yeah that's that's kind of the the running theme is you know i hear companies literally say no we're doubling down on our efforts or it's business as usual nothing's changed but then you look at who's doing the work if the work is still being done at the same level the funding behind it and all these other things so yeah it's yeah it's kind of a double double edged conversation right now i hear you what would you say is the states of inclusion when it comes to employer branding well it's so when when we look at i look at it in a couple of ways one is what is the aesthetic representation right what what is the visual representation of diversity in your brand marketing what is the who are the voices that you're highlighting or spotlight lighting for their lived experiences i'm still seeing that being done right like there wasn't this broad sweeping okay we need to remove everybody who's non white cis rendered able body and male which from from our from our talent ads or yeah our brand marketing what what i think they did was and let me be clear there were some companies who pulled all of their you know cultural heritage month post pulled all of their their ads spend around diversity recruitment all of that stuff like that did happen but by and large when you look at their career sites when you look at their presence at conferences their investments in certain conferences i was just at render aco i still saw all the big names there okay there's not like this sweeping removal or ratio that i think some people might think is happening right again it's just how loudly are they saying it alright so from an inclusion perspective which i think is different than the diversity or the visual representation perspective i don't know that that has changed much and i say that vaguely enough to to to infer that it wasn't great before yeah it's not worse now but it's but it hasn't improved either so yeah yeah inclusion is kinda of it's one of those things that i have a very i don't wanna say unique take but it's i made i made a post i went back it's funny i i made a post on tiktok years several years ago but it was like twenty one twenty two so we're right in the height and the thick of post george floyd execution the the the rush to to fund and make these big commitments by companies and i said d doesn't center who you think it does mh and what i went on to explain was that diversity requires a a measure of standard by which you judge difference yeah right yeah and then we know what that standard is yeah and then equity meant that somebody in a in a dominant group position has to create opportunity for those who aren't in the dominant group and we know who that dominant group is and then inclusion means that the in group allows the out group to participate in in group activities mh so there's always somebody at the center of that allowing these things to occur and oh by the way throughout human history anytime you've had a dominant group in human civilization they've never given that position of willingly yeah right so so i'm i'm i'm a p in that sense that i'm looking at the human nature aspect of this and it's undefeated yeah so i'm i'm tempered in my i don't say optimism but in my in my perception of what was possible in the first place yeah optimism is a good thing right and i think that sometimes we're met with a lot of great disappointment sometimes whenever we we encounter our systems that seem to be they're just bigger they're not they're they're designed to not be broken or or have cracks in them so that kind of brings me to this post that you mentioned the other day and that i was commenting on i'm gonna link it to in the show notes so people can go and and see for themselves and there's an important video in the middle of it that i was like oh so anyway my experience with corporate america was nine years after i finished business school and i knew from the first year that i did not belong there i knew in year one no i stayed nine years right like i just kept trying to make it work in the different care say they were dangling and all these different reasons and i finally left because my soul could not stay right and so it was one of those things where i just knew it wasn't for me and try as i might i could not assimilate in a way because ass simulation is what i really had to do to make it work even to the point to where i was like in a leadership program it was coached to do this without saying those words right but it it just wasn't who i am i did not be belong there right and so my question for you is one if you can just kind of set the stage what is simulation and what is the impact on brand culture like do people need to assimilate and if you don't assimilate you don't like what is your what is the connection with all of this well first i love that you shared your experience and and i appreciate that because i think your experience is a lot of black professionals experience it's just some don't ever reach that point of accepting that it is not sitting well with their spirit and they can't go for right you you you figured it out after nine years and you're like look the money's is good but my soul yeah i need that yeah so so i i i do a lot of speaking engagements with black employee resource groups and i do a speaker session called the cost of the client okay it's actually the it's part of the source material for the book i'm writing currently my second book called the cost of declined from enslave to executives when you say ass simulation what we're talking about is this notion of conformity mh and integration into dominant group behavior and you'll hear me use that term dominant group a lot because it's rooted in a psychological theory called social dominance theory effectively suggesting that anytime there is a human civilization society a natural hierarchy forms based on those who control access and access to resources essentially and then that derive power and then privilege status and it has happened throughout history so it's not just a race is actually one of the sub of social dominance theory point being it starts with age dominant groups usually are older than younger groups alright so we we have more power and authority than people who are younger than us and then at middle age you have more power and authority than younger people as well as elderly people in a western construct who assign value based on your productivity then the next is gender as far as the subset of social dominance theory which male dominant female subordinate in this theory not my belief but then thirdly is what they call arbitrary set which collects a bunch of man made constructs whether it's raised with geography religion orient orientated like all of these things point being in the corporate construct it is built on hierarchy right and that comes from many centuries worth of infrastructure building to support the dominant group's position and make maintenance of that position so by virtue of us is black professionals going into a dominant group construct as members of subordinate group right let's put that out there what you find in this theory is that even the subordinate group has a longing desire and support of dominant group status we contribute to it we aspire to get to it and so anybody and this isn't just racially but anytime you're a part of a subordinate group and you see a dominant group enjoying benefits enjoying access enjoying lifestyles enjoying whatever the case may be that comes with being that group you tend to do what's necessary to get into that yeah what we face is black professionals is once we get into that the requirement is that you shed your sub subordinate group identity to maintain status in the dominant group and so we hear terms like all you sold out or oh you forgot where you came from or all of these things but reality is these are the requirements if you want access to what's behind those doors and so i always ask if you knew what was behind those doors would you still not and that's a question we don't ask ourselves because we've been programmed by our four parents that you're gonna go to school you're gonna get this degree you're gonna work you're gonna get a good job you're gonna work thirty years retiring and die right like yeah that's the mantra but we never questioned because they didn't have frame of reference for what was behind those doors they never had access we're the first generation of black folks in this country with access right born into what i should say yeah yeah that explains a whole lot right like it's china force a square peg into a around hole right there's a number of different i guess responses solutions to this right mh because of course i firmly believe in inclusion but more so what i really esp is belonging and i want people to find the place where they belong not try to force themselves to belong in a place where they really don't right but i think part of what feels like the soul sucking experience that people might have is that there isn't this degree of psychological safety to speak up about things that they want to speak up for or that they see or right and that there aren't right or or whatever it is they just feel like they have to temper what they can say and i'm wondering what is the connection between psychological safety and an inclusive culture where people feel like they belong well i think i think ideally in in a perfect world you would have both right yeah the psychological safe environment would lend itself to you feeling a sense of i can be myself and that others would accept or make space or whole space for yourself right yeah unfortunately it was never designed that way like i think what's lost in the sense of history right as an african studies major i've looked at the world pre european invasion right of of the continent they're pre colonial all the way through to modern and what you notice is that anytime you have a a construct that's designed based on exploitation mh then humanity was not involved in that construction right and so it's it's interesting to to to think that yes we are in a a more evolved expression of colonial capitalism but it make no mistake it is still exploit alright mh and and and that's no more evidence based by then when you look at the significant the grand canyon s gap between executive level compensation and frontline mh so then so then what you start to see is there's a lot of programs and initiatives designed to make you feel better about the exploitation it doesn't remove the exploitation so when we talk about psychological safety you'll hear a lot of folks say well you know maybe you shouldn't bring your whole self to work right whoever made that statement didn't live through a marginalized experience because that's a liability to bring your whole self right yeah but then that also ensures that you need to suppress the things that you visibly can't control and reduce threat perception by whether it's code switching or assuming a different posture or different hairstyle or yeah all of these things to reduce this notion of threats so psychological safety is not necessarily baked in yeah right therefore belonging also i i always had a challenge with that word it's even as a in a in the d professional space because i remember when we actually belonged to people oh i get it yeah yeah right okay right so so so i'm saying if we're not thinking in terms of how do we own and control the outputs of our labor yeah right as as as black folks and i'll specifically hone in on us then we keep trying to belong to somebody and that undertone of psychology is not is not by accident yeah okay no i totally get it like which is important right like it's so it's very important okay i've got another podcast recommendation for you it's this old marketing hosted by joe po and robert rose brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals joe po and robert rose are two of the most well known experts in the content marketing space and they're talking about the latest content marketing trends and discuss how businesses can use content to attract and retain and customers one of the things i really enjoy about this show is how they do a commentary and a discussion on current events you know i love some current events the episode that i'm listening to right now that they are doing that in all about thou shalt build on rented land anyway i think you're gonna enjoy this show listen to this old marketing wherever you get your podcasts okay so in the context of all of this mh we talk a lot about diverse teams and the benefit diverse teams there's data that shows that diverse teams outperform their peers that aren't diverse but the benefits of having a diverse team background thoughts experiences points of view cultures etcetera it's not automatic just because you've got diff these different types of people in the team i've always felt like you need people who are comfortable to be themselves at work to lean into the aspects of what makes them different that's how you get the benefit of it and you have to have a type of culture that nurture and foster that type of thing how would an organization that wasn't necessarily designed to do this how would they be able to create this type of benefit or team or powerhouse team that has all these different identities on it that is able to tap into the power of having all these identities on it and maybe a context that organizational that that might not be the way the organization is set up yeah it's a fair fact no it's a great question i i think you know and and for anybody who's listening this far and i promise i'm not all doom and gloom what what i think is very important for us to shift our thinking to is a humanity practice okay let go of this notion of bringing difference together and thinking that that is the solution because at base level you could have different looking people different experiences and backgrounds and still they're very much in support of in inhumane approaches to solving problems yeah right so i don't want that to get lost i think if if your culture as an organization is centering the human experience centering the fact that people at base level regardless of what you look like or what your background is require and deserve dignity yeah in the work that they're doing that their humanity is honor that their perspectives and their capabilities their abilities are embraced yeah that they are given fair chance fair opportunity and they're given access to be truly who they can be right under the right conditions then i think we're having a different conversation than saying did we hit the the right number of diverse representation or do we have enough women in leadership to make it look good for shareholder or value or consumer perceptions right yeah this is when you start to build cultures that people wanna run through brick walls to get into yeah right and i don't know that there's a lot of companies that on the basis of their culture people are lining up around the block to to put an application in versus the prestige that a little add to their resume or right the the the the compensation potential or whatever those cases may be so it's interesting that you talk about this at a humanity level i live in my everyday world is a culture clash where we're trying to find a way to outperform right or to make things work yeah my husband is from argentina i met him we got married a while i was living in argentina and he is an immigrant now here in the us and we speak spanish in our home and this morning i was telling him about the interview that i'm this this conversation that we were gonna have and i was telling him is explaining to him fumbling through it because i'm explaining this in spanish and it's not these aren't concepts that i will on these are not not normally concepts that i have on my in my day to date in spanish right so there was at one aspect of it but as i was explaining to him what we were gonna talk about i was doing it front it from the standpoint of race and in argentina they think about those things differently of course he understands in the us it's very different right and for him things are often led with a race difference from the way we think about things and so he was listening and he was getting it but he didn't fully grasp it and then i started to explain it in more of a conceptual term and he's like oh and he he referenced the very thing that we were talking about he thought about it in terms of a friend that he had in argentina and said oh this happened and then he was easily able to relate with it and now we were able to have this conversation because it clicked and what the reason why i'm bringing this up is because i think that a lot of times people on teams aren't necessarily willing to spend the time to figure out how can we make an idea at concept relatable because our perspectives our points of view are different and so the way we process things are gonna be different the way we view the world are different the way we understand challenges or not are different and once we take the time to recognize that nobody's really should have to assimilate we just are trying to find a way that we can all exist and tackle problems that might exist in a way i think that is more of a i feel like that's more of what you're trying to say is where we need to shift to which is a much more humanity centered approach versus like this is black and white this is about this culture this is women gender right like and so that kind of makes us get hung up am i kind of explaining this or processing this correctly i think so i think so you know no no it's it's it's an apt concept connection and i i'd i'd love to hear the details on on what clicked for your husband for sure yeah right but but i think what what it comes down to is when i when i say humanity practice what i'm saying is the things that we all deal with regardless and really comes down survival right yeah and the challenge is we have competing and clashing ethos when it comes to survival for instance historically when you look at europe not i'll just single out europe here set thousands and thousands of years of scarcity based you know living right whether it was food scarcity whether it was you know land scarcity political insecurities food insecurities plagues and disease like there's a whole lot of factors that shaped you know european cultures and the and the ways in which they engaged with each other well now you you you j oppose that to an african continent experience right where there's so much resource abundance that they need to import nothing yeah literally i mean so much abundance that there's stories of historical accounts of walking the streets and seeing diamonds and gold laying in the street because because it wasn't this notion of scarcity right so yeah so when we think about these these ethos clashing what we're finding today is that at base level human nature it always defaults to comfort yeah so how do i how do i achieve more without pushing myself past as comfort and if i've achieved the level of comfort how do i maintain that even at the sort of consequence of other people right and that's where i think when you get to a humanity centered approach it's really noting that your position of comfort comes at a cost to someone else and eventually will cost you because there's no group that's remained at the top forever yeah right i mean that's no more no more evident than looking at the african history yeah of tens of thousands of years of global dominance in the sense of trade in the sense of resource so forth whatever and now we're looking at a european dominant group for six hundred years yeah so it's in the in an arc of time it's a blink it's a blink of an eye yeah yeah right but it doesn't last so i say when we get back to this humanity practice it's it sounds very much like you know we are the world right but but it but it but it ultimately we are interdependent okay and and that that zero sum perspective of scarcity based approaches doesn't last long and we're seeing we're starting to see some of that that dismantling now what would be your advice to talent who's going into an organization about would you say to them that they they need to assimilate would you tell them would you recommend that they avoided it at all costs like what would be your advice for step someone who is entering into a it doesn't have to be corporate but just they're entering into a new company yeah well my message to black talent always is understand history mh number one someone and be very clear on what you're going in to do i i am not anti corporate right i think that it has its place and i think there's a lot of value to be derived from going in and understanding having an experience where you learn the different mechanisms of business right yeah go in and and i always say go into your first year as the extension of your college career right okay this this is your extended learning opportunity don't go in thinking that you've arrived and this was the end all be all because that's when people start to do whatever it takes to climb the ladder mh and they think this is it so i also say that we were trained and i use the word programmed to believe that corporate is the aspiration not the stepping stone towards the ultimate goal right yeah the beauty is when you get in there and you meet people right whether you join an employee resource group and you meet colleagues with brilliance and different backgrounds and things like that don't look at them as your competitors look at them as your c founders you should be thinking how do i build my own yeah not just rely on right but again i don't think that everybody i don't think that it's everybody should be an entrepreneur because i know that that's not everybody's ministry however i also don't suppose or accept that we were only meant to be employees of other companies that we don't know yeah right yeah it's just that's not what we were taught trained or program to think yeah but there are some people who who might have that that vision and that passion to go out and create something and how can you support that with your expertise skills and background yeah so it's really a mindset shift go in know what you're going for have a clear idea of what you want to learn and and build what you want to learn and what your skills you need to acquire what relationships you need to cultivate to then apply to something that you actually are passionate about that solves a problem that you care about yeah yeah it is an important shift it is an important agent if i had that mindset i think i would approach things differently am i you would be better corporate america okay so what was your advice be to leaders who are now having increasingly people with different identities on their team how do they support them and create a space that enables them to thrive yeah and their teams excellent question i'll say the leaders who i've seen be tremendous leaders of diverse teams specifically but teams in general are those who have willingly put themselves in the positions of discomfort for the purpose of cultural expansion right cultural intelligence expansion understanding who they are in a broad world where they aren't the dominant group right so this is the leader who goes into south side to an african restaurant or or a soul food restaurant because they enjoy the atmosphere or to learn who they are when they are not centered yeah right this is this is the the leader who spends time in a country where they don't speak the language yeah and they're not catering to your language and because now you know what it means not to be centered entered yeah and these are these are the folks who i've who who i've encountered throughout my career that have put themselves into uncomfortable positions yeah as a pathway to growth and expansion in which cases given them so much more empathy a broader aperture or wider aperture on what's possible beyond their own limited vision or experience yeah this is what i often tell people is part of my framework for building an inclusive brand is they're all about diversifying your circle of influence most people have very limited sources of information or things that influence them and so it's no wonder that their perceptions are super limited right and so once they go and like you said or much more intentional about entering spaces that where you aren't the dominant identity you feel a lot different and it it it contains your your way of thinking completely so totally totally on board with that okay let's switch gears a little bit sure and gonna change the word on the fly because we're thinking about we're rethinking this word belonging right like so tell about his time when a brand made you feel seen in like who they get me so that's a that's a great question and i can point to plenty of of times where a brand has made me feels phil and valued as a marketer as a social and digital brand developer i understand the power of perception and p r so so here here's here's what i'll say those experiences and i'll and i'll approach this broadly are the ones that speak visually rhythm production and commercially in the vernacular of the culture and community that they are trying to connect with and what i mean by that is it doesn't feel like you had a a focus group to understand whether or not this would land well with this this demographic right yeah it's you had somebody of the culture driving that that campaign or you know even down to the to the to the wardrobe the hair the makeup the lighting the the the environment like everything was designed by people who live it it wasn't a a guess and or assumption yeah but but what i've always appreciated is what is the subtlety what is that that that appreciated or that unexpected experience of delight you're like oh my god and that could just be where where i saw it and how i saw it right did it did it just come across the screen on an add at the subway or was it somebody you know doing something that made me stop moving an automatic behavior and look up and be like what did i just experienced but that's that was amazing and felt good i wanna know more so i'm saying all of these things without giving you a specific brand by saying that there are some companies who do that really well i tend to find that those are the organizations that are either growing right that that don't have this fear of getting it wrong but are hyper passionate and clear on who they are and who they wanna their consumer to be whereas the bigger brands tend to second guess and do the safe thing because yeah shareholder value legal legal departments you know not being comfortable with whatever the case may be and then that i think cheap or certainly alters the experience for the consumer yeah i did some research i was doing an audit for a brand and i was doing some user testing and one of the the people that i was talking to he's like i feel like i've been studied oh right and so like they i like they read a lot about his community and his identity and they were trying to apply it and he's like mh it was a difference between feeling like i've been studied and i'm trying to speak to you versus like i get you let's you know and so he didn't like that right so not at all yeah yeah nobody wants to feel like they're an experiment right no no i want an experience not an experiment yeah that's heavy where can you find you if they wanna learn more about you and your work yeah i'm not hard to find i'm all over linkedin for sure so a simple search on john graham creative or i'm sure you'll have a link there but but yeah there that's probably the best way to get get connected okay alright well jump links to that in the show notes of course to the one that posts in particular to your profile overall but to the post in particular that want the slides we gotta talk we gotta talk this has been fantastic any parting words wisdom for marketers and business leaders who want to infuse more humanity into the cultures that they are creating so that people don't feel like ass simulation is their motive survival yeah so and so that you know ultimately these these bring better business results but also it's better for people overall right so what advice would you give them how much time do we have for since i if i had to package this up neatly in a a a quota exit i i'd say focus more on the human experience than in the profitability potential mh and it's counterintuitive to your business school training yeah good right but but i don't think that there's been a unsuccessful business who put their customers needs their their experience and ultimately their their expectations secondary to profitability right i think that that's what drives that and that is the nature of the game that you're in your your obligation is to ensure the viability and sustainability of the business that you're at the helm of get it but you can't do that without people yeah and as much as you wanna try with ai you still need human touch always alright so remember the human in in humanity and think about how is this going to impact how is this gonna be beneficial for the human at the other end of what you're trying to sell or create even in your internal culture yeah very cool very cool i love it and i think that's very practical for people to to people apply it's it sounds very it's very simple you know i'm i'm yeah it sounds very like oh that that does that's not like follow this step but no but it's okay i mean i think it's just a we think about how would you want someone to treat you and just we stop thinking about like roi specifically all the time yeah yeah you'll get to roi but i mean yeah yeah for for the practical steps it's it it's sometimes the simplest thing is the is the right answer yeah and it doesn't have to be this complex do this first and then you're gonna do this for two years and yeah no no just remember that there's a human involved in in these things that you're building culture wise even for products and services so start there yeah it's an ethos that's what i think you it is yeah it is indeed thank you john for for stopping by i've i've thoroughly enjoyed this hey oh the pleasure is mine always sonia thank you so much for having me i really enjoyed my conversation with john and i personally have a lot of things to consider even from what we chatted about in some of the insights that he shared and i'm curious to hear from you what stood out for you the most what are the things that you are pondering the most in your mind as a result of sean's insights i wanna hear all about it let me know send me an email it's chat in the dms or even publicly on social happy to do so i wanna know what's turning around in your mind as result of this conversation alright quick question for you are you getting the inclusion in marketing newsletter i mean if not really what are you even been doing each week i send news resources insights and other important lessons for you to know all about how to attract and retain a bigger more diverse and fiercely loyal customer base go to inclusion and marketing dot com slash newsletter to get signed up i will drop the link to that and shown notes for you as well until next time remember everyone deserves to have a place where they belong let's use our individual and collect a power to ensure more people feel like they do thanks so much for listening talk to you soon