“A Consumer Portrait of the Walmart Shopper”

Crosscuts: Diversity x Retail

Backstory: Photojournalism captures the Walmart (WMT) shopper ‘in motion’ across America.

Culture Cut: Social commentary of Walmart shopper behavior.

Commerce Cut: American consumers spend $36M every hour at Walmart.

Crosscutting: Is Save More. Live Better honestly being realized by Walmart shoppers?  By viewing the website, do you think they would agree they are living better today?

Brand Opportunity: Walmart is an institution and large enough to effect real change on a mass scale.  Remodeled stores with new atmospheres designed for a more pleasant shopping experience, simply is a long-term strategy to maximize Walmart’s profit-driven business model.  That’s what it’s supposed to do.  But… 

Walmart leaders should be inspired and aspire to the likes of (Red), Ikea, Tom’s Shoes…companies the size of an accounting error on Walmart’s books.  These small companies have hearts the size of Walmart’s profits yet have significantly more impact.

What else can Mr. Rollback do?  Can he refresh like Pepsi (PEP) or inspire members to take on actionable projects like Amex (AXP)?  And not just social cause because it’s what you should do, but what you can do.  If all Mr. Rollback can do is lower prices so people can consume to live the lifestyles portrayed in these pictures, then Walmart, what’s your value proposition?  What’s next?   

Market Risk: Buying low. Selling low strategy.  Walmart is simply a global department store being challenged by astute online marketers like Amazon (AMZN).  Walmart growth is being driven by Asian expansion; at some point in history the Chinese middle class consumer will cycle through this phase too, if their society buys capitalism hook, line and sinker. 

And sooner or later Walmart shoppers will beg, borrow and steal to experience Target (TGT) every chance they can get.  That means less trips to Walmart, a decrease in average basket purchase, and less loyalty.

When the whole world is on sale what does it matter?  Where’s the value in value?

“Shopping the Food Groups in the Bodega”

Crosscuts: Diversity x Food & Beverage

Backstory: The Internets Celebrities, Dallas Penn and Rafi Kam, make videos exposing economic, political and culinary injustices to reveal insights and celebrate urban culture.   The Bodega is a satirical look at the consumer experience, trade-offs, and opportunity costs in nutrition and wellness.

Culture Cut: In many urban neighborhoods, the bodega is the corner store.  It’s an important source of commerce in many ethnic neighborhoods; feeding minority consumers, especially low-income residents, has become a de facto responsibility of the bodega.  These communities have traditionally not been a part of national super market chains’ growth strategies, but have become sources of growth for fast food and macrosnacks.  

Commerce Cut: In Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, Newark, Los Angeles, and New York boroughs, neighborhoods and communities over-index for fast food and convenience store options, yet lag healthier food options necessary for a balanced diet.  Food deserts, communities that are starving for healthier, fresher, greener food options, are becoming more isolated as a result of the economy.

Crosscutting: People eat what is familiar, accessible, convenient, and affordable.  Communities that do not have access to real food are at risk socially.  Eating is the foundation of life - without it we cannot sustain, just as our planet.  We sustain the environment, why not youth who are its newest keepers?

Brand Opportunity: Market share-leading macrosnack, supermarket, beverage, and food brands should partner with local government and schools, creating new food co-ops to innovate and supply new, healthier ways to eat nutritiously. 

Think about minority communities as a high-access network of routes connecting food-to-store-to-consumer.  Many of the routes and stores in the supply chain of food in urban areas are operated by entrepreneurs.  So there is license to be creative and break the rules.

Market Risk: Not meeting the basic and fundamental tenant of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs - food.

Article first published as BET Networks: A High-Definition Cultural Experience on Technorati.

BET Networks: “A High-Definition Black Experience”

Backstory: Since 1980 Black Entertainment Television’s mission has been to serve the nation’s African-American audience with quality entertainment, music, news and public affairs television programming.  Crosscutting Diversity x Entertainment reveals new insight in the merchandising and selling of Black Culture. 

Crosscuts: Diversity x Entertainment

Culture Cut: The Culture of Black people in the United States can be define in two ways: in the context of history or in the context of society.  Either route will direct you towards the purpose of a culture, race, and ethnicity that is caught somewhere between preservation of pride and reinvention of legacy.   

Whether African-American or Black, the unique search for identity, as every ethnic culture has experienced, is still undefined because its history is unresolved; the effects and affects of slavery are still evident in some parts of the country.  More than 52% of Black consumers still live in ‘the South’ where slavery was most evident.  And the Black family unit, the traditional symbol of strength of most Cultures, appears to be at odds with itself and modern societies values and social mores.

Add to that, legends, stereotypes, urban myths and the realities of Black Americans and it’s hard to tell who is telling the story of Black Culture and what is entertaining about it.

Commerce Cut: BET (Black Entertainment Television) creates and sells Black Culture-based entertainment and media cable programming to advertisers.  BET Networks programming reaches 90M American households targeting 18-34 and 24-5; BET, Centric, BET Digital/Mobile/Home Entertainment.  The brand is notoriously known for its annual BET Music Awards Show and Hip Hop video programming.  BET was the first Black company to be listed on the NYSE in 1991, and was sold to Viacom (VIA) in 2003 for $3B. 

In 1980 there was an obvious social need for Black programming.  Fresh from of the political progression of the ’70s, African-Americans in the ’80s began to live their own version of the American Dream; increased education of African-Americans and second-generation Black money, led to life style aspirations no different than the General Market.  Then there was a hiccup, we questioned the validity of ‘real life’ Cosby’s because our realities focused on a different picture.  Hip-Hop was born and became a cash cow for the music, media, and entertainment business verticals.  Whether it was on BET or not it was Black-inspired entertainment, and there are no barriers to entry in 2010.   How will BET curate Black Culture for the masses?

Crosscutting: What is Black?  For that matter, what is ‘Black Entertainment and the role of Television?’  How do marketers and programmers accurately segment African-American consumers?  Hispanics and Latino are separate and further differentiated by cultured and acculturated.  These discrete classifications don’t apply for African-Americans; do psychographics include or further segregate African American consumers from the General Market?  Perhaps these questions are best answered when analyzing, interpreting and applying the data.

What if everything you know about Black is wrong.  It’s not color.  Its emotion, spirit, and courage.  And what if many Americans were partially Black but didn’t know it?  Would that be a gift or a curse?  According to a study by Dr. Mark Shriver, a Penn State molecular anthropologist: 10% of Black Americans are more than 50% white, and there are at least 50M whites with at least one Black ancestor.  The cross-over yields about 72M American consumers, twice the American Black population.  It’s bigger than you think.

What if Nike told the story of ‘the Day in the Life of the History of Black Culture?’  It’s not blasphemy is it?  I mean, Black is a vital and key brand differentiator for BET, and for many product segments and the retailers who sell brands.

Brand Opportunity: How do you sell ‘Black Culture’ today?  What is it’s value proposition?  For a Black media outlet, presumably, the brand promise is: it connects and relates to its audience in the way that the General Market cannot access.  Is BET is a Cultural liaison between Black Culture and Popular Culture.

BET needs more relevance to compete today in a media agnostic and fractured ecosystem.  The social network was a fixture in the Black community long before there was a business application.  The dialogue that occurs in that human context needs to be fostered at BET more organically, for authentic two-way Cultural digital dialogue that doesn’t exist today.

BET needs prominent Cultural ambassadors - a Puffy, a Jay-Z, someone to create emerging authentic programming that is unique to African Americans yet interesting to the rest of the population who aren’t Black.  Discovery Communications (DISCA) Discovery Channel brand or even the Hallmark Channel are prime examples of leveraging equity to create new markets and portfolio drivers.

Market Risk: Competition and digital.  Brain Roberts, Chairman and CEO of Comcast (CMCSA) is the most brilliant mind in media today.  Comcast is the largest cable operator and home internet service provider in the United States, with 51% ownership of NBC Universal (deal pending) and part ownership of BET’s main competitor, TV One.  Though TV One is only available in 38M homes to BET’s 90M, its diverse digital portfolio of assets held through, Interactiveone, includes properties with mainstream identities and focuses.  The possibilities are endless in the Comcast universe. 

Black Entertainment stretches Black and Entertainment across its entire portfolio, making it reliant and vulnerable to an ethnic-first approach which can marginalize new viewership adoption.  The brand becomes unstable struggling between a demographic and culture; BET is as much Detroit as it is Watts and everthing in between. 

BET has not invested in News since the early ’90s, a critical mistake.  MTV gained promise for its early news coverage with Curt Loder as it created the music video programming.  The 2012 Presidential election is an obvious opportunity and challenge for Black media and programming; when something seminal happens in Culture often times BET lacks the necessary credibility, originality, accuracy, and ingenuity to report it.

Overtly focusing on Black programming versus relevant programming creates quick death today; there is no new penetration of Black viewers - growth must be produced by either increasing the value of Black ‘eyeballs’ or creating new ones.  Many Black consumers 18-34 are sourcing much of their digital and internet diets from their mobile devices, sharing experiences that they can relate to inside their ethnicity, and identify with outside of their Culture.

"The Journey of the Entrepreneur: Being an entrepreneur means being able to handle the ambiguity of not knowing how to handle what’s next. Those who handle it are entrepreneurs. Those who don’t aren’t. Take a leap of faith, be happy."

Zaid Khalil, Founder and Principal, Bibzi

Crosscuts: Success x Consumer Goods

Culture Cut: Arab business wisdom

Commerce Cut: http://www.prepropaganda.com/

Crosscutting: Providing entrepreneurs and brand marketers’ in-house thinking from an out-of-house vantage

Brand Opportunity: Thinking for Thinkers

Market Risk: Consumer goods industry consolidation is pigeon-holing small, independent consultancies

The Misconceptions of Multicultural Consumerism

Crosscuts: Diversity x Consumer Goods

Culture Cut: In the opening scene of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, he opines “ism’s in my opinion are not good, a person should not believe in an ism, they should believe in themselves.”  Multiculturalism is a misnomer; the term multicultural originated in 1941 in opposition to U.S. nationalism and prejudice.  However, society’s usage of the term is primarily associated with integration and tolerance of race and ethnicity.

Multiculturalism is a theory with multiple interpretations, inferences, implications, and significance.  When does multicultural become diversity, and what’s the difference?  The term Post-Black rose in popularity with the election of President Obama but that doesn’t change demographic truths or eliminate stereotypes does it?

The value of multiculturalism is not its ability to ‘level the playing field’ with equal opportunity consumerism, quite the contrary, it forces debate and dialogue between brand and consumer segment, marketer and agency, and media and messaging.  Multiculturalism is part of a larger quasi political and socioeconomic issue - 60% of Americans (consumers) support Arizona’s Immigration Law, so what does that say about multiculturalism advocacy?

Commerce Cut:  A lot is premised on 2050, when the scale will tip from a General Market majority to an ethnic consumer majority, mostly Hispanic.  But that is forty years from now.  Since 1965 several U.S. markets, small to large, where this demographic imbalance is already evident, national brand marketers have been slow to adapt.  Malls across America where slow to adapt.  It wasn’t until the expansion of mass merchandiser growth in the 1990s that brands and retailers started to work more effectively at resolving a widening hole in their consumer segments.  Their fortunes are tied and dependent upon one another.

Let’s be real about multiculturalism in consumer marketing.  Multiculturalism is a strategy first, goodwill second.  What is the business value of multiculturalism as most brand marketers deploy it?  When is multicultural influence greater than multicultural sales?  What is the demographic of a multicultural consumer versus an ethnic consumer, and how does that change based on product category?  These are real questions that each marketer will answer differently based on their category.  There is no silver bullet is my point. 

Also the rise of entrepreneurship has impacted how society views multiculturalism and race.  Successful and celebrity entrepreneurs have fused Popular Culture and Commerce, crosscutting the two creating a new paradigm.  Brands and retailers where slow here as well to see the changing landscape of influence in ethnic communities and the mass market.  Hip Hop challenged every traditional status quo belief, and won.

Crosscutting: Culture has more value than multiculturalism.  Culture are the ‘sets of practices’ humans use to connect.  Culture is shared by all humans.  Culture does not relate through race and ethnicity but behavior and attitudes.  Culture is a vital dimension of a brand’s Value Proposition, it sits at the convex between “the brand culture” and “the culture of the brand.”

Brand Opportunity: Relevancy.  If a brand uses Culture to relate to its business vertical it will attract a larger proportion of aware and non-aware consumers.  But the brand has to really own a Culture in its business model.  Since day one Apple (AAPL) has been design centric.  The rest of the world caught up and then Apple changed the world.  Culture first, category second.

Market Risk: If marketers don’t look at each consumer as a ‘whole’ consumer they will become less relevant and not sustain leadership.  Understanding multiculturalism means understanding all consumers.  It’s that easy and that difficult.  Multiculturalism is not a panacea or a band-aid.  If a brand segregates by race and ethnicity it will never grow.  Tolerance in marketing is short-sighted and impractical.  Adoption and acceptance of humans before consumers is the essence of Culture.

Politicizing multiculturalism within the corporate environment will have a brand’s strategy showing, displaying brand schizophrenia for everyone, mostly competitors, to see.

Target’s Harlem Renaissance Mirrors Shoppers

Diversity x Retail

Culture Cut: There are approximately 41.25MM Black consumers of all ages residing in the United States.  Large cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami and New York have seen a rise in affluent Black families since the mid-to-late 1980s.  Obviously a group of this size has tremendous “purchase influence” in certain categories, and tends to “laggards” in others.

Commerce Cut: In order for Target Stores (TGT) to maintain growth, it must find new revenue drivers in key product verticals to remain competitive against Walmart (WMT) and other mass merchandisers.  Increasing penetration among Black shoppers, especially moms, is low-hanging fruit.  Target operates 1,684 stores in 48 states, including 239 SuperTarget stores, 1,519 pharmacies, 325 optical centers, 186 portrait studios, 916 Starbucks, 1,165 one-hour photo processing labs and 28 health clinics.  Target’s geographic footprint closely mirrors geographic areas where Blacks have the highest density.

Crosscutting: Target opened a new store in Harlem, (New York City) during the summer, and expanded its Design Boutique Collection featuring marquee Black icons in American lifestyle and design.  Target has initiated and sustained a dialogue (digital, OOH, print, experiential, and social media) with Harlem shoppers and surrounding NYC communities in many boroughs.

Brand Opportunity: NYC is the style, fashion and design epicenter of the world. The city is the perfect forum to engage consumers with Expect More. Pay Less without the clutter of Walmart’s Save More. Live Better proposition.  Stephen Burrows and Marcus Samuelsson, Swedish wunderkind-chef of Aquavit are featured designers.  What’s smart about this strategic growth direction is that the Target’s merchandising ‘mirrors’ the aspiration of the shopper while she’s in the store.   The reflection that Target helps her cast is reflected back upon the brand in terms of awareness, consideration, and preference.  The categories offer her a familiar and comfortable segue into new lifestyle areas that she may not have shopped before.

Market Risk: In under-served communities the role of the service offering and the brand are indistinguishable.  Harlem residents will hold Target to the “Expect More” value proposition

“4 out of 10 Global Citizens Assess the Economic Situation as “Good” in their Country”

Crosscuts: Diversity x Economy & Finance

Culture Cut: We are all connected by the emotion of cycles.

Commerce Cut: Developing nations are spending themselves into the Middle Class.

Crosscutting: Finding a happy baseline. 

Brand Opportunity: Can brand portfolios and product life cycles be correlated to match these changing consumer sentiments?

Market Risk: The world’s economies are connected.  This picture is really just one line in many parts.

Jeep and the Cotton Gin

Crosscuts: Diversity x Automotive

The new 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee, built by Chrysler Group, LLC looks to be a fantastic improvement.  But if the patriotic American pride that inspired its new design is the reason to believe, let me address a small, but significant issue in American economic history.

First, let’s review some of the copy: “The things that make us Americans are the things we make.”  This has always been a nation of builders, crafters.  Men and women, for whom straight stitches and clean welds are a matter of personal pride.  They made the skyscrapers and the cotton gin…”  Huh?!

Eli Whitney’s cotton gin invention in 1794 may seem like a marvel of industry to some, but its creation prolonged slavery in the United States.  You see, the cotton gin increased production and yield of cotton in the Antebellum south.  It’s effects where devastating, as plantation owners and slave master’s became even more dependent on cotton, and the physical resources needed to harvest their crops.  In other words, the cotton gin kept African Americans enslaved.  Jeep, how in the hell do you make the analogy between industrialization and forced labor?!  Seriously, you dropped the ball on this one.

Cotton is a crash crop, a commodity.  It was the largest sector of the Southern economy.  During its manufacture, the number of slaves rose from approximately 700,000, before Eli patent, to around 3.2 million in 1850.  The cotton gin’s economic benefits were, at the time, revolutionary despite the social implications it would have on our society.  Recall, we fought a civil war, North vs South, and at issue: slavery.

If fact, America, in large part, was made on the backs of slaves.  The United States developed quickly and efficiently because of slavery.  Jeep’s newest son, the 2011 Grand Cherokee, claims its spirit is derived from the same place as this past.  How ironic, an American brand leveraging the name of Native American Indians, while associating its product manufacture with the advancements of slavery.

“Come as You Are,” but Only in France

Crosscuts: Diversity x QSR and Casual Dining

The sheer irony of the latest French installment of “Venez come vous etes,“ meaning “Come as you are,” and featuring a gay protagonist, sums up McDonald’s relevancy in the modern world.  McDonald’s (MCD) really doesn’t get it - just like the father in the advert.

Does McDonald’s not understand that a company, no matter how colossal, cannot segment consumers in real life?  We, people, aren’t one-dimensional?  That people don’t fit neatly into one box of Culture, rather, we navigate, finding associations and affinities for our beliefs?  Why does McDonald’s take such political stances on such topics?

The controversy has centered around a statement that Don Thompson, McDonald’s President and Chief of Operations, made referencing that this specific spot would never air in the United States.  It has been cited that Mr. Thompson’s remarks were based on his Christian faith.  He actually never said that, he referenced faith in another context. The fuel to the fire was added by Bill O’Reilly, with his stereotypical rhetoric, agreeing with Thompson’s statement, but for very different reasons I suppose.

I’m sure the story of this young french boy is relevant to many.  Forget the fact that he is gay.  It’s a story every teenager has empathy for - parents just don’t understand.  Wil Smith said it, like, 15 years ago.  And his edict has stood the test of time.

I couldn’t help but interpreting McDonald’s as the unaware father, bragging about his youthful virility, so detached from reality and emotion, that he thinks he see’s himself in his son.  He believes his own reality, which couldn’t be further from the truth.  What’s telling is the son’s reaction to his father - he was accepting his father for who he was, ignorant.