Moving Beyond Demographics to Help Advertisers Understand African-American Consumers — Ad Age

Can Thrivals Lead the Black Consumer Advertising Evolution?
Trying to Move Beyond Basic Demographics

One of the highlights of the ANA Conference was the Beyond Demographics presentation by Nat Irvin, founder of Future Focus 2020, who wrote The Arrival of the Thrivals, and Esther Franklin, exec VP-director of cultural identities, SMG Multicultural at Starcom Media Group. The session, which was unfortunately scheduled at the end of the conference after most attendees had departed for flights, presented the most innovative information of the conference for marketers, agencies and media companies targeting African-American consumers. 

Is the ad targeting a Fly Girl really engaging and reaching your target? Which medium is a must to reach Devouts and which brands resonate with this segment? Just a few of the questions that Starcom Media Group hopes to begin to uncover for marketers starting with the just-released study Beyond Demographics.

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Starcom's intent is to share this new knowledge with the advertising and media marketplace, with the goal of revolutionizing the way our industry views/values the African American community. The opportunity to add this knowledge to the account planning process to sell through more engaging creative and hopefully make the case for more sizable advertising budgets can be significant for participating marketers and their agencies. For media properties the vision is to uncover deeper insights into the strengths of their media property and explore branded content development concepts that will resonate with brands in partnership with one of the largest media investment agencies.