September 6th 2023.
The Katalyst Group is creating an exciting experience that people won’t be able to stop talking about. The Cincinnati, Ohio-based brand strategy and marketing firm have recently launched their new inclusive marketing diagnostic tool, the Cultural Competency Monitor. This revolutionary platform assesses brand team and agency readiness for multicultural marketing.
The Katalyst Group has identified the biggest opportunity for market growth in the “multicultural market”, as evidenced by the increase in buying power of multiracial and multiethnic consumers. Studies have shown that ethnic consumers represent 20-30% of new category growth across sectors, and since 2020 over 70% expect a new level of authenticity from the brands they purchase. Furthermore, achieving fair share among diverse consumers can result in sales increases of up to $500 million for the largest advertisers without having to create a new product.
Their goal is to enable more brands to resonate with consumers at the point of engagement. To this end, the platform was introduced to the 2023 Cannes Lions’ Cannes Can: Diversity Collective Inkwell event at Martha’s Vineyard in August. Sean Rugless, Katalyst group president, explains that “the multicultural market is highly nuanced and requires a thoughtful, effective approach that brands can apply. We developed the CCM to measure the efforts being made by brands in inclusive marketing and to assist companies with the enhancements that develop propositions that authentically connect and resonate with multicultural consumer cohorts.”
The CCM platform is geared to provide “insight into the level of multicultural proficiency found with brand teams and their agency partners to connect with”, according to Procter & Gamble. This helps to break the habit of marginalizing multicultural marketing, which is actually mainstream marketing. More importantly, it helps brands to connect with diverse consumer cohorts and portray them more accurately, thus avoiding negative social consequences.
Katalyst is partnering with brands, advertisers, and agencies in deploying the CCM. The components of the CCM, such as work sessions and assessments, have been used at companies like Procter & Gamble, Publicis Groupe, Beam Suntory, and Kellogg’s North America. For instance, P&G has increased their US Hispanic media spending and introduced several new multicultural agencies to their marketing, while Kellogg’s has witnessed growth in annual brand performance across six brands and five agency partners.
The CCM is instrumental in helping to close the brand market share gaps among multicultural consumers. It promotes new narratives, eliminates bias, and encourages inclusive marketing. It also helps to analyze brand development and creative development processes, co-create action plans between brand teams and agencies, and integrate its measures into existing brand and agency performance reviews and metrics.
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