Leading the Change Day 4: Charting the Next Step in Your Hispanic Marketing Journey

• Cultural competency is a business driver. Focus on buy-in, branding your efforts, budgeting, and making the new system built to last.
• Shift thinking and operations from Hispanic marketing as a nice-to-have to a must-have.
• Flip the question from what’s the worst that can happen to what’s the best that can happen.

Leading the Change 2020 — the virtual series — is complete, but the inspiration certainly isn’t over. Day four focused on what’s next. What does greater cultural competence mean for businesses? How do you create momentum toward a future you want to inhabit? What is your next growth move?

Our day four speakers— UniWorld Group’s Monique Nelson, GSK’s Stacey Harris and Gina Moletto, and Hello Fears’ Michelle Poler — posed these questions and more.

Let’s review the key takeaways.

Cultural Competency as a Business Driver

While organizations work toward cultural competence, they can identify, quantify, and monetize. Nelson mostly spoke about this from a talent perspective, but the parallels and direct repercussions to business are clear. Building cultural fluency allows you to “spot missed opportunities, calculate the revenue you’re not generating, and monetize the highest priority opportunities.”

Diversity can also drive higher quality, productivity, and innovation and become a profit center in and of itself.

To achieve this, Nelson added, it’s essential that “inclusive leadership become the default leadership” and to focus on the four Bs: buy-in from senior execs, branding your efforts, budgeting for change, and building systems that hold people accountable.

Creating Momentum

The GSK team knows something about momentum. They went from zero to 10 brands consistently targeting Hispanics over the past few years. “And it’ll be more in the future,” hinted Moletto.

The momentum took off when they shifted operationally to embedding the U.S. Hispanic consumer in the mainstream strategy. “We moved from Hispanic as a separate line item in our budget, to, for example, Hispanic audience within our overall TV plan. And we did the same across our insights, media strategies, and vendor relationship,” explained Moletto.

Not only does this break down cross-functional silos, but it sets up the fact that Hispanic is a must-have, not a nice-to-have.

At the same time, GSK understands the need to respect the segment’s nuances and speak with Hispanics authentically. “We owe them a responsibility that we communicate to them in language,” said Harris, “and we turn to the experts for help.”

Given that Hispanics spend $8 billion per year in the OTC category, and growth is double that of non-Hispanics , the opportunity is clear.

“Other than being a business driver, it’s a belief that this is the right thing to do,” added Harris. “We need to ensure we’re reaching everyone and not just a subset of the population.”

Your Next Growth Move

Poler experienced a rush of momentum first-hand when she embarked on her 100 Days of Fear initiative to step out of her comfort zone and become a braver person. The project made her a viral superstar, TEDx speaker, author, and entrepreneur.

Because of it, she now has a whole new interpretation of comfort and fear: Facing them allows you to uncover your next big opportunity.

“Don’t let fear hold you back from making your next growth decision,” she advised. “Flip the question from what’s the worst that can happen to what’s the best.”

Consider that as you take the next step on your Hispanic marketing journey.