Taking a page from reality television, brands have been using non-actors to engage their audiences in television commercials. We’ve seen this in the likes of Mitsubishi’s “Ride the Storm” campaign, Domino’s “Show Us Your Pizza” campaign and Chobani’s “Real Love Stories” campaign. However, this isn’t the first we seen of reality commercials — even if they weren’t labeled as such. Remember the “Pepsi Challenge” or McDonald’s Big Mac commercials?

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Join Tyrha M. Lindsey and Bruce Kirton for their Digital Impact Conference session, The Digerati: Social Media Habits of Multicultural Consumers.” The PRSA 2012 Digital Impact Conference, to be held April 2–3 at the Sentry Center in New York City, offers workshops where public relations professionals will hear from entrepreneurs and others who specialize in technology communications or social and digital media.

Multicultural consumers wield a significant amount of influence on popular trends in the general market, and consequently, smart marketers understand the importance of engaging this segment. For the sake of brevity, I will focus on the African-American segment in this article, but each ethnic segment has particular online behaviors and habits that can be leveraged to build a relationship with those consumers.

Continue reading " Leverage Online Dialogue and Conversations to Create Multicultural Brand Ambassadors! "

Join Tyrha M. Lindsey and Bruce Kirton for their Digital Impact Conference session, The Digerati: Social Media Habits of Multicultural Consumers.” The PRSA 2012 Digital Impact Conference, to be held April 2–3 at the Sentry Center in New York City, offers workshops where public relations professionals will hear from entrepreneurs and others who specialize in technology communications or social and digital media. 

When Mr. Lewis founded UniWorld Group in 1969, the only media outlet was EBONY magazine. The only other way that African-Americans found out about the news in their community was through “word of mouth.”

Fast forward to 2012. There are many media outlets of color — African-American, Asian, Hispanic, Haitian, Chinese, etc. Nevertheless, as a public relations professional, how do you REALLY tell a positive multicultural news story that is not related to celebrities, sports or crime? Since current studies say that multicultural consumers’ rate of Internet usage is now nearly indistinguishable from that of the general population, at 80 percent (versus 88 percent in the general market), African-Americans and Hispanics are now online more than ever before.

Moreover, according to “Brand Information Sources Among African-Americans,” the new study by One Solution and UniWorld Group, “ ‘Advisers’ in the African-American community are “advice exchangers” — they both ask and are asked for opinions of products or services.”

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Now in its third year, Hispanicize 2012 (#Hispz12) is the annual event focused on Latino trends and trendsetters in social media, entertainment, marketing and media. The event is a partnership of Hispanicize, the Hispanic Public Relations Association (HPRA) and the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).

Everyone knows that moms make most of the purchasing decisions in U.S. households. Moms are much more likely to make those decisions based on what other moms think about a product. According to a Fleishman-Hillard & ModernMom.com 2011 Marketing-to-Moms Study, 63 percent of moms surveyed said blogger reviews are influential to their purchase decisions. With Latina women becoming one of the fastest growing demographics online and more than 85 percent of them visiting social networks on a regular basis, it should come as no surprise to see the attention that Latina mom bloggers are garnering from major brands, public relations firms, marketing agencies and media. Latina mom bloggers can be a culturally relevant voice for brands that want to get their products in front of Hispanic moms and families. The question is, how can brands effectively engage with Latina bloggers?

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There are almost 500 million Facebook accounts and 200 million people with Twitter accounts. There are more than 150 million pages that identify themselves as blogs. Newspapers and magazines are under serious pressure as ad dollars move online and to social networks.The line between public relations and marketing has been blurring for some time now, creating new ways to tell a story and influence key constituents.

Continue reading " The Principles Are the Same: Young PR Professionals Still Need to Develop Credibility and Influence "