We distilled the latest thinking from all those conversations into four tenets that informed program development and should be core to any multicultural marketing practice whether in higher education or business.
Human-Centered Design
Great marketing puts real people at the center, keeping their pain points and preferences front-of-mind, so outcomes are tailored to their unique needs. We must learn to listen for unique lived experiences that may be different from our own.
For students, our curriculum includes existing cultural competency courses from across the university, existing courses on marketing skills within the College of Business, and new fusion courses at the intersection of the two.
Cultural Identities
To produce truly tailored outcomes, marketers must develop competencies in appreciating and responding to people’s cultural identities. Cultural identities form from a sense of belonging and are increasingly complex in today’s world. Circumstances of peoples’ lived experiences may encourage or require multiple cultural identities, especially given factors like globalization, modernization, migration, and inter-ethnic/faith marriages.
In one of our newly designed fusion courses titled, Multiculturalism in the Marketplace, students learn the history of marketing to diverse cultural groups in the United States (e.g., Hispanic/Latino and African Americans) to understand how to execute effective marketing efforts to not only those groups, but any group.
Diversity
As marketers pursue increasingly diverse markets, marketing teams should reflect the diversity of the consumers and communities they serve. Homogenous perspectives cannot empathize with a heterogeneous market. Every marketer, no matter their background or identity, must be able to appreciate, understand, and integrate diversity in developing marketing plans and leading marketing teams.
Students in the program can develop the multicultural competence needed to tap into the power of diversity and inclusion in teams, organizations, markets, and societies through electives such as Managing a Diverse Workplace.
Marketing Constraints
Neither marketing budgets nor marketing tools allow for true 1:1 communication at scale. Therefore, marketers must segment and prioritize consumers to maximize brand investments.
These decisions are critical for maximizing marketing effectiveness and ROI and require some level of generalization. In another fusion course, students learn how to design fiscally and socially responsible marketing plans in the Multicultural Marketing Strategy capstone class.
Early success
In its first year, the program is meeting its goal. We are preparing students to make a positive difference in an increasingly diverse world and developing a deeper pipeline of diverse marketing talent. The program is even attracting students who wouldn’t otherwise have pursued a career in marketing.
For instance, Sheridan Darnell taught at an elementary school and didn’t have a marketing background before enrolling in the University of Louisville College of Business. Still undecided on a major, she took the program’s introductory course in January this year. Before the semester ended, Darnell declared a major in Marketing.
