Cultural Fluency: A New Framework for Winning in Today’s America

Cultural Fluency represents a powerful new way to significantly increase the ROI on marketing.

Multicultural America will dominate population growth and influence for the foreseeable future. 

Younger Americans expect brand to embrace diversity and take stands on issues they care about.  The general market will be won by brands that efficiently and effectively appeal to all segments in an authentic way.  Is your brand ready?

The Problem: Brands are Ensnared in a Marketing Trade-Off

Every brand manager struggles with a fundamental trade-off:”  do we go deep on “ethnic” segments and generate deep connection at the expense of no connection to other segments?

Or do we go broad on safer “gen-pop” themes and risk being forgotten as savvier competitors win with stronger messages?  How do we handle the impossible: multiple “ethnic” segments to target, each growing rapidly, but limited marketing dollars.  And what about backlash from our traditional consumers?

We believe this trade-off can be transcended.  Our Cultural Fluency framework enables marketers to move ahead of competitors with savvy insight that combines deep cultural insight for specific segments AND generates broad appeal, revealing a new equilibrium that generates higher ROI on marketing investments.

The Solution: Build Cultural Fluency

Our Cultural Fluency originated in research we began for our 2017 Executive Roundtable series, co-hosted by Google and A+E Networks. 

Fundamental to our work is a new method to measure cultural variation, enabling us to quantify cultural differences and similarities across race, ethnicity, generations, gender identity and sexual orientation. These measures have given us the ability to exhaustive document the cultural traits of these consumers, and help brands identify ways to extend their reach across and impact within cultural segments.

In addition, we developed a way to measure the cultural fluency of ads and brands, enabling brands to diagnose cultural fluency gaps with these metrics. Our members use these diagnostics to identify where they need to close gaps with insights gleaned from our work in cultural traits.  Budget-conscious brands use these insights to reduce the cost of custom engagements.

The Cultural Fluency Roadmap

Our members use the Cultural Fluency Roadmap to declare a destination, measure their progress and hold themselves accountable to delivering the cultural fluency consumers now expect as price of entry.  Multicultural consumers want to see themselves represented correctly. Younger Americans expect brands to embrace the diversity they have grown up with. Brands cannot afford to miss out on the growth opportunity America faces across all segments, driven by multicultural America and the embrace of diversity.   It’s time for brands to declare Cultural Fluency as a top goal.

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