You're gonna find it. You gotta keep on at it. Hello everybody, this is Bob Goodwin, founder and President of Career Club, and thanks so much for joining me for another episode of Career Club Live. Today's episode is sponsored by Next Placement, which is our innovation in the out placement space, where we're bringing a more people-centric, empathetic approach to helping folks who are being off-boarded or when you're transitioning employees. Again, check us out at Careerclub, next placement, very excited about today's guest. He came highly recommended by a mutual friend of ours, who we'll name in a minute, but today's guest is Sean Ruglis. Sean is the founder and president of the Catalyst Group and just to read a little bit more about that a strategic consulting and brand development firm that develops platforms and designs engagements that enable brands and organizations to connect with their audiences Through uncovering the client's proposition at its core. They harness insights, industry knowledge and strategy to design outcomes and experiences that resonate.
Speaker 2:All of that, sean welcome. Oh, thank you very much, bob. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:No, thank you, and thanks for having a well-written website. That was good. But first I'm just really happy to have you. I mentioned that we've got a mutual friend, bill Donabedian, who used to run the Brandemonium conferences here in Cincinnati. We're both in Cincinnati and you came highly, highly recommended. We've gotten to know each other since and I'm really glad that we've got the opportunity to have you today. So, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I think the connection between Bill and us is wonderful because Bill is a type of person that created Brandemonium as a platform for brand activations and experiential marketing, and he was kind enough to actually allow me to introduce a multicultural track within that conference, which led to a series of things I've done with our clients and agencies around the world, as well as having this conversation today. So glad to be connected with you, bob.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and thank you for kind of telegraphing the topic here, which is going to be around multicultural marketing, and we're going to unpack that. I think that, whether you are a marketer or an HR professional, this all kind of ties together. So, again, I don't want to jump the gun, but thank you for mentioning the multicultural piece, because it's going to be really, really interesting. Before we do all that, though, as is our want, we have just a couple of icebreaker questions to help people get to know you a little bit better. So easy one when were you born and raised?
Speaker 2:I was born and raised in Rochester, new York, used to be the headquarters of Boshelam, codec and Xerox, so not a native Cincinnati and I feel the high school question which is so important here.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to ask you the high school question, Although I did phrase it that way, like where'd you go to school. So that can be high school or college, but I'll let you answer that as you wish.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So I'm a native of Rochester, new York, born and raised in Western New York. I undergrad, I went to University of Buffalo and then came back and did my MBA at the Simon Business School University of Rochester, which was a recruiting school for Procter Gamble. And so that is actually how I got to Cincinnati was I was recruited by in fabric and home care, the largest business unit in P&G, and started as an assistant brand manager on Downey, got promoted to a system brand manager on Bounce and then got promoted to a brand manager role doing shopper marketing so anywhere from conceptualizing products to giving them to the shelf, to consumer purchases, kind of how I would have done. And so that's how I got to Cincinnati and which is now the branding capital of the world.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, that's how, that's how it all happened.
Speaker 1:Well, so you anticipated my next question you've already started to answer it which is just a little bit about your career. So you started at Procter and you had some nice promotions there, and then where did all that lead?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So PNG is how I got into Cincinnati, and I think you know I came from a top 20 NBA program and you know there's aspects of things that you love about business and aspects that come out that end up being your passion points, and marketing was mine. So I was fortunate enough to get my branding teeth cut at the World's Largest Sabotizer From PNG. I left and jumped on the other side of the table and became a brand strategist for a global design firm here locally, still working on every other brand except PNG. So so I've got a lot of experience in terms of understanding, then, what the creative process kind of looks like and how strategies created and how it manifests itself into design.
Speaker 2:Left to go into work, to work with one of my clients, which was at that time Cincinnati, was developing a brand to attract visitors, which was tourism, and so I worked with a PNG executive on loan who recruited me to the tourism group, consequently became the president of tourism for Cincinnati, and that cut my teeth on experiential marketing, right. So brand activations, thinking about a way to have people come to your region's money and then I left there, became the president, ceo, of the American Chamber of Commerce for Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati, and so that's where I really got steeped into economic development, small business development, in corporate relationships. And then I got the itch for, I guess, from some of my members and started my own brand strategy consultancy, the catalyst group. So a lot of good corporate experience, corporate and municipal partnerships, and then now you know small to mid tier business experiences kind of how I round up my it's great we talk about a career cut because we help our clients do their personal branding and you've got a very eclectic set of experiences.
Speaker 1:But we talked about baking a cake where you know you've got flour, eggs, milk, you know what sugar what should I be? And so I put no, blend them together, create something really unique and synthesize those things, and you've done just a phenomenal job with that. Last personal question what do we find you doing, sean, when you're not at work and helping brands activate?
Speaker 2:And I wish there was a time where it wasn't working but enjoy music, particularly live music. I am a huge hip hop head, so the 50th year hip hop has brought a lot of given options for me. But I also love I'm a bourbon enthusiast, so you're the core of the country. Yeah, exactly. So wherever I can find a good sip in a decent environment, you'll find me doing that.
Speaker 1:That's cool, Awesome. Well, let's jump into our topic because obviously and I think listeners and viewers can see already that you really do have a very well rounded background and kind of come out multicultural marketing from a number of angles Just kind of broadly can you help people understand what you mean by multicultural marketing, kind of what it is and maybe what it's not?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think it's. We'll start with what it's not, because it probably surprises. Group Multicultural marketing is not a utopic effort, right, it's not a company's diversity effort. It is really a business strategy. So when we think about multicultural marketing and I'm just going to back it up for folks who are kind of in our industry in terms of marketing and advertising and folks who are not every brand in the world, every company in the world, is looking for growth, right, and this easy way to think about this is that the only way that a company or a brand can grow is to appeal to a broader swath of consumers, right, people who would buy their services. And so when we start to think about, then, the demographic changes and shifts that are happening in the US the US is getting much more diverse, right? And so if a brand's growth is tied to how many people that it can attract and engage and not to be buy services, then in some way or shape or form, it's in a brand's best interest to understand the insights, the motivations and the attitudes of everybody who wants to sell it to.
Speaker 2:So multicultural marketing is not just hey, how do black and brown people think? And should we just position our brands to appeal to them. No, all of our business growth comes from appealing to as many consumers as possible, and the ways that brands resonate is to be able to understand each of these consumer segments separately, such that there's a collective, universal theme that they can find to identify a way in a territory that they can own and connect with consumers. And that's how it happens. So multicultural marketing is not a DE&I initiative. Multicultural marketing is not just the right thing to do, but multicultural marketing is the key driver to brand growth for all companies.
Speaker 1:So when we first were getting to know each other, I shared with you that I come. You talked about shopper marketing and before starting Career Club in 2021, I was at numerator and IRI and NPD and numerators panel data and so I was teaching Wall Streeters. Hey, there's only two ways to really grow a brand at the end of the day Either sell to more people or you sell more stuff to the same people. Those are sort of like your options and what you're talking about is sort of that first piece of it at least, which is well, how do we increase household penetration? You know, if we're selling to this group of people and there's this many people out there, how do we broaden our reach and our appeal to include more households in the brand franchise? Is that fair?
Speaker 2:That's fair, and I think the key piece here that ends that, you know, is what gets measured gets done. So let's talk a little bit about the measurements. If you look at any category name it food, cell phones, entertainment, cars the research will say for most consulting firms that 20 to 30% of new growth comes from ethnic consumers. So that's one thing that we think about growth, incremental growth. Almost a third of that growth is coming from ethnic consumers.
Speaker 2:The buying power for ethnic consumers is now amassing close to 1.5 trillion, is expected to be more than $2 trillion in buying power over the next three or four years, and so what we're talking about, then, is that the pie is getting bigger, and even companies like P&G have acknowledged. They were at Black Tech Week in Cincinnati just three or four weeks ago, and what they said is they identified that 60% of the new growth that they're experiencing in their brand is coming from consumers of color, and so the key piece simply is is that when we think about multicultural marketing, we're not saying, hey, let's just do some feel good campaigns and resonate with consumers what we're talking about is that it's going to be essential that we position brands and experiences to resonate with the consumers that have the money to be able to purchase our products, and that's what's going to fuel our growth.
Speaker 2:The last thing I'll just share with you is P&G and some other companies that what is called a fair share assessment, and what that basically says is if we can look at multicultural consumers it's called a Black and Hispanic consumers, just to use two segments and if we can get the household penetration and share levels of those ethnic consumers to equal what we have in our general market of white consumers, that actually leads to between $100 million and $500 million of new growth without inventing a new product. So the key piece just simply is saying is that if you want to unlock brand potential, if you want to unlock company growth, then it's not necessarily a great thing to do and just a great thing to do in terms of embracing EDI and diversity, but it becomes a business imperative because the face of our consumer looks different than it today, than it did 15, 20 years ago.
Speaker 1:So I just want to underscore bold, put an exclamation point behind what you were saying, because it's just good business. Do the math If you have a growth imperative, everybody does Grow or die. If you've got a growth imperative and we know that most new products fail, right, the failure rate on new product launches is in the 90s. It's not encouraging. And yet so much money gets put against innovation not saying that you shouldn't try and innovate, but at the same time you'd make a very compelling case of if we just got our fair share against these under-indexed segments of shoppers who have what did you say? $1.5 trillion going to be $2 trillion in the few years. I mean you don't need a whole lot of $2 trillion to probably hit your growth target, even if you're proctor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And so what we talk about in terms of the business imperative of reaching as many consumers as possible is that we've had interactions with you know very large companies P&G as an example.
Speaker 2:We've had interactions with Beam Centauri, which is a third largest spirits company in the world. They make you know makers, mark Jim beam. Obviously, if I say in a couple of other spirits that we're all tasting, you know we've worked with, we went on the agency side. We've done interactions with the publicist group of the third largest agency group in the world.
Speaker 2:And, and now we're doing work with Kellogg's North America, with six brands and in five agencies, and, and what we're really doing? We introduce a platform and a tool called the cultural competency monitor that helps brands Understand whether or not they're investing behind their growth opportunity. So it's one thing to say, hey, we see this as an opportunity for business growth. It's another to say, hey, how, what is our footing right? It would have forced us to lean forward, to Engage these consumers. And then, where do we need to enhance our processes, our approaches, to get there right? And so what we'll be talking about today and some of the Are going to be some of the findings that we've gotten working across all those great brands and all those great companies that, hopefully, will Begin to help your listeners and, in your viewers, begin to develop business strategies to connect with these consumers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so. So last thing, and then we'll double click on what you just said. Again, this isn't about well, we ought to, we should. I feel better because I am, or whatever.
Speaker 1:It's just do the math, and so what I love about what you guys have is a framework for establishing when are you now? Yes, and then what are the levers that you can pull that are most Apped to get you to where you want to be, to grow your brand, which is sort of your job, yeah, so what's? Let's Kind of peel the onion back, then a layer, and you said you know kind of establishing the, your footing and then Understanding where you can go to drive growth. Can you, can you break that down just a little bit more of what that looks like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when we talk about establishing our footing, you know some people look at Multicultural marketing and a lot of different ways. Here's, here's the, the way to think about this. One out of two consumers in the US will identify as ethnically diverse. Right?
Speaker 1:But nine, I'm sorry, one out of two.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one out of two consumers will identify as as an a person. I actually let me double click on that, since you, since you brought that up Ten years ago there's there's a term called the census, term called majority, minority cities right or majority minority. And that simply means that if you pick a geography, a city, a county, a state or what have you, majority minority means that the ethnic population of that municipality or geography Reaches 51% ethnic minority. All right, so that's why they call it majority minority.
Speaker 1:Just is the, even in plain or English, non Caucasian minority majority.
Speaker 2:Yep, okay, exactly, all right. So what we're saying here is is that 10 years, 10 to 15 years ago, if you look at the top 40 metros in the US maybe it was maybe 10 to 15 of the top metropolitan markets across the US were majority minority. Fast forward to now 25 of the top 40 Metropolitan markets in the US have an ethnic population that tops more than 51%.
Speaker 1:So more than 50% of the top 40 markets in the US are already ethnically diverse, as measured by the census.
Speaker 2:Absolutely right, and so when we start to think about this, those are consumers. Those are customers, right, and so one out of two people in the US Ultimately identify as an ethnic minority. But when we look at marketing and branding agencies In marketing and media industries, nine out of ten people are creating messages for them, or not. So, when we start to talk about multicultural marketing and trying to Engage consumers, many brands and many companies are trying to get growth out of a, out of a consumer group that never had a conversation.
Speaker 2:It would understand the, the insights, the attitudes associated with Authentically connecting with diverse consumers, and so, therefore, some of their brand propositions don't necessarily Connect, and sometimes they marginalize communities of color or LBGTQ or what other diverse segments because they're not there, and so one of the things that Brands have done Is it begin to start thinking about what is our footing right before we start to engage in this journey. Hey, do we have a way that we can understand our level of readiness to actively engage in, you know, and engage these consumers with our marketing and branding and our agency platforms, and so that is where I see that you know, the smartest brands and most effective brands have done that right. They have dissected. Our approach that we do is we dissect a brand's development process and we dissect an agency's creative development process and we help you understand your level of readiness, and then we also help you understand, then, where Some focused enhancements can come from to improve your outcome, to resonate with these diverse consumers.
Speaker 2:And so I think that's really the first step is to not just jump in and say okay, we've got the data, we made the market case study in the business case study, let's just go. No, I think you think the first step is to calculate.
Speaker 1:Hey, what is our footing today? What is our?
Speaker 2:level of readiness to engage in that and then begin to start to understand where we need to enhance some things, come out with some strategies and then execute.
Speaker 1:So I'm sorry I might be a little slow. What are some of the hallmarks of readiness? So some of the hallmarks of readiness.
Speaker 2:In our platform for the cultural competency minor, we look at five things on the brand side and three things on the agency side, and we assess both. For a brand, we're looking at whether or not you prioritize this consumer segment. Right, I should be looking at your brand goals. Have we done analysis on the household penetration things that you and I just talked about? Are there gaps? But I should also see, in looking at your budgets, are you investing behind your growth opportunity? Right? I'm also looking at the level of diversity within the brand, right? Because if your brand again we've talked about that statistic of nine out of ten people creating consumer branding and marketing campaigns that are at some degree diverse if you happen to have diversity within your organization, that creates a better opportunity for you and to embed the insight you need to be effective. So the first piece is are you prioritizing a consumer? I should be able to look at your structure and your processes to do that.
Speaker 2:The second area we look at is alignment, that's, your consumer research plan. Do you have any visibility into the attitudes, the behaviors and the values of the consumers that we want to have a conversation with? The third area we look at is strategy. We say, okay, well, look, if I look at your brand and what it stands for in your footing and your equity and your promise and your benefits, how do those align with the needs of the multicultural consumer, right? The third piece is. The fourth piece is just looking at your brand expression. You know that's just like your commercials, that they have representation and even if they do have ethnic minorities in them, are they in context, right? Are they in? Are you finding an in-culture moment that they can see themselves in your brand and feel as if there's a connection? So that's what we do on the brand side. On the agency side, it's much simpler Three stops.
Speaker 2:We want to understand whether or not the agency has what is called core competency. Do they have the ability and the research and the strategy to be able to lead the brand's thinking in this area? The second area we stop in is whether or not they have the cultural context. So think about it Advertising agencies, media companies, even your everyday news companies. They take insights and their job is to manifest all what they've learned about these consumers into creative, like things you read, things you study, and so we're looking at their ability to even do that.
Speaker 2:And the third piece is the quality of the executions. Are they able to produce brand touch points, commercials, media stories, public relations, shoppers, shopper marketing, activities that authentically engage these consumers? And so, again, what gets measured gets done. But one of my mentors always said his name is Sam Lynch. He said you're perfectly designed for the outcome you get. So if you want to change your outcome, you have to look at how you're designing. So that's what we do. We work with brands and agencies to understand if they're designed to do this well, and if they're not, then we are in a place then to help them identify where enhancements need to be made.
Speaker 2:Say that little pearl of wisdom again that pearl of wisdom was you're perfectly designed for the outcome you get, and so if you want to change your outcome, you have to change your design. There you go, I love that.
Speaker 1:Just as you're talking, Sean, and it seems like, particularly given the demographics, that you paint a very compelling picture on that. By definition, multicultural marketing is mainstream marketing. It seems like it's still positioned as being niche or kind of the specialty thing. But if the demographics are what you're saying, they are, this is marketing.
Speaker 2:It is, and I think the term that we use is there's a term in branding an agency they use the general market and they use kind of multicultural special markets. General market generally means that you mark it to the middle, which traditionally is going to be white America, right, Because that's the way the brand campaigns have always used as a target kind of the middle America, Ohio, whoever it is, and say they represent the rest of the world as it relates to consumer beliefs and all these other pieces, right. So that approach just completely ignores the demographic shifts and attitudes that we're seeing and changes in attitudes, right. And so now what is happening as a practice is what is called total market, recognizing that the entire market is really the culmination of different segments within the market, each having a different nuance. Right, A different way that they look at life and the way they enjoy life and the way that they move through life.
Speaker 2:And brands that are most successful are the ones who are able to then understand how each segment is a little different.
Speaker 2:Right, Identify a way to work across all segments such that it feels much more inclusive, dynamic and resonates with more people.
Speaker 2:And so, if we have a general market approach to this markets to the middle, then you're going to be leading out a great swath of people that we said that had the buying power right. But if we have a total market approach, which is I'm going to spend my time and understanding the nuances associated with what it means to be an African American, what it means to be US Hispanic, what it means to be Asian American, what it means to be a white male, what it means to be a white female, right, and if my brand can find some great space right in each of those segments, the potential for growth is exponentially better than marketing just to the middle. So you know, you bring up a really good point, Bob. There needs to be a shift from just general marketing and marketing to the middle, in a place that we're all familiar and comfortable with, into recognizing that our buying power, our business opportunity and everything else lies in the culmination of different segments, and so now what we have to do is identify propositions that work across a lot of different groups.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, which is sort of where you know my mind goes, which is how do you have enough cohesiveness around the general excuse me brand proposition, brand image, brand equities and yet be able to operate across many potential sub segments of the market? We have seen in the not too distant past brands that have very broad demographic footprints really stepped in it because they tripled down on one segment and ended up offending and or running off their core consumer.
Speaker 1:So that seems to be a really challenging balancing act that the brand's got to engage in. How would you advise a client on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think the piece is understanding the nuances. The magic is in understanding nuances. Let me give you a quick example, since we both have consumer package experience. So let's talk about toothpaste. So all the work's been done in the world and researched that, hey, toothpaste offers three benefits that everybody wants White teeth, fresh breath and cavity prevention. I'm just using those three as two broad statements. If we were to say white teeth, white teeth means something different across different consumer segments. And fresh breath White teeth to some consumer segments might say this signifies health, but for other consumer segments it might say this reinforces a positive image. You get what I'm saying. I didn't.
Speaker 2:So while we have a brand benefit, that says white teeth, fresh breath and lack of cavities those benefits mean something different depending upon who you're talking to.
Speaker 1:That's really interesting, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So the key piece for brands is to really understand and do diligence and get visibility on these consumer segments, is to understand. When we say these things, how's it fall on people? What is it that they are walking away with understanding, and is that true to what our brand position is? And so I just think that, at the end of the day, there is a lot of information around the topical piece in terms of white teeth, fresh breath and cavities. No one would disagree that those things are important, but the brands that win are the ones that understand why those things are important and can go deeper into what consumers actually desire and differs by consumer group.
Speaker 2:And so if I were to develop a ad for white teeth, fresh breath and prevention cavities, for some, in some it would just be an ad to talk about a fresh mouth, but for others it might be putting on a fresh smile right, because that reinforces an image and something about me that I project to the rest of the world. So it's really just understanding again, spending time and your brand plans and your investments to help you uncover what that consumer truth is, such that you can play that out in your advertising.