An Atlanta-based company www.USA-postage.com has launched a series of custom made stamps or rather "postages" featuring various Hindu Gods and Goddesses. Krishna, Laxmi, Ganpati, and Sai Baba are just a few of the Gods and Goddesses featured on these 44 cent postages.

What is interesting to me is that although the issuance of these stamps would be a huge "emotional" pull for Indian Americans, little if any buzz about these stamps is found anywhere. All I found was a few press releases announcing these stamps and a few others challenging the validity of these stamps.  And although the usa-postage.com site has a "follow-us on Twitter" link & a Facebook link on their site, those channels are barely being used to promote these stamps to the people who could and would be interested in using these stamps.

Indian Americans are VERY internet savvy. Therefore Internet campaigns to get these stamps visible to the Indian American population would be highly successful. Also, outreach activities to create awareness among non-Indian Americans on the significance of having Laxmi devi (goddess) on a letter would also garner new customers wanting to buy these stamps.

Bottom-line: Market to your constituents and educate your non-constituents about the cultural relevancy of a new product or service. That's what differentiates successful product launches from not-so-successful ones.
 
NOTE: According to USA-postage.com, these postages are valid for use even though they are not issued by the US Postal Service (USPS) because by law, custom postages are permitted in the US. I have however been unable to find any information on the USPS site or through any other google search that validates this claim.)

Talk about a no-win situation. The US Muslim population is estimated at over 2.3 million by Pew Research. Their buying power is obviously attractive enough that Best Buy decided to incorporate a holiday message during the holiday season. Oh what a storm that ad created!
 
US Muslims were ecstatic that US companies were finally getting it and were interested enough to recognize one of their holidays. However non-Muslims were insulted. Many wrote that they'd take their business to other retailers because they felt that Best Buy was "catering to those responsible for the 9/11 attacks" (Note, this is a quote, not my opinion but what was shared by others online and in public forums).

The Muslims rejoiced Best Buy's move and Best Buy said it stood by its campaign. However many marketers believe that they ought not to go down the path that Best Buy did so as to not get caught in a similar storm.

So what's the answer to this problem? Unfortunately there is no clear cut, one answer.
 
Companies need to target market to ethnic populations. That means that they need to use ethnic media channels to attract ethnic populations. However mainstream media is influential and needs "diverse" messages for diverse audiences. However, companies will need to do more research to create these diverse mainstream messages without creating an explosive situation like the one Best Buy faced.

(Note: I'm not saying that what happened to Best Buy was right. Nor am I saying that companies should not be creating targeted marketing campaigns to appeal to Muslims.  However, perception is 99 times out of a 100, reality. So how can companies take those perceptions into factor so that your campaigns don't backfire?) Anyone???

Johnnie Walker Black Label wants to attract the Latino community! Johnnie Walker Black Label will be launching a grassroots community effort to showcase events, promotions and new business opportunities to New Jersey Latinos. Johnnie Walker is celebrating its centennial birthday and has a good reason to reach out to the Latino community in New Jersey.

Latinos making up more than 16 percent of the New Jersey population are a powerful force in New Jersey, representing the fastest growing segment in the state. The 52,000 Latino businesses found in NJ in 2008 are predicted to double by 2010 in New Jersey. This makes New Jersey the 5th largest concentration of Latino businesses in the country.
 
Gerry Rojas is the brand ambassador chosen by Johnnie Walker for their outreach to the NJ Latino Community. Gerry is an industry veteran when it comes to designing campaigns to target the Latino market. Johnnie Walker Black Label’s new brand ambassador, Gerry Rojas says that they want to celebrate the accomplishments of the Latino business community and also want the Latino community to participate in the celebration of their accomplishments.

It’ll be interesting to see how with Rojas’s help, Johnnie Walker will convince Latinos to give up their favourite tequila in favor of Johnnie Walker Black Label.

(I also look forward to seeing when Johnnie Walker will target market to the Indian American community. I hope they know that the South Asian Indian community is perhaps the biggest fan of Johnnie Walker Black and Blue brands!)

Every 2-3 minutes, over a 15-20 minute period, I kept trying to load Twitter and nothing would load. So I thought oh perhaps my internet connection is down. But no, everything else was working and all other sites were coming right up.

Then I went to google alerts to see if anything was reported on Twitter being down. Again, no news so I just ignore it. Then I asked a friend in India if Twitter was coming up for him and he said no. He dug around and found a "developing" story on Techcrunch.com about Twitter being hacked.

Techcrunch.com reported that Twitter was hacked and the following message was posted on it:
 

Hmmm……….Twitter hacked? Twitter, everyone's beloved, the favorite child of Social Media Marketers, the one that is in the limelight. That Twitter with it's big name geniuses can't protect itself from hackers?

Twitter's back online now and it's interesting reading all the tweets on what happened when the defacement message appeared on Twitter. All I can say is this is embarrassing!

Who doesn’t understand the need to market to multicultural audiences? Marketing to Hispanics has become quite popular and many large companies like McDonald's, Coca Cola, and Johnny Walker, are increasing their focus towards this ethnic community. By 2010 it is estimated that Hispanics will have a buying power of almost a trillion US dollars so it’s not surprising that brands are clamoring to reach them.

The Tribune Company has launched Tribune Hispanic Media Group which is a national sales team for the Hispanic market targeted media. They will offer advertisers customized solutions across print, digital, mobile, direct and event marketing.

Tribune already has four Spanish-language media properties that reach an estimated 1.7 million Hispanic consumers in markets like LA and Florida where the Hispanic population is less than 30%.

Since Tribune’s four media properties already have a ready audience, the new sales team should have an easy job convincing brands to advertise with Tribune’s various media platforms.
 

Brands are paying more and more attention to ethnic consumers of late. Brands like Coca Cola have taken multicultural marketing to heart and according to Coca Cola's Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Katie Bayne, Coke plans to focus more and more on multicultural Americans between now and 2020.

Coke’s CMO also pointed out that Coke is no longer focusing on event based marketing. Meaning it is not just targeting Hispanics around Hispanic events or African Americans during the Black History month.

Now this makes a lot of sense right?

Ethnic consumers don’t just make buying decisions a few times a year. They are buying year long and so engaging with them every day is the right thing to do. Wonder why no one got that until now?

Increasing the attention paid to multicultural or ethnic consumers is a smart marketing strategy. Brands are already finding out that ethnic marketing impacts the bottom-line with significant gains in sales and market share.

Twitter is what I would call the "favorite child" in the social media world.  Oh how it has just become the apple of the eye for social networkers! And as Twitter has grown its user base; it has also begun creating added value for its users. Twitter is now an important component of the online marketing strategy of major brands like Coca Cola, Dell, and Ford. Dell has even claimed that Twitter has generated millions of dollars in sales.

Twitter understands its own value too and is seriously focusing on growing it with partnerships around the social media landscape. Recently, Twitter announced a partnership with LinkedIN, one of the most respected business networking websites out there. Now you can link your twitter and Linkedin accounts; peep into your LinkedIN status updates and have your tweets sent to your LinkedIN connections. 

This Twitter-Linkedin partnership can lead to enormous exposure for those tweeps who will focus on crafting their tweets in such a way that they would appeal to the very-business oriented LinkedIn users. I’ve yet to try the features out but I’m sure I’ll give it a TweeIN soon!

Target Market News, a Chicago-based research company published data that showed that African-American consumers spent approximately $2.8 billion on new General Motors cars in 2009. General Motors appeared to be a big hit for African Americans who bought new cars.

The flip side of that data is about GM’s spend on reaching the African American population. According to unnamed national sources, it appears that General Motors only spent $29.9 million or 2.4% of its approximately billion dollar marketing budget on black media advertising.

So I get why “experts” are baffled over the almost insignificant spend by General Motors in reaching an audience that is clearly engaged with their brand.

But what baffles me is how GM’s negligible spend towards reaching the African American audience through black-focused media can “border on being criminal” or be “malignant”. Those are the words used by Danny Bakewell, chairman of the National Newspaper Publishers Association. Mr Bakewell wants to confront the automotive industry about their so called “imbalance”. Oh brother!

Is GM taking the African-American population for granted? Perhaps!

• Or perhaps GM’s marketing team felt that they are doing well enough in the African American market segment and decided to spend more money on attracting an audience that is not so enamored with GM vehicles.
   
• Maybe GM’s team wasn’t really tracking their marketing spend by ethnic marketing segments?
   
• Or it could very well be that GM’s marketing team is taking more of their spend online and thus cutting spend across other segments.

I didn’t see any data that showed a comparison of % spent on Indian Americans or Asians or Women to know if the imbalance is towards one ethnic community or all. Data could very well show that GM’s doing pretty well marketing to the African American population and is doing really bad target marketing to Indian Americans. I know for a fact that Indian Americans prefer foreign cars for more reasons that one. Knowing the Indian American market segment and knowing what I know about GM, I would venture a guess that GM doesn’t spend any real marketing dollars on attracting the Indian American population. But then again, I could be completely wrong and perhaps GM is spending a ton of money trying to attract a population that is more interested in driving a BMW or a Lexus.

So what's my point?

In my humble opinion, GM’s lack of marketing spend to target market to African Americans is not a race issue or bias against African Americans. It also is in no way unethical nor is it a moral issue as is being made out by Mr. Bakewell. GM and other companies should be able to spend their marketing dollars where they want to spend. They have to know where they will get their biggest bang and if they don’t the loss is certainly theirs.  I mean, where do we draw the line at dictating what a company should do and not do? Government Motors or not, GM still has the onus of making decisions for itself.

Love to hear your comments if you don't agree with me.

“Unfriend” is a real word now; the New Oxford American Dictionary has “Unfriend” picked it’s 2009 word of the year.

If you play on any social media sites, “Unfriend” has a pretty clear-cut meaning; i.e. to remove someone as a friend. So now you can use “Unfriend” in sentences like “I’m going to unfriend so & so cause he is too nosy” OR “I decided to unfriend all work colleagues cause….”.

Personally I think the New Oxford American Dictionary should have chosen “Intexticated” as the 2009 word of the year. Intexticated means texting while driving (like intoxicated if you still didn’t get it).  I think Intexticated is SO apt and by creating more awareness about it, we can all start de-intexticating!

Corporations will expand social media spend

Did you see Best Buy’s Twitter presence (http://twitter.com/twelpforce)? It leverages their employees to provide collective customer support on Twitter. It’s a cool way for a corporation to participate and still keep track of what their employees are saying on the social networks. Social media is scalable and is a good way for companies to connect with their audience. This trend will grow rapidly as companies uncover ways to manage online content while leveraging it fully.

Social Media promotions will grow fast and furious

There are a lot of sites offering incentives to people for participating and for spreading the word. Retailers will increase their online promotions as they are doing for the upcoming holiday season. Email coupons, free shipping, exclusive online prices, etc. are all expected to grow. And it couldn’t happen fast enough for people like me who want everything “online”.

Going Mobile with Social Media

I do more texting than before. I also find I do more “short” emails from my mobile phone as I try to keep up with my ever growing email box. Since everyone has a smart phone and since many smart phones provide the ability to broadcast to various popular networks, mobile social media will grow faster than any other technological trend.  This also means we can all look forward to more technologically advanced phones than ever before.

(I also think that smart phones would be a great work-around to remain connected for employees of companies who may still block access to social media sites in 2010.)