Millennials and Multiculturalism

"The Global Society" by Frits Ahlefeldt-Laurvig
licensed under Creative Commons

It may seem obvious, but it is worthy to drive attention to the fact that majorities are shapers of trends and trends often carry the seeds of its own perpetuation.

There is much talk about the multiculturalism characteristic of the global era, and there are global factors that justify this trend. Of course, the fact that we can connect to Google+ and chat with someone in India or Korea instantly and at a very low cost is one of the key drivers of the multicultural society. But this explanation undoubtedly important, can hide another explanation of a more local and less noticeable order. In the United States (a giant in the field of building culture, through its leadership in the area of music, film, etc) Millennials are the most racially diverse generation in history. According to the 2014 census 43% of Millennials are descendants of Hispanic, Asian or other foreign groups, and the United States Census Bureau forecasts that, not only 50% of the millenials, but about half of all the total population of the country will be "non-white" around 2043 [i] . This circumstance leads to brands and Marketing companies to measure diversity in terms of demographics and calculate the audience based on figures derived from the census. However, as noted at the beginning, "majorities are trends’ shapers" and the impact of the change in the demographic composition does not stop there, in the relation one to one, one Asian, one more consumer of thai food , but that change has a multiplier effect: the "generation of diversity" is an agent that promotes acceptance of transforming and multiplying multiculturalism with energy.

As the advertising consultant Eddie Yoon points out in his article in the Harvard Business Review , culture is not strictly determined by the racial origins or membership of an individual, but is the product of the choices that each person makes about how they spend their time and money. "The essence of culture is a passion shared  by different experiences in common” says Eddie Yoon in his article. This approach to the concept of culture might explain a phenomena such as this one:  the largest consumers of hip hop are not black colored and urban millenials, but 80% of this music is consumed by white men from the suburbs.

However, companies are running their campaigns mistakenly thinking their consumers as a result of a binomial demographic function. The logical corollary of this misunderstanding is the loss of many opportunities in the global market.

[i] United States Census Bureau

Advertisement: new forms of fugacity

Picture by Esther Vargas under
Creative Commons License

You may have noticed the gradual trend to brevity exhibited by the most popular online platforms

such as Facebook, Instagram, and more recently Snapchat, all characterized by a casual, brief, increasingly fleeting and ephemeral style.

Brands are challenged to promote their products through an application in which the content disappears in seconds. Not an easy task for advertisers to come up with a shocking announcement, interesting, "sticky", efficient enough to capture the attention among that waterfall of twitters, status updates, and conversations often disjointed and lacking in consistency. Especially in the case of Sanpchat (currently the 3rd. most popular social application among youth, behind Facebook and Instagram), the randomness of conversation sometimes makes it difficult even for robots aimed to detect the use of keywords, get to determine what kind of notice or advertising is more or less relevant. However, advertisers are including such platforms in their advertising efforts, and even beginning to capitalize on unexpected benefits of their campaigns.

As per Instagram, this application introduced the first paid ads (for mobile version) in last November. Less than a month later, the report released by the company showed the experience as a great success: three out of the four sponsors included in the report revealed having achieved the perception that they were pursuing for their brands, reaching an audience of between 7 and 9 million users without flooding Instagram with their ads. Indeed, in a span of nine days Levi reached nearly 7 million users in the US, while Ben & Jerry achieve similar results, reaching nearly 10 million people in a campaign the same period.

Although, as noted above, the information exchanged on these platforms is highly volatile, fleeting, and most chaotic cases, this type of advertising has virtually endless possibilities. Imagine the kind of information available to applications like Facebook or Snapchat: the average teenager publicize events such as their new relationship, or if they’ve gone on vacation to this, that and such place; if they have visited some disco and found it brutally boring ... This is like a diamond in the rough for the advertiser trying to define the profile of its consumers. And to skillful miners, half a nugget is gold...

What does CRM, Pipeline and Sales Funnel mean?

What is CRM?

The word CRM (English Customer Relationship Management ) is a marketing concept that refers to a method or system to organize and keep track of the various stages that make up the sales chain of a company. As such, ie as a method, it can be executed on paper or verbally. However, in common usage, the term is used to refer to software business management and business administration such as Salesforce, Zoho, Workbooks, Microsoft Dynamics, etc.

What is Pipeline?

This term is used to designate engineering based on different branches, which have valves and pumps to drive, at each distance, the flow of a given substance (in this case, a "commercial substance"). This type of data stream output implies that a phase is another input. Thus, the various stages or phases are linked in the manner of a pipe, making the flow speed through the pipeline. Perhaps a valid translation of the term into Spanish would be "Aqueduct sales" ( AS ).

Why is the concept helpful? One reason for segmenting the calculations, is that it improves the diagnosis of the present situation of the company: where is the business today, what sections of the marketing chain are neglected, where are they over-allocating resources and eventually the causes.

What is Sales funnel ?

Like the word Pipeline, the English term funnel (in Spanish embudo) is graphical and pretty self-explanatory: the top of the funnel, the widest part illustrates all potential customers ( CP ) consumers or users of the service or product the company sells. Includes thus, in a vague and undifferentiated way all potential candidates  that the company has indexed in its database as potential customers, even in the case of people who are not even been shown the product or service yet .  

The bottom of the funnel, illustrates what is happening as you go through the sales process after product presentation, negotiations, etc., until it reaches the narrowest part representing the final percentage of actual buyers or consumers.

The sales funnel is a marketing tool to quantify potential customers (or sales value) at any given moment of the marketing process.

Its utility lies in helping to predict the number of CPs that with probability, will become customers of the company.

Another of the advantages is that through continuous monitoring of the coefficients, detects problems in the sales pipeline and take corrective action before it is too late.

The  sales funnel shows AV obstructions, downtime outside the standard norm, or if there is an insufficient number of CPs in a given stage of the process. This knowledge allows to determine where sales agents should focus, efforts to maintain sales at the desired level and to meet sales targets.