Bill Duggan of ANA: Multicultural Marketing Makes a Comeback

According to Bill Duggan, Group Executive Vice President of ANA, multicultural marketing has made a comeback. At the 2019 ANA Multicultural Marketing and Diversity Conference, he recalled that two years ago, talk of multiculturalism was overshadowed by interest in the Total Market (TM) concept. “The TM approach has worked for some,” he said, “but not for many, so targeting language and culture is back. I hear a lot of talk about ANA’s Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing (AIMM) and I see a great deal of passion in that group.” As the defining concept of the event, Duggan considered AIMM both a movement and an opportunity. “Some 45 percent of the population is multicultural, but only 5 percent of the media speaks to them directly,” he said, adding that “the purpose of AIMM is to help those already doing multicultural marketing to do it better. But I think the greatest opportunity is that it can help those who are not in the game to get into the game.”