CMO Perceptions of Muticultural Talent Opportunities
June 3, 2008
Source: Brandiosity
We live in exciting and dynamic times marked by increasing diversity in the North American marketplace. Our “general” market is now defined by a multicultural mix of heritages, personalities, preferences and practices. Heidrick & Struggles, a premier provider of executive search and leadership consulting services, is the only such firm to have a practice dedicated to supporting multicultural leadership development. Heidrick recently commissioned BRANDiosity, a top multicultural insights and strategy firm, to learn more about their perceptions of the multicultural business opportunity. A specific goal was to quantify and dimensionalize the specific organizational challenges that top marketers face in actualizing the potential presented by the multicultural marketplace.
Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) and other senior marketing executives of Fortune 1000 organizations were the target of a customized study that was fielded in late 2007. Among the total ending sample of 60+ respondents:
· 71% were SVP or CMO level
· They represented industries ranging from financial services, retail, consumer packaged goods, restaurant/fast food, telecommunications and automotive
· They included represented multicultural marketers including Sprint-Nextel, Burger King,
Wal-Mart, Starbucks, General Motors, Eli Lilly, Arby’s and Disney
The findings validated BRANDiosity's in-going hypotheses regarding the principal issues that firms face when it comes to multicultural marketing:
* Companies are making significant investments behind the multicultural opportunity (primarily Hispanic) despite not having a compelling business case for the multicultural opportunity
* Executives aren’t satisfied with their business results because they lack an understanding of the opportunity and a multicultural strategy
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