by Matthew Jones

For Charlee Taylor-Hines, life is pretty good.  As a senior vice president, group account director for Draft New York, Taylor-Hines has just been tapped to help lead a most exciting effort – to help lead the agency’s multicultural practice.

Draft is considered to be the country’s largest promotions and direct marketing agency, and one of the most highly regarded integrated marketing firms in the world.  Draft has 39 offices in 27 countries, and an impressive client list that includes such coveted names as Bank of America, United States Postal Service, CVS/pharmacy, Verizon, Kellogg, and Aventis Pharmaceuticals, among others.

For most leading marketing firms, entering the multicultural arena is high on the list of growth priorities.  That’s because their clients are scrambling to keep pace with the ever-changing global marketplace.

Some agencies are well into their game plan, with established subsidiaries and spin-off shops dedicated solely to ethnic marketing.  Others are taking a more internal approach, by creating seamless teams within the agency to lead and integrate the multicultural effort.

Draft falls into the second group – and Taylor-Hines is one of the people responsible for overseeing the growth, expansion and integration of Draft’s ethnic marketing efforts with the rest of the agency.  The end goal is to offer multicultural marketing campaigns that reflect top-quality service and value to Draft’s current and prospective clients.

“We’re trying to build a broad platform that extends across a wide range of constituents,” explained Taylor-Hines.  “(We’re reaching) people from different ethnic cultures, (consumers) with different values, lifestyles, sub-cultures, philosophies and mindsets.”

For most leading marketers, reaching a consumer target means more than sending out messages.  It means creating a dialogue with those customers; and that’s something Draft continuously strives for.  When Taylor-Hines and her team sit down to create a plan, they explore ways to create a conversation with different (ethnic) communities, across a wide range of channels and disciplines, and ways to create deeper relationships with the target audience.

Navigating the Multicultural Landscape

Creating relationships with consumers has changed dramatically in recent years.  From public relations to promotions to the Internet and beyond, the term “marketing mix” has taken on a whole new meaning.  Adding to this complexity is the need to effectively communicate with ethnic markets, which has created an unprecedented demand for a wide range of new services and expertise. 

With so much changing on both the agency side and the client side, one wonders what it now takes to pitch and execute multicultural plans in an increasingly crowded and multi-layered arena; and whether the job has gotten any easier or harder for multiethnic marketing experts like Taylor-Hines.

“It’s easier, and it’s more complex (at the same time),” said Taylor-Hines.  “For clients to decide whether or not to do (multicultural marketing), or to explain why it’s necessary, that has gotten easier.  People understand that.  Execution (of multicultural plans), however, has become more complex.”

Today’s multicultural efforts require a much higher level of sophistication, precision and expertise than ever before.  The more marketers understand about different ethnic communities, the more they see that each ethnic group is distinct, and not homogenous.  “Reaching the Asian market, for example, does not just mean reaching the Chinese market,” said Taylor-Hines.  “Now it’s a wider range of constituents – Koreans, Japanese (and other markets).”

The same goes for the Hispanic market, which in marketing terms, often meant reaching the Mexican community.  Now, it means much more.  The African American market is also understood to include a diverse subset of values, tastes and preferences.

As the demand for multicultural expertise increases, so too does the number of competitors.  Everyone seems to be getting into the game.  “There’s no question the demand is up for multicultural marketing,” said Taylor-Hines.  “But (the multicultural market) is more competitive, which also makes it more difficult.”

According to Taylor-Hines, census numbers aren’t the only reasons to pursue emerging communities.  From her viewpoint, these are important targets “not just in terms of numbers, and population, but also in terms of impact and influence on popular culture.  African-American consumers set the youth market trends.  The Hispanic population has had a strong influence over food and music.”

Taylor-Hines believes that the huge cultural impact of Hispanics and African-Americans belies even the staggering population increases.  Leaving these consumers untapped would be a huge mistake, in her opinion.

“Increasingly, as markets stagnate and decline, (marketers) have to pursue all consumers,” explained Taylor-Hines.  “You have to go after the under-leveraged markets.”

Ethnic Marketing and More

If reaching out to under-leveraged markets is the name of the game, then Draft must be counted among those who heed the call.  Although the agency’s new multicultural effort is in its early stages, and doesn’t yet have an official name - it is just Draft’s Cross-Cultural group for now – it is poised to make a profound impact on the industry.

According to Taylor-Hines, one of the main advantages of the new group will be its resources.  “We will have the ability to provide a world-class integration of services – in addition to advertising, we are providing direct marketing, online capabilities, (and more),” she explained of their unique ability to leverage Draft’s industry-leading, global resources.  “This is not something we’re putting together in an isolated fashion.”

One extremely important advantage, in Taylor-Hines’ opinion, will be the group’s access to Draft’s vast market analysis.  “We’ll know who the customers are.  We’ll know when to hit them, in the right place, and at the right time, with the right message.”

That relationship between Taylor-Hines’ group and the agency as a whole is mutually beneficial – with Draft adding value to what the Cross-Cultural group is providing, just as the Cross-Cultural group brings its expertise and insights to Draft’s clients.

As a leading integrated marketing firm, Draft is no stranger to the notion that advertising alone will not create and keep consumers loyal to clients’ brands.  According to Taylor-Hines, a concerted effort to reach a new consumer in a new way will pay dividends, if done correctly.

“As markets continue to fragment, consumers can tune out advertising more than they have in the past,” she explained.  “It’s more important to reach those consumers through other means.  Advertising is still the lead horse in the brand engine, but you need to do more to create roots and relationships with your target. The (brands) that are able to put out a choreographed stream of communication through multiple communications avenues are going to be the winners,” she concluded.

A Mentor’s Touch

Draft is slated to become a winner in the multiethnic marketing arena in no small measure because of Charlee Taylor-Hines (pronounced Shar-Lee), who has always wanted to be among the winners.  From early on, she thought about a career in marketing.  “I always loved the idea of getting into the consumers’ mindset, and persuading them to purchase a brand, and create an affinity for products.  I thought, ‘how can I help a company do that?’”

Over the years, she has helped a number of companies do just that.  Prior to joining Draft, Taylor-Hines was on the client side of the business, as a director at beverage giant Pepsi-Cola, where she oversaw the Sierra Mist and Diet Sierra Mist brands, established their multicultural marketing department, and earned many awards and accolades for her cutting edge work.

Like most professionals who have achieved great success, she hasn’t accomplished all of these things on her own.  She is a strong believer in role models and mentors, and spends much of her time reaching out to young, up-and-coming women and minorities in the business.

“(For people moving up), mentoring makes a big difference in determining whether or not you will succeed,” she said, plainly.  Taylor-Hines believes that it’s not only important to guide people in terms of what needs to be done, and how, but also “to fuel the passion and drive that are necessary to succeed in any business.”

Taylor-Hines’ mentoring activities are not a formalized effort at Draft, although the agency does have a training program that offers similar benefits.

Mentoring alone, however, will not effectively change the face of the industry.  If the industry is to see more dramatic changes with regard to minority participation and success, the efforts will have to run much deeper, according to Taylor-Hines.  In her opinion, awareness of marketing as a potential career choice is one of the biggest obstacles to achieving true diversity at all levels of the industry.

“(Awareness) is a huge issue in recruiting minority candidates,” said Taylor-Hines.  “Marketing is not typically one of the things on the list.  (Minorities) don’t know it’s an option.  We don’t understand it as an option.  The outreach isn’t as strong as it ought to be.”

For Taylor-Hines, however, marketing was always on her list.  As a graduate of Columbia University with an MBA in marketing and international business, she was always well aware of her choices.  Years later, she still keeps her eyes open, in part, with the help of her family – her husband, her children and her siblings, among others.

Mostly, it’s her children that keep her aware of the changing world outside the office.  “My young people keep me constantly in touch,” she said.  “They keep me from being an old fogy.  They keep me from being so set in how things should be.”

Taylor-Hines credits her family with helping her to “look at the same old issues, products and challenges with fresh eyes – to develop new ideas and strategies.”  Not everyone in Taylor-Hines’ family fully grasps what she does for a living.  As one of six siblings, she notes, “To this day, they don’t understand exactly what I do.  They’re happy I graduated, and got a job.”  But progress is being made.  “Once in a while, they’ll see (my work) on TV and think, ‘Yeah, that’s what Charlee does.”

The End