While the fight between Senator Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama might be winding up, as Obama grows closer to clinching the Democratic Presidential nomination, the political race has stirred up important lessons for marketers about reaching an increasingly diverse American population.

 
“The discussion about race has now begun in America,” says Pepper Miller, president of the Hunter-Miller Group, a consumer research firm with an emphasis on the African American market. “I think that’s a good thing,” she adds, explaining that while race is a common topic of conversation among groups of blacks, during the Democratic Primaries, she’s seen it being discussed more frequently among whites and other ethnic groups as well, as families are split over which candidate to back.

Ms. Miller also sees Obama’s campaign as a good example of multicultural marketing: He capitalizes on diversity, she says, pointing to his biracial roots and how he’s courted young people with a full online marketing campaign. As opposed to multiracial advertising, in which an ad campaign might feature an Asian, Caucasian, Hispanic and Black in a photo, multicultural advertising understands “those cultural differences and what motivates [people] to buy a product or services. Barack Obama understands this.”

At the same time, Clinton pulled in a disproportionate amount of Asians and Hispanics in primaries, such as California’s, where she won the popular vote by eight points. While Obama won the majority of the white (including males) and African American voters in that state, a CNN exit poll showed that Latinos voted for Clinton by a 2-1 margin, and Asian Americans voted for her in a 3-1 margin. Analysts credit Clinton’s victory with her in-language marketing as well as her ability to win the favor of leaders in the Asian and Hispanic communities.
And while the issue of race has been a strong factor in this election so far, Ms. Miller believes that mainstream media overall are missing the mark by not fully reporting the sentiments and motivations of black and other ethnic communities.

For instance, she says, by tuning into African-American newspapers, websites and radio stations, such as WVON 1690 AM, a Chicago-based African American all-talk radio station, she hears a different story, which refutes the great divide among blacks and the simplistic way of assigning voters to candidates. “If you can put your politics aside, blacks are saying, ‘we’ve always voted for black people, we’re voting for him because he’s qualified.”
Neither does Warren Brown, an automotive industry columnist for the Washington Post, and an African American who says it “enrages” him when he hears mainstream media report on “Obama's strength among ‘African-Americans’ and Hillary's strength among ‘blue-collar working people.’” “The subtle suggestion is that there are no ‘blue-collar working people’ among blacks, which is ridiculous,” he says in an email interview.

“The same thing goes on with talk about Hillary's support among ‘women,’ as if the only women supporting Hillary are white women in her age group and with her general demographic profile,” he adds. “News flash: black people are people, whole people, diverse people. ‘Black’ neither limits nor excludes their humanity.”
Instead of viewing this diversity as a way to segregate racial groups, Ms. Miller says, marketers should take this opportunity to appreciate the differences. For instance, she says, the term urban used to be a euphemism for black. “It’s not black anymore,” she says. “For one marketer it could be hip hop. For someone else it could mean fashion or language.” And there are universal values that translate across all ethnicities. Ms. Miller points out, that hip hop, for instance, was a product of urban black American that was adopted by white suburban kids as a way to rebel against the status quo.

And Obama’s message of “change” and “hope” could also appeal across demographics, Mr. Brown believes. “What Obama is on to and what Hillary does not understand is that hope is real. It is powerful,” he says. “It gives sacrifice meaning. It powers the will to achieve. It makes you work for something better because you believe in something better. It is the essence of faith. A person or product or movement that engenders hope is bound to have some discernible degree of success.”