AdExchange by Sarah Sluis.- When ads positively portray people from a racial or cultural group, or contain cultural insights that resonate with members of that group, they measurably boost brand KPIs such as purchase intent, brand loyalty and brand relevance.
But efforts to measure cultural inclusivity are in their infancy. One such effort – a new panel-based metric called the Cultural Insights and Impact Measure (CIIM) – is the result of a year-long project spearheaded by the Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing (AIMM).
At the end of this month, in time for this year’s (virtual) upfronts, brands can use the CIIM metric even if they’re not a member of AIIM.
The CIIM metric allows brands to measure the presence of culturally specific values in an ad, as well as the TV program where the ad appears.
The approach goes a step beyond multicultural casting, taking into account how the content makes a viewer feel about their culture.
“Many marketers believed they were doing multicultural marketing but in fact they weren’t using any culture in their outreach to this segment,” said AIMM President Carlos Santiago. Using CIIM addresses this gap.
CIIM to test creative messaging
During an initial test of the metric with 10,500 respondents and 150 ads at the end of last year, the ads judged most culturally inclusive increased purchase intent by 300% compared to ads in the bottom quartile of the rankings. Brand perception doubled, and ad effectiveness doubled or tripled.
With those benchmarks in place, a brand can now find out where its ad falls in terms of cultural representation.