Diversity in Advertising | Brittney Garcia Dumas

David McBee: Hello and welcome to Simpli.fi TV. I am David McBee. Our guest today is Brittney Garcia-Dumas, owner of BGD Digital Marketing, a business branding company focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion. She is a proud Latina business owner, speaker, and advocate for women. Her personal touch approach to business branding has opened doors for her to lead talks on modern marketing practices, women's empowerment, business strategies, and rallying others through her perspectives as a young Latina in the corporate world. Brittney has also been recognized as one of Arlington's Top 40 Under 40. Brittney, thank you for being our guest today. Brittney Garcia-Dumas: Absolutely. Glad to be here. David McBee: Well, Brittney, it's clear from that introduction that DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion, I abbreviate it because I think we're going to be using the term DEI throughout our conversation, those are a high priority for you. And I think that they are a high priority for just about any business to understand. But I'm specifically interested in asking you how and why it's important to consider cultural sensitivity and inclusivity into marketing campaigns. Brittney Garcia-Dumas: Absolutely. So if you want to have a long-lasting brand, you have to look at the diversity of your campaigns. The average American consumer doesn't look the way that it looked 50, 60 years ago. And so it's not just something that's a great social cause. It's not something that just appeals to the heart. If you're a business owner and you want your brand to continue to last, you're going to have to look at the images that are on your website, the people that you're speaking to, the people you showcase on your social media, because that is the American consumer. David McBee: So how do you prioritize those DEI strategies? Brittney Garcia-Dumas: How we prioritize it for our clients is, first we listen to them. We believe that you educate, you never shame. People don't like to learn from a bully. So when we talk to people we say, "We brand businesses that have diversity at its core, or businesses who have recognized a diversity deficit." So listening is the number one thing that you can do when you want to incorporate DEI into your marketing campaigns. Take a look at your brand assets, take a look at your mission statement. Listen to yourself essentially. Listen to what you've been putting out there to see where you're coming from, and then think about the needs that you want to meet of your consumer. So listen to your consumer. What are their pain points? It's the same thing that we do in marketing all the time. How do we make meet the need? But instead of focusing just on that need, we take it a step back and we focus on that consumer. What does that consumer need in general as a person? What is their purchasing cycle like? What are their influencers in their life like that influence the way that they purchase? So listening is definitely the first thing that you would need to do to create a DEI diverse campaign. David McBee: Can you share an example of a specific campaign where you successfully promoted DEI? Brittney Garcia-Dumas: Absolutely. We were very, very proud to launch a restaurant in the heart of Memphis, Tennessee. It was a Black-owned restaurant, and their whole story was the American culinary story of Black brilliance and resilience. So it was essential to listen and listen up about these events, and the history, the plates that they made, the drinks that they made, they were all based on these extremely important historical events, extremely important historians. They came to BGD because they said, "The marketing agency that we were working with gave us our first brand deck. This is what we envision your brand will be." They put a picture of Rihanna on the first page, and they were very nice and very respectful about it. They said, "What does this have to do with our brand at all?" So people are really looking to that. As marketers, a part of our job is to tell their story correctly. So what we were able to do is say, "Okay, let's take several steps back. Tell us the original dream. Why are you creating this restaurant? What is most important to you? What do you like most about it? What have your advocates said are their favorite things about it?" And then we designed appropriately from there. They were very, very pleased, very, very happy with our campaign. One of the things we were able to do was to locate a local typographer who had created a font specifically to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and we utilized that font within their entire brand. So from the very font case, the very font type we were using to tell this story, it embodied this vision that they had from the very beginning. And we did that through listening and activating on that. David McBee: All right. This might be a little bit of a harder question, but what do you say to the advertiser who says, "Well, my target market is white," or "My target market is Black," whatever that might be, "Why do I need diversity in my advertising?" Brittney Garcia-Dumas: Immediately, I think you have the wrong information. I think let's take a look at some of those numbers. How did you get there? How did you reach that conclusion? Pull at the thread as to why you think that. Because to have a business in America, that's just a statistical anomaly to say that that is your only consumer or your target consumer. I would even say, "If your target consumer is white men over the age of 55," which I love and adore plenty of white men over the age of 55, "What are you selling? And how do you think that there aren't other people looking at that? And where are you promoting it?" So there's just so many things, again, that listening piece, to say, "Okay, how did you reach that conclusion? Because I think if we take a look at the data together, which marketers do very well, I'll be able to put you in a better, more realistic direction." David McBee: Yeah, I love what you did there, actually. You challenged their assumptions. So kudos to you for that. All right, one more question that I like to ask everyone before they leave my show is, "Is there a mentor, or a podcast, or a book, that has influenced your personal success? Brittney Garcia-Dumas: Yes. Actually, I love Barbara Corcoran. What I love about her is that she is so just herself. She's really honed in on who her own brand is. She's really opened herself to a younger market. She's opened up herself to TikTok, and Instagram, and all these things that are really not the strongest suits of people who are in her demographic. She was just so open to it and explored it. I really admired how she was willing to be innovative with the tech that she was utilizing within her brand. That's a huge part of DEI, is, "Hey, we're improving here. We're modernizing here to keep up with the target consumer." So I love her. I love her podcast. I love all her books. And then what I'm reading right now is Good to Great. And then there's also an extra portion called Good to Great in the Social Sectors, and it's really great for social media in my opinion. It tells a better comprehensive story about how to activate that marketing in an authentic, realistic way that highly informs our DEI campaigns. Because that social media portion is really where tech and community align and you have to have both of those things in order to run those successful campaigns. So that book has been really helpful to me. David McBee: I have heard Good to Great recommended, but not the additional piece, so thank you for that. Brittney Garcia-Dumas: Mm-hmm. David McBee: Well, thank you so much for being our guest today. I really enjoyed all of our conversation. Brittney Garcia-Dumas: Same. Thank you. David McBee: And thank you guys for watching. Simpli.fi TV is sponsored by Simpli.fi, helping you to maximize relevance and multiply results with our industry-leading media buying and workflow solutions. For more information, visit Simpli.fi. Thanks for joining us today. I'm David McBee. Be awesome, and we'll see you next time.