Why 2015 was a “Tipping Point” for Black Consumers

“365-Black”
“On Fleek”
“Swag”
“Twerkin/Nae-Nae/Harlem Shake” (…any dance credited to Black culture)

It is nothing new for Corporate America to join the party late on ideas, phrases, and other happenings of Black culture and re-purpose them for its own financial gain. Blogs discussing cultural appropriation abound. However, Black consumers, their economic power, and the marketing focus we demand can no longer be overlooked, as described by Janie Boschma with The National Journal:

A new Nielsen re­port on “the un­told story” of black con­sumers, es­pe­cially af­flu­ent ones, shows that as the black pop­u­la­tion grows, so will its eco­nom­ic in­flu­ence and buy­ing power.
The re­port high­lights 2015 as a “tip­ping point” for black Amer­ic­ans in their “un­pre­ced­en­ted im­pact” across a num­ber of areas, es­pe­cially tele­vi­sion, mu­sic, so­cial me­dia, and on so­cial is­sues. Demo­graph­ic trends com­bined with the power of so­cial me­dia have col­lided to em­power an in­creas­ingly edu­cated, af­flu­ent, and tech-savvy black con­sumer base. As a res­ult, it’s a key time for com­pan­ies to “build and sus­tain deep­er, more mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions” with black con­sumers, ac­cord­ing to the find­ings.

“We’re go­ing to see a change in the face of Amer­ica, as mul­ti­cul­tur­al com­munit­ies and pop­u­la­tions grow more. Com­pan­ies who aren’t ad­dress­ing that is­sue now are go­ing to find them­selves a bit out of sorts when the minor­ity be­come the ma­jor­ity,” says Cheryl Pear­son-McNeil, coau­thor of the re­port and Nielsen’s seni­or vice pres­id­ent for stra­tegic com­munity al­li­ances and con­sumer en­gage­ment. “Mar­keters have got to keep pace in un­der­stand­ing what’s im­port­ant to di­verse com­munit­ies.”

The Neilson report that informs this analysis can be found here. Follow the source for more of Janie’s analysis on why any marketing campaign targeting millennials “must include messages to reach African-American youth.”