how many multicultural ad agencies do you know that have analytics capabilities? We’re not talking about the ability to develop a proprietary technology platform ala Mediabrand’s custom digital ad marketplace (again, see WSJ article referenced above). I’m just talking about marketing professionals that can evaluate and crunch data to make smarter advertising decisions.

I think you know the answer to this rhetorical question – and it is one of the many deficiencies that continues to put multicultural agencies at a competitive disadvantage to their general market brethren, and is ultimately doing a disservice to their clients.

If you’ve worked in multicultural marketing at any point in your professional life, you undoubtedly heard some reference to what makes multicultural audiences different from their general market counterparts. One point of difference I have heard over and over, in various forms and variations, for audiences as diverse as Hispanics, African-Americans, and even Asian Americans, is their heavy social tendencies. They typically have larger households, non-nuclear families, and bigger social groups (that often mix family and friends interchangeably).

If you follow new media and digital trends at all, you’ve also undoubtedly seen statistics about how multicultural audiences over-index in social media usage (think social networking, blogging, instant messaging, etc.)