The Minority-Majority Shift: Two Decades That Will Change America— Tech World Faces A Reboot

2020 is the year when the majority of all Americans under seventeen years old will be from a minority background, a process that will culminate with a so-called “minority-majority” population by the mid-2040s. These demographic changes will bring about a significant transformation to Corporate America, and during the next few months, I will discuss some of these consequences, in each article targeting one specific area of our business environment.

When I started working on this article about the impact of the demographic changes we are facing in America from a technological standpoint, I quickly realized that the information was rich enough to fill, not just an article, but rather, a whole book.

I have summarized below some of the key trends and discussions impacting brands and marketers as a result of the convergence of technological advancements and changing demographics:

Minorities Over-Indexing in New Tech Adoption

What makes the subject of this article especially rich is the fact that minority segments over-index on technology usage, which makes some experts call these consumers “technology optimists.”

Furthermore, these minority users tend to be early adopters and influencers when it comes to setting the trends that may impact the broader marketplace.

We believe that in the coming decades the demographic changes in America will further accelerate this trend, and the manufacturers and retailers that dedicate a disproportional amount of resources to understanding the target’s needs and behaviors will be in a strong position to win in the marketplace.

The good news is that some leading tech companies have started to expand the concept of multicultural marketing, also considering their product development process. I spoke with Annie Jean-Baptiste, Head of Product Inclusion at Google, who described her company’s approach to achieve that:

“Google’s goal is to create products that reflect all of our users — no matter who they are or where they live. In order to do that, diversity and inclusion has to be a commitment both as it relates to an organization’s culture and in its processes. Product Inclusion is about bringing an inclusive lens to the product design process so that perspectives from underrepresented users are highlighted, leading to better outcomes for everyone. We’ve done research on the business case for inclusion, and both underrepresented and majority consumers prefer inclusive products.”

The New Digital Divide

For many years we have heard about the Digital Divide, which describes a gap in internet access rates when comparing minority households, mostly from lower-income African-American and Hispanic-American users, and the rest of the country.

While we celebrate the fact that minority consumers have closed this gap through the adoption of mobile devices as their primary access to the internet, it is important to recognize that some of these consumers still lag when it comes to having access to high-speed internet, either at home or at school.

In an era when inequality has become a regular topic of debate in our society, it is vital to understand how the digital divide can negatively impact the social mobility of some of the country’s minority populations.

Closing this gap is extremely important since we are facing a job market that will be more impacted by automation and technology by the day, which may disproportionally impact individuals that work in jobs threatened by labor automation.

This is an important discussion as we are in the early stages of 5G technology adoption in this country, which will unlock significant opportunities for more products and services that not only rely on heavy usage of technology but also may require a high technological standard from an educational standpoint.

Failure to close the internet speed gap may further marginalize a significant share of our population, limiting the consumer market growth for some industries and categories and making our country’s productivity more limited in the decades to come.

Lack of Representation in Silicon Valley

Over the past few years, we have witnessed a rising awareness of the lack of diversity in Silicon Valley. Why is this an important topic? Because a business community that better reflects our country will have a higher probability of developing innovative products and services that can benefit the society it serves, thereby being more successful in the marketplace.

A few weeks ago, Goldman Sachs announced it won’t take public companies that don’t have at least one diverse board member. As part of this announcement, Goldman Sachs CEO, David Solomon, mentioned that companies with at least one diverse member on the board have been performing much better when compared to those that don’t.

We expect to see more initiatives like this one in the years to come, including topics like higher focus on diversity recruitment, better mentoring/sponsorships to diverse employees so they can grow their career to senior levels in their organization, more minorities working and owning VC firms and a more ethnically diverse universe of startup companies.

But many people are trying to change this situation, like Melissa Medina, co-founder, and President of eMerge Americas, a Miami-based global technology platform and conference. I spoke with Melissa and asked about her initiative:

“One of the reasons I helped launch eMerge Americas seven years ago, was to foster a unique tech ecosystem in Miami, a city that already looks like the future of our country – minority dominant and built by immigrants. We launched this effort not to compete with Silicon Valley but, rather, to help create a launchpad of ideas that would welcome a diverse group of entrepreneurs. Although Miami is in the early stages of building a thriving technology hub, it certainly has all of the ingredients to become a sustainable, diverse, and inclusive ecosystem. Miami is consistently rated amongst the top entrepreneurial cities in startup activity in the USA and the top five U.S. metro areas for female entrepreneurship.”

“As a female Latina in tech myself, it is extremely important to me to show the next generation of women that there is just as much room in the tech world for women than there is for men. No matter how we slice it, a more diverse workforce is always better for businesses and the economy. I think we are beginning to prove that great ideas and innovation need not be captive of Silicon Valley.”

Is Artificial Intelligence Unbiased?

While we can’t predict what the future will look like from a technological standpoint, I believe we can safely predict that we will see and experience higher importance and impact of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in almost every aspect of our lives.

This brings me to the important question above — Are we better off when we trust machines to be bias-free? Will our society be better off because computers don’t carry with them misconceptions about race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation?

Or machines will only perpetuate preconceived ideas and biases because they tend to mirror the idea they are exposed to today, as imperfect they are?

Privacy Regulation Will Impact Marketing & Advertising

Last but not least, the topic of privacy — one that will be felt by marketers not in the next few decades but, rather, in the next few years.

A series of privacy laws and regulations will block advertisers from targeting consumers based on their race or ethnic background. While brands will still have the ability to use language as a proxy, these changes will significantly limit the ability to directly reach bilingual and bicultural consumers.

A negative consequence of the above could be that marketers will treat these consumers as the general population perpetuating the false assumption of “one-size-fits-all” when it comes to messaging. However, leading brands will understand the restrictions as an opportunity to build culture-based targeting strategies, with contextual relevancy and intent-based marketing.

Even if you can’t flag me as Latino if you know my taste in sports, music, and food, if you understand my news consumption preferences, you will know that I am very close to the Latino culture and research shows that messages that leverage this are more effective than messages that treat me as a general market consumer.

Furthermore, building first-party data strategies that recognize the importance of cultural nuances will be more critical than ever since brands that don’t recognize culture as an integral part of their strategies may miss out on effective ways to increase their media investments ROI.

It’s time for the marketing industry to start having a debate about how technology will impact (and be impacted) by the demographic changes we are facing as a country. Corporations and marketers have a unique opportunity in the months and years ahead, and, as in almost every aspect of multicultural marketing, this disruption may create opportunities for shifts in consumers’ preferences and consumption patterns.