Watch all video interviews from the Advertising Research Foundation Audience Measurement conference.
Sponsored by
A demographic time bomb has been ticking in the U.S. population for years, but what gets exploded will probably be outdated assumptions about who Americans are, how and where they live, and the implications of domestic migration and lifestyle trends that have finally become impossible to ignore.
With the nation’s population projected to grow to more than 400 million by 2050, shifts in how Americans age, who and when they marry, how they buy and shop and communicate are just some of the big changes that demographers see looming on the horizon.
Multicultural consumers are leading the way, but they are being joined by the “creative class” –educated, affluent, whites who seek out and expect diversity in the places they work and live. The resulting intercultural “New Mainstream,” and the expanding socio-economic landscape it respresents, will impact the life of every American.
The historic election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States was not just a resounding endorsement of political change; it signaled a dramatic break with the past and confirmed America as a fundamentally multicultural society.
Yet the resounding victory of the nation’s first African American chief executive was merely the political culmination and most visible sign of a phenomenon that has been brewing for decades. Hispanics, African-Americans and Asians, who already collectively command buying power in excess of $2 trillion, are expected to make up half of the population by 2042.
At the same time, the number of multicultural births for the first time recently exceeded that of non-Hispanic whites and the percentage of marriages between people of different ethnicity or race reached a record 14.6%, ensuring that the diversity of America will continue to increase long into the 21st century.
The results of the much-anticipated 2010 Census will only accelerate and confirm what corporate executives, educators, artists, scientists, politicians and ordinary people have long sensed: the U.S. is a nation on the brink of transformative change.
Census Bureau Director Robert Groves, who oversaw a force of 600,000 Census “enumerators” who spoke a collective total of 130 languages and knocked on 47 million doors, believes that part of the buzz around the 2010 Census is attributable to the fact that the United States has become “a nation of numbers.” By that he means that statistical research is increasingly being used to decide everything from how to appropriate and distribute federal funds to design restaurant menus and choose movie locations. “Numbers are the way we make decisions now,” Groves told me before our conversation at the Advertising Research Foundation Audience Measurement conference, “so all the different groups that are now part of the country see this as a tool for gaining social, economic and political influence.”
One of the big surprises coming out of early Census data, according to Groves, is the migration of Hispanics and African American out of the big cities and into the Midwest, New England, the Southeast and the suburbs. As Baby Boomers age and tech-savvy youths come into their own, we will also be seeing a postponement and re-definition of retirement, as well as an explosion of social media networks that cut across racial and linguistic lines.
A PEW Research Center study found that a majority of Americans expect to be working into their 70s. Meanwhile, younger people are more likely to delay marriage or remain single. Time will tell if the general population can learn from Hispanic and Asian families, who have a long tradition of supporting and sustaining multigenerational households.
Corporations, which are seeing up to 100 percent of the growth of their general market brands coming from multicultural consumers, are mobilizing to tap New Mainstream markets. Pepsi, Ford Motors, State Farm Insurance, McDonald’s, Wal-Mart and the AARP have all initiated programs that target multicultural customers by appealing to their interests and passions. Time Warner Chairman and C.E.O. Jeff Bewkes has indentified New Mainstream consumers as a top priority. “It’s more important than ever for us to get this right,” he wrote in an internal memo to the company’s employees titled The Multicultural Key to Our Growth, “because the future is coming faster every day.”
As the color and shape of the population becomes more diverse, so are the pastimes that entertain and amuse them. The hoopla over the United States soccer team during the 2010 World Cup was hailed as history-making, not because it was the first time Americans had played well, but because New Mainstream fans had exuberantly announced their passion for a global sport that acknowledged their nation’s cultural and emotional ties to the international community.
Critical Mass is not just about demographic and economic clout; it’s also about the power of authenticity in a world that is hungry for connection and engagement, and about new forms of narratives that speak to hybrid intercultural audiences.
The architects of the new America are both native and immigrant, local and global. The polyglot populations of the U.S. and the rest of the world are becoming mirror images of each other; they are complimentary expressions of the same demographic and cultural forces, and they are essential components of America’s social and economic security and prosperity.
The ballooning buying power of America’s multicultural marketplace is the tip of the iceberg; below the surface, tectonic shifts are laying the groundwork of the next economic revolution. As the new hybrid cultures of the United States achieve critical mass, the margins will continue to move to the center of American life, which, just as in decades and centuries past, will itself become transformed.
The intercultural New Mainstream is not limited to a single race or ethnic group, nor is any race or ethnic group excluded; the choosing and merging of identities and affiliations is an ongoing process that will continually redefine the mainstream and, by extension, what it means to be an American.
