The New Mainstream - Led by the growing statistical and buying power of blacks, Latinos and Asians, the New Mainstream is a
loose coalition of minorites who have been forced to forge their own identity in American culture - even as they use and
consume good and services targeted to the general public. This shift in consumer buying power is not only transforming
how products are developed, marketed and bought, it also illustrates that diversity is the driving force of American capitalism.
(The New Mainstream by Guy Garcia - for more info, click HERE).

The growing economic clout of ethnic and minority groups are playing a critical role in the growth and bottom line of the nation's largest companies is clear that always reveals that they are not a single monolithic group, but made of many fragmented pieces. Race is merely one indicator of the cultural differences - ranging from language to psychographics and a shared history - that truly creates a distinct ethnic group. In today's multicultural economy, a failure to understand the importance of ethnic identity is a failure to understand the American consumer.

"In Culture" marketing that is sensitive to ethnic and nationalistic sensitivities without making any major gaffes are quickly being utilized by reaching out to their respective community leaders. Leon E. Wynter (former Wall Street journalist) has stated that the blurring of races and cultures is well under way and the Anglocentric culture that once characterized the mainstream no longer eists. This is seen when surveys of potential growth areas have provided data that 30% of a company's potential new customers would be minorities. U.S. market share for non-Hispanic whites has declined from 87.4% in 1990 to 80.1% in 2007. "An ethnic program is not marketing, it's an investment" stated Andrew Nuttney - a partner of the Research Advisory Group

As more minority men and women find their way in executive suites and corporate boardrooms, they will join other members of the New Mainstream elite, an amorphous but powerful group of racially and culturally diverse innovators and leaders in entertainment, media, business, advertising, politics, technology and other fields who are setting the style, mood and direction of what America is and what it will become as it leads the way into the twenty-first century.

In the multicultural marketplace, social responsibility and brand identity becomes almost undistinguishable. International film franchises like X-Men, The Matrix and Spy Kids are reflecting their global audiences and projecting ethnically blurred images of peoples, cultures, and even extraterrestial worlds. Multicultural chic is showing up on the streets of surburbia and in the effete salons of cutting-edge couture. With the British-born Chinese Jamaican entering her second decade as a "super model," its no longer a question of whether black is beautiful, but merely to what extent new colors and shapes will alter the sprectrum of the physical ideal. The 2003 MTV Video Awards - whites, blacks and Latinos appeared together in commercials without the slightest hint of racial self-consciousness or tension. The most striking thing about the 2003 MTV Video Awards . . . . was the seamless convergence of multicultural consciousness and capitalist consumption that was happening around the show.

The increasing visibility - and commercial cache - of ethnic celebrity and public figures in advertising is one of the most visible manifestations of the multicultural economy. Because a growing percentage of the consumer market is anything other than White, Madison Avenue has necessarily become a powerful force, however inadvertent, in legitimizing a multicultural vision of America. Advertising contributes to the breakdown of outdated stereotypes and promotes tolerance because projecting a positive image for a brand is a prerequisite for selling its products, and the positive images it projects contributes to the mainstreaming of minority groups, which in turn boosts their ability to buy more products.

A prime example of the symbiosis between advertising and celebrity more apparent - or lucrative - than in the field of professional athletes - of which, the best example of a multiethnic (i.e. Black, Thai, Chinese, Native American and European bloodlines) superstar is Tiger Woods in a sport typically played by whites. He has provided a sense of unlimited possibility for a new generation of Americans of every race and ethnic stripe. Messages that capture the multicultural zeitgeist can have universal appeal and build long-term equity for the brand even as it sells more products.