African American-Focused Advertising Agencies News and Trends

Stay on top of trends in African American marketing for a strong consumer base
By Angela Roe, Freelance Writer Following African American-focused advertising agencies news and trends is essential to effective advertising. Whether working with an African American advertising agency or working on your own, it's important to research advertising and cultural trends to understand the best way to successfully execute your advertising campaign.

Effective advertising through African American ads requires research of recent demographic trends, marketing trends and an understanding of cultural connections. For example, reach out to the African America populace by marketing in popular African American magazines or during TV shows with an African American focus. Consider these possibilities to help you:

1. Choose the hottest current markets to place your business's African American ads.

2. Tap into the powerful underground and mainstream hip hop markets of African American popular culture.

3. Check recent marketing trends in African American magazines.

Stay on top of the latest trends to make the most of African American ads

Make a point of learning the most popular programming being viewed by your target audience in order to make the most of advertising dollars. Learning the latest trends of your target audience allows you to saturate that market with your product.
Try:  Access raw statistics about the top-ranked television markets at Watershed Publishing. You can even sign up for daily updates of marketing charts. Cynopsis Media provides you with the most up-to-date financial and entertainment news. You can listen to the updates or you can read the full article daily.

Choose an African American ad agency that's up on trends like hip hop culture

Advertisements geared toward African Americans in hip hop, with the music's recent boom into mainstream audiences, now cross cultural and racial boundaries. Advertising in hip hop has the potential to reach far beyond the African American populace, to teenage and college-age youths of all backgrounds around the globe.
Try:  Hip Hop and Advertising is a blog about African American advertising agencies that target the hip hop community. Wax Custom Communications puts out a daily e-news report to help you stay abreast of the latest in advertising and marketing including African American-based information. This newsletter is free for those who request it.

Check reports and studies on African American marketing in magazines

African American-focused advertising agencies often market heavily to ethnic magazines, and with good reason: African Americans on average read 11 magazines a month in comparison to the general average of eight per month. Popular African American magazines are a highly effective medium for African American ad agencies to reach their target populations. Currently, major ad agencies spend two-thirds of their minority-directed advertising dollars on black advertising. Read studies and research on African American magazine readership to help figure out where the market for advertising is the hottest.
Try:  Magazine Publishers of America releases an annual study called the African-American/Black Market Profile, which gives a rundown of publishers and market data. Read an article from CBS Interactive's BNET about black magazine readership and its share in the multicultural magazine market.

• Talk to the youth market on a regular basis in order to stay on top of the latest popular African American brands and other trends.