Marketing to Black Audiences is Product Management

Pepper Miller is president of the Hunter-Miller Group.

Her personal experiences dealing with race go back to the segregated South and provided her with the impetus to do what she does today. As president of the Hunter-Miller Group, she is a market researcher and thought leader in the multicultural marketing space, helping large companies better understand and engage Black America.

Many executives don’t understand the differences among their audiences — or how to maximize them — so Pepper spends a lot of time having to convince companies to spend time and money to research Black audiences.

“One of the dangers of having this one-size-fits-all approach is making huge missteps and alienating your audience, the Black audience, instead of engaging them,” she says, also pointing out that marketing to the Black community should be viewed as the business opportunity it is.

“Understanding what’s going on with us gives you opportunities to tell more stories for other segments of the population,” she says. “It’s an opportunity. Different does not mean deficient. Different provides an opportunity. Black people are different. There’s an opportunity to grow your business not only with this segment but with the mainstream, as well."

Pepper shares her advice for how to conduct equitable qualitative research and focus groups — as well as several of the seven blind spots she’s identified when it comes to understanding and marketing to Black Americans — on this episode of This Is Product Management.

Download the transcript:

Here are some highlights:

• Why Pepper loves qualitative research
• Pepper’s identified blind spots
• How Black beauty gets it right
• Why the introduction to research interviews is so important