Minority markets remain untapped, BET founder says

In the late 1970s, Robert L. Johnson realized that there was a lack of television shows — and advertising — aimed at black viewers.
At the time, there were plenty of radio stations, as well as magazines such as Ebony and Essence, that targeted black audiences.
But Johnson, who was working as a cable industry lobbyist, saw a lucrative business opportunity in the growing number of cable TV channels such as CNN and MTV. So Johnson obtained $500,000 in start-up capital and launched Black Entertainment Television in 1980.
“No one was going after the African-American consumer,” Johnson said, speaking Friday at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business Administration.
Within 20 years, BET reached 62.4 million households and was bought by Viacom for $3 billion.
Johnson was addressing a room full of Darden students, faculty and alumni interested in replicating his success with BET and subsequent ventures.
“The idea is to make a billion dollars and be the next Robert Johnson,” said R. Jerry Nemorin, a Darden student and coordinator of the Black Business Student Forum’s conference Friday that focused on how to tap into the combined $1.3 trillion purchasing power of the nation’s black, Hispanic and Asian populations.
The secret of Johnson’s success, he said, was that he was the first minority entrepreneur to offer an emerging technology to minority consumers. Young minority businesspeople, he said, ought to find an unexplored niche and become known as the “first mover.”
“Everybody remembers that Jackie Robinson was the first black baseball player,” he said. “Nobody remembers the second.”
If a minority entrepreneur gains this “notoriety” and a reputation for success, he said, opportunities will roll in for years to come.
“We’re getting calls because we have the brand of being first,” Johnson said, referring to a firm he co-founded that owns 114 hotels in urban areas. “We’re out there. We’re first. We’re known as value-adders.”
Johnson added that the business world still needs more ultra-successful minority entrepreneurs.
“Most white businessmen know one-and-a-half black businessmen — I’m one and Magic Johnson is the half,” he said. “We’ve got to create more opportunities so there are more Bob Johnsons.”
Earlier in the conference, which was titled “Emerging Domestic Markets: Unlinked Talent, Opportunities and Capital to Create Wealth,” Marco Vega, planning director and partner of the Concept Cafe advertising firm in New York, offered his insight into how to market a company to minority consumers.
Honda hired his firm in 2006 to boost its lagging auto sales among Hispanics living in South Florida. Rather than simply convening focus groups of the target audience, Concept Café hired documentary filmmakers and anthropologists to interview numerous Honda-owning residents about their lives and their experience with their car.
Vega showed a five-minute clip of one man who spoke in Spanish about his job as a bank officer, his soon-to-be-born baby and his Honda Accord. The man said his car gives him a “feeling of tranquility” and is his refuge where he can listen to music or the news. More than 20 hours of videotaped interviews, similar themes of “freedom” and “liberation” began to emerge and eventually formed the basis of the ad campaign.
“You have to be intimate with your audience,” Vega said.
When the Honda TV, radio and Internet campaign launched, Vega’s firm placed billboards in various Hispanic neighborhoods in Miami, each targeted to the different ethnic group that lived there. For example, a Spanish-language billboard in a Colombian neighborhood said: “If visas were granted to nice people, the U.S. would be filled with Colombians. Honda: The Power of Dreams.”
The trick, Vega said, is to go beyond stereotypes and to actually learn about your target market. Too often, he said, companies will try to make money off the Hispanic community by simply sponsoring a Cinco de Mayo celebration. “There are no shortcuts,” he said. “Don’t rely on other people who tell you that this is the way we market to Hispanics just because that’s the way it’s always been done. Do something that actually resonates with them.”