PR’s Top Pros Talk: Cheryl Overton

Cheryl Overton, Founder and Chief Experience Officer of Cheryl Overton Communications, defines the designing for the margins philosophy and shares how she applies it through her work with clients. Cheryl also explains how brands can obtain loving consumers and discusses her 2024 trend predictions.

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TRANSCRIPT:

DOUG: Cheryl, you often talk about designing for the margin. What do you mean by that?

CHERYL: Thanks so much. I mean, one of the things this is actually a phrase I cannot take credit for this whole design philosophy. It is actually something that is used in many fields and in many industries. And I’ve decided to apply it to the marketing communications industry. It’s really a design process or a thought process that at every step of the way, whether it’s from strategy to ideation to performance, marketing, and measurement, it takes the most marginalized target or the most impacted target and solves for their needs. And so what I think that means for us from a communication standpoint is the most underrepresented or heretofore undervalued communities. If we can challenge ourselves as creatives, as strategists, as communicators, to really find a message, to really find an approach that meets their needs, we have automatically widened the opportunity to reach everyone in a very impactful and in a very human way. It’s almost like we’ve raised the bar for ourselves to solve for the most challenged. And in doing so, we come up with things that really resonate universally.

DOUG: Yeah, that’s so interesting because obviously multicultural marketing can frequently involve groups that have been underrepresented. So, this philosophy can play an especially key role for your business in that area.

CHERYL: It really is. It’s really one of our strategies and really more of a philosophy to how we look at things. So, if a client is coming to us and they want to reach, you know, black moms or they want to reach, you know, Latino Gen Xers, you know, or Gen Zers, that’s demography, right? Like that. That’s not how we, we don’t check boxes and figure out messages. We really look at who are humans, what drives them, what motivates them, what makes their heart sing, what makes them cry when no one is looking. And if we can solve for those things, we actually come up with those aha’s that feel a little more sticky and frankly, feel more memorable and memorable to everyone. I mean, I think that’s the other thing. Before, when you start doing this work and you start to talk to potential clients about it, sometimes they’re fearful. Oh, no, will that alienate a broader audience? Will that make, you know, my consumer who might now be the market share? Will that make them think differently about my brand or my service? And the answer, according to the data, and according to practice is no. People are very happy when you can zone in on something very specific. Because in that specificity, there is a universal human truth that gets revealed.

DOUG: Yeah. And that’s one of the more intriguing parts of this for me, is by focusing on a specific tight group. It seems like your message is more effective for the masses of people, which might be counterintuitive. I love counterintuitive.

CHERYL: Well, I don’t even think it is counterintuitive, to be really honest with you. I think it is, you know, in our industry, I think when you can find that tension, but the tension that’s not negative, but the tension that’s like provocative and like, oh, it makes you lean in or makes you listen a little harder. That’s what we’re seeking. And so, I think that this is a way to get at the tension. For example, I worked with a client last year, Hologic, and they are a women’s health diagnostics company. And one of the things that Hologic wanted to do was to encourage women to get their annual exams. Well women exams is what doctors call them. Everybody gets an annual physical or we hope everyone does. But our data show that during the pandemic, as you well can relate to women who are busy working and caring for family and caring for themselves, they put themselves last. Well, this is about, you know, women getting an annual physical because there are certain health conditions that if you even miss a year of your diagnostic and you go back the next year or you go back in two years, there are certain women’s health things.

Breast cancer being one, cervical cancer being one. We want to watch this every year. We want to get a clean bill every year because even missing a year, something could develop. And we don’t want to have to manage to a real diagnosis or a real serious health issue. So, we did a whole awareness campaign around encouraging women to get a well women visit, and we aired a 30 second spot during the Super Bowl last year featuring Mary J. Blige, a black woman. Black women are more impacted by these things than all other women. We also find that there is health bias in the health field among or against black women. They are not recommended for diagnosis and treatment as fast as other women. They are not recommended for more aggressive forms of treatment and therapy as other women. So, there’s a real epidemic impacting black women. But this is something we want all women and anybody who cares about women to know about. So, we chose the biggest opportunity to talk to people, the Super Bowl. There’s not anybody who’s not watching the halftime show and the ads and things like that. We chose that venue. We chose a black woman as the messenger for this because they are the most impacted. And every step that we took from the crew that we hire to the director of the spot, to everyone who worked on the team, was female fronted. We wanted to make the most female and the most diverse team ever to bring this, because we both live it and we believe it, and I think that the work was stronger because of all of that. Designing for the margins at every step of the process.

DOUG: Right now, your clients are clearly getting the message. But do you think brands in general are getting the message and taking it to heart? There’s a lot of talk about that, but are they getting the message? How do they go about doing it?

CHERYL: Yeah, I mean, if I were to give brands a grade, you know, somewhere between a B-minus and a C-plus, maybe, I think things have improved. I think that there are brands out here doing amazing work. So, by no means is this a finger pointing exercise. But we could do better. I think brands can do better. You know, it works in a couple of ways. So, I’m talking about sort of directing our thinking and our strategy against the most agreed, if you will, or the most marginalized as a way to lift up everyone. But the truth of it is, when you look at some of these cohorts, whether they are people of color, whether they are people of different age ranges or different colors, these are often the most prolific on social media. These are the most influential from a popular culture standpoint. These are people whose registered receipts, when they actually go to stores and retail, who are higher than the total market, if you will. So, these are valuable consumers to brands. So, there’s no reason to do this for any other reason than a business reason. But if you are a brave brand, if you want to impact culture, and if you really want to reach and get people to fall in love with your brand, it’s a great way to do it. What I would encourage my, you know, peers and colleagues in the communications field is to keep talking. There’s been a lot of scuttlebutt in the past year, especially, I think, as people are sort of winding down from a lot of the programs and announcements and pledges that they made in 2020, around racial inclusivity, around anti-Blackness, for example, around being more multicultural or ultra-cultural in their marketing, a lot of brands have started to push back from the table a little bit about that. They’ve started to see maybe budgets are dwindling that get funneled toward that type of marketing. Maybe they feel like, well, we made a pledge, or we made a program, or we made a campaign, right. We’ve done it checking the box. Let’s go back to business as usual. And so, what I will continue to tell my colleagues and what I continue to, to do myself in practice is let us let both culture and data guide the day. You know, numbers don’t lie. And so, if we can show through case studies, through registered receipts, though data, you know, among consumers and just spending and attitudes and usage, if we can continue to use data to guide us. I think that brands listen to data. They like to see movement in the needle. So, we can continue to use data and performance metrics to tell the story. But more importantly, I think brands brand love is like the big thing that everybody wants, right? We don’t just want; our brand awareness is not even in anymore. Right? A lot of these brands, people know who they are, but people want brand love. And I think the way is the way to brand love is to really impact culture and to really talk about the things that might be difficult. I think we expect film to do that. We expect music to do that. We expect the fine arts to do that. I think that we can do that in marketing as well. We take up a lot of space in minds and hearts. And while it’s just in culture, you can’t walk down the street without being hit by screens or billboards or just surfaces, and messages that ping up all the time. We should use that space responsibly to make a difference. And I think we can.

DOUG: Also, I really like the insight because I’ve seen this myself and talk about it a lot in business. The idea that things aren’t a zero-sum game. If you’re doing something for one group, the idea that you can be lifting up all groups at the same time is such a different mindset than, oh, if someone is benefiting, that means I’m losing out. So, trying to change that sort of contributor to the hate culture that we currently experience would be a great accomplishment. As we wrap up, are there any multicultural marketing trends you see for 2024 that people should be thinking about. You’ve given a lot of really great information so far, but we’re looking for more.

CHERYL: You know, we’ve talked a lot this year about AI and artificial intelligence and GPT. I think that will continue to become more inclusive. I think one of the things that particularly with the multicultural audiences that that I spend so much time working with and working for, I think we sometimes see with some of these generative, technological, some of these platforms, they don’t necessarily spit back something that feels like it’s authentic to my lived experience or my worldview. I think the more we all are using it, the more they will become representative of a more culturally diverse world. So, I think that that will continue to happen next year. That’s one of the trends.

DOUG: Phenomenal. Are there any others?

CHERYL: Oh, sure. I think that one of the things as we look at, you know, social channels, whether it’s TikTok, whether it’s Instagram, I think that these social channels have moved from entertainment to commerce this year. We’ve seen everything like it’s built in. I think that will become less clunky. But more than that, I think these will become our search and not even just search. But these are our education engines, if you will. I think that we’re now looking at I think about, you know, looking at TikTok, it’s sort of the Google for me now, if I, if I want to research, when I’m traveling, I want to look at a restaurant review. I don’t even look traditionally anymore. I’m going there first because it’s a real person. It’s a live feed of it. And anything you want to know is there. I think we’re going to start to look at these to learn more, and educate ourselves more, using real opinions of people who we think mirrors our lives.

DOUG: That’s really phenomenal. Cheryl, thanks so much for sharing your insights and ideas and congratulations on your continued success.

CHERYL: Thank you. Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.