Kimberley McArthur on Critical Multicultural Marketing Nuances
How can today’s brands authentically celebrate target consumer cultures — without the cringe-inducing appropriation and insincere virtue-signaling we see far too often? In this Art of Sway episode, we dig into the tricky topics surrounding multicultural marketing with cultural engagement strategist/inclusive marketing expert Kimberley McArthur.
A bilingual, bicultural Latina, brand storyteller and cultural engagement strategist with nearly two decades of experience in multicultural marketing, Kimberley McArthur has built a career on a deep curiosity about people and the nuances of culture and identity. Currently leading multicultural strategy and engagement at General Mills, she leverages her cross-functional and cross-category experience to develop strategic campaigns that drive authentic engagement.
Listen along as podcast host Danielle Wiley and Kimberley break down the most important elements in meaningful multicultural brand outreach on social media, including:
- How brands can help authentically celebrate — not appropriate — target consumer cultures
- The power of brands partnering with a cultural navigator to help navigate cultural identities
- Why authenticity is the most critical element behind every multicultural strategy
- How multicultural brands can prioritize long-term awareness over short-term conversions
- The biggest mistake brands make with multicultural social media outreach
Episode 19: Kimberley McArthur Transcript
Danielle Wiley: Welcome to The Art of Sway. This is a podcast that brings you inside the world of marketing through the lens of influence. I’m your host, Danielle Wiley. Each week through candid conversations with industry insiders, we will uncover how influencer marketing is making an impact across all consumer buying habits and is changing the way we talk to each other. Let’s dive in. A bilingual, bicultural Latina, brand storyteller and cultural engagement strategist with nearly two decades of experience in multicultural marketing, Kimberley McArthur has built a career on a deep curiosity about people and the nuances of culture and identity.
Danielle Wiley: Currently leading multicultural strategy and engagement at General Mills, she leverages her cross-functional and cross-category experience to develop strategic campaigns that drive authentic engagement. Prior to her current role, Kimberley was a key leader within such agencies as Edelman Public Relations, Olson Advertising, and Bravo/Young & Rubicam, delivering successful campaigns for a diverse set of global and US clients across a range of industries. She is passionate about making a difference with the work she helps to bring into the world.
Danielle Wiley: You’re going to love this conversation with Kimberley. She is a dynamic powerhouse who has worked on multicultural marketing for some of the country’s largest brands. Our conversation was, no surprise, a ton of fun. Enjoy.
Danielle Wiley: Hi, welcome. I’m so glad we’re doing this.
Kimberley McArthur: Thank you. This is a fun thing to do on an afternoon.
Danielle Wiley: Yes, a freezing afternoon. I’m very cold. We’re both in Michigan, so we’re both freezing right now.
Kimberley McArthur: Fun tip, if you build a backyard office, build in a bigger heater than a small room heater, so definitely…
Danielle Wiley: I have the room heater under… I’m in the basement, so I have a room heater by my feet and I keep turning it on and burning my toes on it, but it feels really good.
Kimberley McArthur: So note for Michiganders, buy better socks.
Danielle Wiley: Yes.
Kimberley McArthur: That’s how I’m feeling right now as well. I hear you.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, this is awesome. So we bumped into each other, gosh, it was probably a couple of months ago now at the Detroit Digital Summit. Of course, worked together years and years and years ago at Edelman. So great to catch up and you were so dynamic on stage, and then we had all these amazing conversations at happy hour and dinner. I was like, “I have to get Kimberley on the podcast. I have to do it.” So thank you for making this happen. I really appreciate it.
Kimberley McArthur: No, thank you. And this is my first podcast guest experience, so couldn’t have picked a better host to do that with, so thank you for this as well.
Danielle Wiley: Amazing. So we’ll start easy. I would love for you to just kind of fill everyone in on your unique background and your kind of career path and journey to where you’re at now.
Kimberley McArthur: Sure. I think my personal background is very coupled to my business background because it really is the purpose and the motivation behind what I do. I was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil. My parents are both bicultural. I always joke about the Latin American women in my family love the Anglo men. My dad’s mother was Chilean. His dad was Canadian who met my grandmother in Chile. They didn’t speak a word of the same language, but they met dancing tango, so that tells you a lot about just the dynamics of my family. On my mother’s side, she was Panamanian. Her mother was Panamanian. Her dad was American from Boston, who was in Panama with the Army at the time.
Kimberley McArthur: We’re very bicultural. And then I grew up in Costa Rica, in Mexico, in Colombia. I lived in Canada, and then I moved to the States when I was about 13 years old. So I’ve been here for the better part of my life, that duality of the Latin American element of my life and the American element of my life, having lived in Tucson, Arizona, in Chicago where we worked together. I lived in Minnesota for 10 years. That’s a different culture. And then I moved to Michigan about a year and a half ago. And so, this element of the cultural dynamics really ties into what I’ve done with my life from a career standpoint. My career path is not really a path. It’s been a journey.
Kimberley McArthur: It definitely was not a linear journey. When I went to university, I actually went to the University of Arizona, well, Arizona State University in Tempe, Phoenix, Arizona. I studied journalism. The reason I studied journalism was because I loved storytelling and I loved people and people’s stories. One of the things that as I grew up my whole life, my mom always implanted in us, “Wherever we live, immerse yourself in the local culture. Be curious. Be curious about people and their identity and their experiences in life. And always be open to the fact that you can learn something new from someone else.”
Kimberley McArthur: And so that has been something that has fueled my career because I’ve had this curiosity about culture, curiosity about identity, and then also just I think more than anything when I think about what I’ve done with my career, I’ve wanted to partner with brands to really help brands to understand how to engage people for how people see themselves versus how brands want to maybe oversimplify who people are. I’ve worked in television. Actually, in Chicago I started [inaudible 00:05:01] Chicago, Univision Chicago, and then I was at Edelman. I’m a member of the Edelman Comeback Club. So I was an Edelman at the very beginning when we did diversity solutions, when we were like, “There’s all these Latinos here and salsa outsells ketchup.” That was the data that we had.
Danielle Wiley: Oh man, they used to say that all the time.
Kimberley McArthur: That’s way back, my friend. Yes.
Danielle Wiley: It’s been a while since I’ve heard it.
Kimberley McArthur: That was at the very beginning when the conversation about Latinidad or Latino culture and the Hispanics in the US. So I was at Edelman a total about, I think, 10, 11 years. I left as a VP of Multicultural. I went to another shop in Chicago that partnered me with a shop in Minneapolis, and I started working on the target business, so I moved to Minneapolis. And then in Minneapolis I worked at Olsen in the PR and advertising side. And then I also did my own thing. So I’m three times now an entrepreneur because I love telling stories. And so I’ve made a documentary you can find on Vimeo, and it was part of the Chicago Latino Film Festival and the International Film Festival in Chicago.
Kimberley McArthur: But everything I’ve done in my career has been storytelling. And so for the last four years just about, I’ve been at General Mills, and my job at General Mills is really helping our brands to authentically engage with diverse communities, specifically the Latino community in the United States. So that’s a bit of… It was a wiggle dance. I’m very curious. I spent a lot of time with… Actually General Mills was my client when I worked in shopper marketing. So I think the best way to say it is I’ve done everything from PR to media to above the line below the line. I’m a well-rounded marketer because I’m super curious about the way that we engage each other and we as brands engage communities. And so I’m just constantly looking for new ways to do that in a very authentic way.
Danielle Wiley: My career was… I mean, I jumped. I majored in sociology and jumped all over the place and did all the different things at all the different places. So probably why we get along. I identify very much with that hopping all over the place and just finding things that are interesting and jumping in and learning what you can and then moving on to the next.
Kimberley McArthur: I always see it as my next assignment. I only ever want to be in a place where I can make a differential impact. And pretty much every assignment that I’ve left, I’ve actually trained my replacement. So it gets to a point where I’m just like I think I’ve done what I came to do and now it can grow in a different direction with a different leader. So I’ve been really privileged to be able to do that. Right now I’m nowhere close to completely cracking what I want to do at Mills. I had really big audacious goals at Mills and I still do. And we’re making tremendous amounts of progress and there’s so much opportunity. And so I’m here because I like to be challenged. I think to your point, Danielle, is finding what’s new and finding what you can learn and what you can give back that’s different in every assignment.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah. So I’d love to… I mean, there’s been such a focus. I mean, for us it’s been a focus for a while just because personally my partners and I are very passionate about diversity and equity and inclusion, and it used to be something that we sometimes felt like we were forcing down our clients’ throats. Now, since 2020, the tables have turned a little bit. I don’t know that they’ve turned, but finally clients are asking, “Is it as diverse as it can be? Are we doing everything? Is this list of influencers reflective of who we’re trying to market to?” So I just would love to hear some of your thoughts on influence through the lens of cultural identity. You are kind of specific about using the term cultural identity, not multicultural. So I just kind of love what you’ve seen in the space. And when brands are working through outside parties, whether it’s influencers or creating advertising materials, what have you seen? What do you think worked? What’s your perspective on that?
Kimberley McArthur: 2020 was a big year for a lot of reasons. I think conversation about just the racial reckoning, the social justice representation, that kicked off a lot. And then 2021, the census result of 2020 got released and then all of a sudden we were learning about the fact that when given the option, Americans were choosing to identify as two or more races. And so then that started to change the conversation on what does identity look like. As marketers, we like to oversimplify things. We’re sitting there going, “Well, that’s a mom,” or, “She’s Hispanic.”
Kimberley McArthur: But there’s so much intersectionality in our cultural identity that I think it’s something that’s really interesting. And so I’ll give for the audience a little bit of background. So multicultural marketing is a term that has been loved and used for many, many years. And the difference is that we now live in a multicultural nation, and we’ve seen it in the data. The populations that are growing in this country are diverse populations. The non-Hispanic white population is decreasing, it’s aging. There’s a change in intersectionality. The dynamics of families are changing. It’s not that nuclear. I’m trying to think of the Americana family, like the Nelsons, I think. I’m trying to… I’m digging deep in Metro, but it’s not that Rockwell-
Danielle Wiley: Like Leave It to Beaver or… Yeah, it’s like…
Kimberley McArthur: Yeah. So it’s just how people define family is so different. And I work for brands that are very specifically about, “We are for families.” And so part of our journey has been really thinking about like, but what do families actually look like? Right? And what are the dynamics of family? And even within that family, what are some of the aspects of culture that are starting to show up? What are they participating in? And one of the things that has been really interesting in 2022, if you’ve seen just Bad Bunny, I mean, Bad Bunny is on fire.
Danielle Wiley: Just especially with the Spotify Wrapped that just came out. I mean, I was just looking on Twitter, he killed. I mean, he’s at the top of everything.
Kimberley McArt…: He dominated from the global and the US.
Danielle Wiley: And was in Bullet Train. He was very good in Bullet Train.
Kimberley McArthur: He was amazing in that. Got to catch that on my last flight. That’s definitely a laugh out loud. So everyone on the plane was weirded out a little bit, but they should all watch it. Bad Bunny is a great example, the fact that there… He has a specific vibe, and he’s unapologetic about the fact that, “I am Spanish first. This is my vibe, this is who I am, I am authentic.” And I think he’s been a great case study for the fact that he unites so many different kinds of people who don’t even necessarily speak Spanish, who don’t know anything about Puerto Rican culture, who don’t understand anything about trap, who literally do not know what he’s saying in his songs. But because he’s a vibe, they’re in on the vibe. And so that’s an example of the fact that mainstream American culture is being so incredibly and beautifully influenced by diverse cultures, that you’re starting to see it in a way that you can get a matcha latte at a Starbucks, at a Caribou, and that is a heritage item.
Kimberley McArthur: And so there’s so much about American culture that is actually… Again, I think we take a lot of things for granted, but when you think about cultural identity and when you think what it means to someone when their culture is being celebrated, not appropriated, but celebrated in an authentic way and elevated to the point where that cultural aspect, that cultural joke is now something that is in the mainstream. And that’s something that’s really interesting. You think about what Coco did for Day of the Dead. It took it from being a Mexican Halloween, which was just this lack of understanding, to actually bringing families into this journey to talk about the honoring of ancestors in that cultural participation moment. And so I’m just trying to bring it back to your original question, which is what are brands doing? Obviously, I can talk about this all day, I love this stuff.
Danielle Wiley: Do it.
Kimberley McArthur: I think there’s an opportunity to really talk to people in that cultural participation moment because it talks to an aspect of your identity. Right? I watch Grey’s Anatomy, and I watch Spanish is on Netflix, and I watch YouTube as a channel because YouTube is a channel. And so the amount of content that I consume is very disparate, and it meets different elements of my identity. But I would self-identify as a white presenting Latina who is South American, born and raised, bilingual bicultural. And so there’s all these, the pluses, the double clicks, the triple clicks.
Kimberley McArthur: So brands, you can’t do all things for all people. But what I will say is Bad Bunny is an example, again, of the fact that you can actually pick a place within culture. If you have a cultural navigator to your question of influence, partnering with a cultural navigator that is an authentic voice in that space to essentially invite you to the party and help you to navigate in that setting, you can actually attract not only the people you’re going after who already participate in that setting, but anyone who’s interested in it.
Kimberley McArthur: So I always talk about the fact that we can bank on the power of Latinidad, not just because Latinos are living their Latino culture in the United States, whatever that means in this American experiment, but there are a lot of people who aren’t even Latino who want to participate in Latino culture. And so when we as a brand partner with an authentic Latino voice, when we show up in an authentic Latino space, it is meant to engage not only that Latino community, but it’s also meant to engage beyond for those who want to essentially culturally navigate.
Danielle Wiley: Right. I mean, that’s one of the things I’ve always loved about influencer marketing is that it takes… Brands can say, “Here’s our initiative. This is what we’re trying to promote.” And then they can find people from all walks of life who can tell that story through their own lens. And it’s not the brand saying, “Here’s this thing that’s going to appeal to this certain person.” It’s this brand saying, “Here’s a person who loves our brand, and she’s going to talk about it in her way and what it means to her and who she is and all the different and pieces and parts of her.” I mean, that’s what I love so much about it. And it’s a powerful tool, I think, because it’s very hard for brands to… There’s so many different… I mean, even just within Latino alone, I mean, within your family alone, there’s so many different cultures. How can you possibly do one single thing that’s going to appeal to everyone?
Kimberley McArthur: Not only that, but I mean, I think we just have to have an honest moment and say that the people in the boardrooms making the decisions aren’t necessarily as diverse as we’d like them to be. And so when we think [00:14:30] about how does a brand succeed in a multicultural America, well, you need to start looking at representation based on population and based on the population that your brand specifically serves. We can’t be all things to all people, but at the same time, you can actually be more things to more people than we probably have allowed ourselves to be historically because we’re so… I think we take such a simplistic approach. We depend on things like mixed models. We depend on things like efficiency versus efficacy. So when we start to think about even the role of influencers, that’s where you’re driving that resonance. That’s where you’re driving an authentic brand relationship.
Kimberley McArthur: That’s where it’s not necessarily only about the short-term conversion, it’s about the long-term awareness. It’s about making sure that you’re a part of the community, but you can’t go into a part and be like, “Hey, look at me. I’m the coolest person on the block.” You literally need someone. I mean, Lin-Manuel Miranda, imagine working with him and having him say, “Your brand is amazing, and you’re welcome to this party.” That’s a different introduction than if you just show up and throw your fireworks and stand in your very positive stance and try to talk at people. So I do think that influencers really give us that opportunity to give an authentic brand experience. It gives us that inspiration that I think we’re all looking for. This is a total nerdy data point, but Kantar, they talked about their 2022 trends. It’s US as well as global, but consumers are actively looking to participate in culture. And it’s not necessarily their own individual heritage culture. They want to belong. They want to belong to a moment, to a movement, to a collective.
Kimberley McArthur: And so when you think about the power of influencers to unite based on what your brand is trying to do, there’s such an opportunity to have that voice, many voices, honestly, when the micro influencers… To me, I think micro influencers are actually more powerful than using one big celebrity. I think you have to look at your mix to make sure what fits right for your brand and for what you’re trying to create. But creating essentially a community around either what you’re offering as a solution or what you’re offering as a product can be tremendously powerful as long as you are in authentic relationship. And again, consumers are demanding more from brands, not just in representation in terms of what we see visually, but in terms of the voices that are speaking out in the brands and the authenticity of it. You can’t just get away with a sweepstakes and a promo anymore. You need to be a part of my life and show me why your brand is a part of my life and part of my culture.
Danielle Wiley: You don’t have to name… I mean, if you want to name names, go for it. But how do you think… What are some even just generically examples of companies getting this wrong, trying to do that multicultural thing and falling very short.
Kimberley McArthur: I think what I can share, just so that it’s helpful for your audience is maybe habits that we typically get into, right, that kind of keep us from doing best in class, multicultural marketing. And again, multicultural marketing is literally just marketing in a multicultural America. I think the misunderstanding and thinking that one size fits all is number one for my list. I think when people don’t understand that a 60 million Hispanic population in the United States is incredibly diverse. So I think there’s just the lack of information, and I use Hispanic in most of my examples because that’s my sweet spot. This is what I do, this is why I do what I do. But when we think about, again, that diversity of the segment, you’ve got people from Central America, South America, the Caribbean Latinos, whether you live in New York and you’re Dominican, or you live in LA and you’re of Mexican origin but 18th generation, there’s going to be a lot of differences in who you are as a Latino, how you’re experiencing Latino culture in Latinidad.
Kimberley McArthur: And so giving you with that example, I think the best thing is a watch out is people not doing their research, [00:18:00] making decisions on a gut, making decisions on a focus group of one. I always believe that you should have people who are representative of the community, but just be careful not to look at either your one person of color, who may be Indian American, who may be Chinese American, and assume that they understand all people of color. And also don’t expect, even if that person is Latino and you’re doing a Latino program, don’t expect that that person can speak for all Latinidad. There’s a lot of research that needs to be done. And so I would say a misstep that a lot of companies make is thinking that they can just essentially [00:18:30] reactionarily do a one-off effort, do a Hispanic Heritage Month shout-out, do one thing with one Latino person, and they call it a day.
Kimberley McArthur: This is an authentic relationship. You need to date our community. You need to romance our community. If you want to be married and live in our kitchen, and again, I go to food because that’s my life, you really need to be an authentic relationship. So I would say that that’s the top one. I think the second thing is also, it almost fits in the vein if we called it a theme of just don’t have a superficial relationship [00:19:00] with these communities, I think that would be your overarching, and the companies that have done it wrong are the ones who have done things for Black History Month. I think we’ve all seen the watermelon ice cream that Walmart put out during Black History Month. And so you start to ask yourself, “What is that?” I mean, that’s why there is a difference between cultural celebration and cultural appropriation or even just massive amounts of bias that you may think it’s a great idea, but you don’t realize how much bias there might be.
Kimberley McArthur: I mean, I was in a brainstorm many, many years ago, and the client shall not be named, and someone was just like, “Well, we just put a mariachi hat on it?” And it’s just like, “Oh, that is how you have simplified an incredibly diverse segment. You’re just like Latinos equal mariachis.” And so there’s a lot of bias. So I think making sure that you are checking yourself, checking your team, checking your work, making sure your consumer insights partners, whoever it is that might be doing that work, we all know that there’s shops of different sizes, but your strategists, your creative people, do homework. Talk to people in the community. That’s why those influencers and those cultural navigators are such an important way in because they actually serve as a focus group.
Kimberley McArthur: So I would say don’t just pay an influencer to promote your product. Ask the influencer to essentially have a relationship with you and your brand and make it mutually beneficial. And ask them questions about the community, see who’s in their network. I think there’s a lot that brands could learn from if they just had more of a dialogue versus a transactional relationship with a lot of their partners, including influencers.
Danielle Wiley: We’re always surprised by how rarely brands take advantage of the vast amount of research that they have access to and insights from influencers. Because not only are these people part of whatever community they’re a part of themselves, they also typically have an audience that’s made up of a majority of people who are like them or identify them in one way or another. And what an influencer does is they speak to this audience. They’re experts in this audience. They know what this audience wants to hear. So not only is it an individual person who you’re trying to reach, it’s an individual person who happens to be an expert on whatever segment of the community that they’re in. And so few brands take advantage of that, it kind of blows our mind on a regular basis.
Kimberley McArthur: I mean, I would like… To me, when I’m thinking about our brand planning, it’s just I could have a room of 12 marketers that are essentially trying to source from the same shallow bucket, or I could bring in voices of the community, media partners, influencers and say, “Here’s the brief, here’s the challenge. How would you go about it?” And I guarantee you, the richness of the conversation in innovative ways, in new ways, in authentic ways, would certainly pay off for that effort.
Danielle Wiley: Yeah, yeah. Okay. So on a more positive note, what are some examples of brands doing a great job? And here you can definitely name names.
Kimberley McArt…: I mean, for sure. Look, I think… I don’t know any CPG person who doesn’t have a crush on P&G. So Procter & Gamble, Marc Pritchard was at the A&A conference this year. So the 2022 Multicultural and Diversity Marketing Conference was, I think, three weeks ago in Miami, well, Hollywood, Florida. And he got up there and he talked about the fact that multicultural marketing is marketing, and there is no general market because there’s no general consumer, there’s no general person. We are all multifaceted, we are all intersectional. You can leverage specific insights. As an example, we leverage specific insights for a bilingual bicultural. We have psychographics, and we’re saying, “Okay, there’s values and behaviors for this Latino family that will actually help us to engage more modern families that are of diverse backgrounds.” And that is our doorway, our gatekeeper, our way in our cultural muse, however you want to call it. Vicks VapoRub, not the sexiest product.
Danielle Wiley: No.
Kimberley McArthur: But I know you didn’t expect that. You were just like, “Nike.” No. Vicks VapoRub, my friends. One thing that I loved about P&G and Marc, actually, he presented this as a case study where he was talking about the fact that Vicks VapoRub has a legacy in the Latino community. If you remember my Big Fat Greek Wedding where they use Windex for everything. That is what Vicks VapoRub is, right? It cures a cold, it cures heartbreak, it cures a headache, it’s , put it on everything. And so there’s always been this almost cultural joke about Vivaporu. It’s on top of it. It’s pronounced differently, VapoRub, right? Like yeah, VapoRub but-
Danielle Wiley: It sounds a lot more exciting and sexy when you say it.
Kimberley McArthur: Right? You can get behind Vivaporu versus like Vicks VapoRub. It’s like when you watch soccer, it’s the World Cup right now, but it’s when you watch soccer on TV and in Spanish, it’s a different level of passion. Well, Vicks in Spanish is a different level of passion. And so one of the things that was really interesting in the case study is they said, “Look, we understand the Latino community over indexes.” There is a love for Vicks VapoRub, which I don’t think anyone can actually trace back to where that happened, but Vicks VapoRub in the Latino community, it’s like la chancleta, so if you’ve ever heard about the flip-flop in the Latino community, it’s a weapon. It’s a mom’s weapon. If you Google chancleta, my friends, you’ll go down… Actually go do chancleta plus Tik Toks, and it’ll be a fun afternoon.
Kimberley McArthur: But Vicks VapoRub, like I said, has this historical legacy love across Latin America, and still with the [inaudible] Latino group in the United States, there is this legacy. In fact, if you saw Father of the Bride with Andy Garcia and Gloria Estefan, there’s a whole thing about Vicks VapoRub. There’s a whole joke where the grandmother is offering Vicks VapoRub for all the things. But what they did essentially is that they took a look at it and they said, “We don’t actually have to force anything. We just need to jump into what this cultural bandwagon is about,” Vicks VapoRub being all the things. And so they did obviously their TV campaign, which was very heart-filled and family moments and all about the functional benefits of Vicks VapoRub. But then they worked with influencers, especially comedy influencers. And so there’s these amazing, amazing comedic voices out there that used to be on like Mitu. You can find them now.
Kimberley McArthur: I think Jenny Rivera. So Jenny Rivera was the one who did the Cuban abuela, and she actually did a whole campaign with them all about Vicks VapoRub. But Jenny Rivera, she’s an incredible voice, and she’s Cuban American. She’s not even Mexican American, but that’s because Vicks VapoRub is the whole Latino community. I don’t know any Latino, no matter where you’re from, that doesn’t have that experience and relationship with Vicks VapoRub. And so what I said is just really when you look at the brand, instead of saying, “Oh, that’s a funny, weird cultural quirk,” they’re like, “How do we leverage that? Honestly, we’ve never actually leaned into that fully.”
Kimberley McArthur: And they use influencers to be able to do that because, again, it’s all about the fact that the community was already having a conversation about you. So if you’re a brand that you’re lucky enough that there’s a positive heritage, nostalgic love at that level about your brand, lean into it. Because again, that’s a great example. The fact that a brand was brave enough to say, “Let’s poke a little fun at ourselves. We know that we’re not for curing heartbreak, but let’s make this connection with this community a lot stronger by leaning into that cultural nod.” So I would say, yes, Vicks VapoRub I think does a great job.
Danielle Wiley: And I think you now win the award for guest who has made this transition slash segue to my final question easiest ever. So our final question… Sometimes I’m having this really deep emotional conversation, then I have to switch to this, and it’s awkward but this is the best one ever. So we end every episode asking what commercial from your childhood has stuck with you to this day? Because I think, well, for me personally, commercials, that was my influence when I was a kid, and they all stick with me. And it’s just been a very interesting question to ask.
Kimberley McArthur: So I appreciate that you posed that question, and I got some time to marinate on it because I really thought about it. So I grew up in Latin America, so I moved to the States when I was 13. So everything I saw in Latin America was dubs or local commercials that were stellar. But I will say what always stuck with me is every time we’d come and visit family in the States or we’d come for the Disney vacations, because Latino families, they come for the Disney vacations. It’s magically delicious, Lucky Charms. It is no joke. It is no wonder that I actually work on Lucky Charms now. And it’s funny because I remember my first day at General Mills, they do the whole question of just like, “What’s your favorite brand?” And most people are just like, “I just have to pick a General Mills brand.”
Kimberley McArthur: I’m like, “No, legitimately, I love Lucky Charms.” I mean, my dad used to buy it on his American business trips and bring it back. And in Costa Rica, Lucky Charms is not the best because the marbits don’t hold up to humidity. At least they didn’t in the eighties. But Lucky Charms has been a part of my experience. And I think when I think about those commercials and I think about the chase and I think about the magic and I think about just possibility, I think the Lucky Charms commercials always… They gave me the sense of magic and possibility. And as a brand champion for that brand, I’m still asking the question of, if Lucky Charms is a mega brand for a multicultural America, what do we need to do differently so that we can continue to bring that magic and possibility to today’s kids? I’m very lucky. But yeah, the magically delicious. Yep.
Danielle Wiley: Love it, love it, love it. Well, this was so awesome, and I am so glad we live so close to each other now and can bump into each other at other conferences.
Kimberley McArthur: Yes. And make it to brunch.
Danielle Wiley: Yes, yes. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much.
Kimberley McArthur: Oh, thank you, Danielle, for having me. And yeah, just for all the audience, just have fun. This is such a great time to be marketer.
Danielle Wiley: Indeed.
Danielle Wiley: Thank you for listening. Don’t forget to share and subscribe. Please check back next Monday for a new episode featuring marketing conversations through the lens of influence. I am your host, Danielle Wiley, and this is The Art of Sway.
