By Alison Stein Wellner

There's more than one wrong answer to every multiple-choice question. But, in the new America, "none-of-the-above" is going to be the right answer more and more often. Results of Census 2000 are pouring in as fears grow about where the economy and consumer spending are heading. The combination of the new data and jitters about the continuing ability to tap into a once-effervescent wellspring of consumer confidence make one thing abundantly clear to the consumer goods and services sector: mainstream marketing's day is over.

Marketers can no longer regard greater focus on ethnic consumers as "new market development"--there are 70 million of these consumers by the latest count. Blacks, Asians, and American Indians will represent $860 billion in spending power in 2001, according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth, Terry College of Business, The University of Georgia. Include the Latino market, and New York-based market analyst Datamonitor figures that non-mainstream market spending power is more than a trillion dollars. Yet to date, ethnic market advertising expenditures represent a scant 2 percent of more than $200 billion in domestic media ad spending.

But as advertisers and their agencies scramble to buy, merge with, or hire people who "get" multiethnic consumers, they're in for a surprise if their strategies rely on reaching simple homogeneous ethnic segments within the larger population. New census data makes it clear that the race and ethnicity story is far from a simple tale of the growing size, power and influence of minorities. Expect heated debate ahead as those who've been valiantly battling to channel more dollars into minority marketing programs come face to face with a startling new wrinkle in the de-massification of American society.

That wrinkle? No single racial or ethnic group will supplant white descendants of Western European heritage. Rather, a combination of all the groups will. The dominant racial category in the United States of tomorrow will not be Hispanic, Asian, Black, or American Indian- it will be a mix of all-of-the-above. Last century, marketers who actually saw the opportunity in the nonwhite market had the luxury of thinking about racial categories as if they were discrete population segments. Today, thanks to the new census data, we know for the first time that a multiracial and multiethnic society is not only the future, but an immediate reality. Which means that marketers will have to study the diversity within each ethnic group. They must start to understand how racial identities will blend and blur in the consumer marketplace. "We're at just the beginning of this trend," says Felipe Korzenny, principal and co-founder, at ethnic market researcher Cheskin, Redwood Shores, California. "We will soon live in a 'confetti' society, where people will be different combinations of diverse colors."

The Census Bureau gets credit for fanning the flames of controversy on this issue. The new way of recording race allowed people to choose their own race in any combination from six racial categories, instead of forcing them to pick just one. The six racial categories- white, black, Asian, American

Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, or "some other race"-yield 57 different possible combinations. And while 98 percent of Census respondents still picked a single race-habits can be hard to break-what is quite telling is that the third most popular single race from people's self-selections was "some other race."

Nearly 15 million people characterized themselves as "some other race." Ninety-seven percent were Hispanic-not a racial category, but an ethnicity, according to the Census Bureau because Hispanics can be of any race. Apparently, plenty of Hispanics thought otherwise. But on the other hand, it's no surprise that many Hispanics chose "some other race" in high numbers because Hispanics are an exceedingly diverse ethnic group, points out Daisy Exposito, chief creative officer at the Bravo Group, N.Y. With more than 35 million people of all races identifying as Hispanic, about 48 percent reported their racial identity as "white only," 42 percent reported "some other race" alone. Two percent of Hispanics reported their race as black or African American alone. About 2.2 million people who identified as Hispanics reported that they identified with two or more races.

But the growing popularity of the some-other-race category alone is not enough to signify the end of dominance by a single race. It's the 7 million Americans who specifically identified themselves as multiracial-that is, they checked off more than one race on their Census forms-who are most persuasive. It is this segment that is the future of the United States, says Korzenny. That's because a far greater percentage of them are under the age of 18. "Multiracial will eventually become the rule rather than the exception," he says.

So what does the future look like? Again, no one racial combination dominates. In fact, "some other race" was a hot choice among the multiracial segment too. One-third of multiracial people (2.2 million) said that they were white and some other race. More than 1 million people identified as white and American Indian. There were about 2 million who identified themselves as black and multiracial: 45 percent of these people identified as black and white; 10 percent as black and American Indian or Alaska Native; 6 percent identified as black, white and Alaska native. About 1.7 million people identified as Asian and multiracial: 52 percent are Asian and white; 8 percent are Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander; and 6 percent are Asian and Black.

What does the growth of multiracial America mean for marketers right now? It means that the time to figure out what multiracial means to today's consumers, whether it creates specific consumer marketing or communication needs, and exactly how to tap into the market was about five minutes ago, and that it's time to catch up fast. "Since multiracial marketing is not in place today, there's no precedent in reaching out to these consumers," says Saul Gitlin, a vice president at Kang & Lee Advertising, N.Y. Marketers, hear this: you don't have time to wait for precedent.

COLOR COORDINATES
Seven million Americans said they belonged to two or more races in Census 2000.
Note: Four most common racial pairings. Source: U.S. Census

KEEPING IT SIMPLE
Total number of people who picked one race alone, or included that race in a combination with another race.
Note: This number is higher than the total population because categories are not mutually exclusive. Source: U.S. Census

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Copyright 2001, Media Central