As FAMDO seeks to be proactive in empowering local communities, it's important that we have as many visitors' email addresses as possible. Currently, FAMDO has numerous email addresses from across the country; however, to have the biggest impact on our communities with the national brands that (will eventually) partner with us, we are in need of YOUR email address.
Excerpt from "The Famdo Way" book:
For starters, the correct pronunciation of the company is FAM-do, not FAM-talk. It takes the fam from family and the do from the execution of a plan. Until the national black community executes a plan that seeks to get our local communities from one level of success to the next, things will not change. We cannot continue to convene or congregate merely to talk about the issues...
...Let's switch gears and talk about the company's initial two products, advertisements and the FAMDO clothing line, as well as boycotts, transparency, and strategy.
Brand Choices and Advertisers
The size of the American advertising market was projected to be $256.5 billion in 2005.2 With the African-American annual buying power projected to be nearly a trillion dollars soon, this advertising expenditure offers a sizeable amount of money that FAMDO--and hopefully other black-owned media outlets--can capture to create wealth and employment in the black community.
Many companies, unfortunately, have not been as fair on advertising in media outlets owned by African Americans. For example, when Viacom bought Black Entertainment Television (BET), the executives at Viacom quickly ascertained that black households comprised 13% of the total television households but were the target of only about 1% of U.S. ad spending.3 If equity was being achieved with the nation's 2005 estimated ad expenditure of $256.5 billion, African Americans would be the target of approximately $33.3 billion versus the substandard $2.5 billion:
$256.5 billion x .13 (or 13%) = $33.3 billion
$256.6 billion x .01 (or 1%) = $2.5 billion
The additional ad money that would target African Americans could be used to staff more African-American media outlets, advertising agencies, television production companies, actors, and other jobs in the overall black community. Instead, the underrepresented 1% is going to media outlets that are often not owned by African Americans. This example of inequality in the marketplace must be eradicated.
For many years, national advertisers felt they could get their messages across to the black community via general outlets such as mainstream television stations, radio stations, websites, magazines, and other forms of media. FAMDO seeks to be proactive and set a new precedent in getting a company's message to the African-American community. This type of approach is much-needed due to the limited amount of media ownership by African Americans.
At the FAMDO.COM website, one can find the Brands Down With The FAM section. This aspect of the company is very important for the success of FAMDO and local African-American communities. We are great consumers in the fast foods, soft drinks, telephone services, automobiles, gasoline, athletic shoes and apparel, computers and related equipment, electronics, media, financial services, travel and lodging, and housing services markets. Currently, we spend billions of dollars in each of these categories and advertisers are seeking an entry to the FAMDO audience. These advertisers are seeking to get their message of why you should buy their brand across to as many as possible. FAMDO seeks to provide an easy way to identify companies and products that value giving back to African-American communities.
With FAMDO's resonating message of community empowerment, brands that want to do business with our national community should have a presence on the FAMDO website. Our support of these community-oriented brands should be solid and ongoing in the marketplace. This may not happen overnight, but we must begin to place a demand on the great number of companies that have come to rely on the African-American dollar.
The Digitalization of a Community
FAMDO seeks to be proactive in other ways when looking at the African-American selection of brands. With FAMDO gaining information from our "off-line" community as well as our "on-line" community, a strong strategy could be developed to maximize FAMDO's advertising and co-marketing efforts. The off-line community consists of African Americans in local salons and barber shops who do not use the Internet regularly. These customers from local shops could manually fill out a survey informing FAMDO which brands they prefer. The on-line community is comprised of the African Americans who do go on the Internet and they could also volunteer some information via a short on-line survey. The information FAMDO gains from both off-line and on-line participants would allow the company to clarify which products our national community prefers. There is tremendous value in this type of information and, our community must get to this level of strategy to capitalize on its buying power and patterns.
For example, if a FAMDO survey showed that 70% of our community prefers fast food A vs. fast food B, the company would use this powerful information for the most profitable marketing alliances and advertising deals. With this type of insight, the national African-American community would benefit without making major changes in its purchasing decisions. The information could also be gathered for products/services such as soft drinks, gasoline, athletic shoes, retailers, computer companies, home electronics, candy and gum, wireless phone service, Internet service providers, as well as other products and services. This is the power of information and ownership by a media outlet that's solely focused on equipping blacks for success.
It would be a definite plus for the company if most "on-line" African Americans willingly signed up to the FAMDO group email/newsletter. Through group emails, FAMDO could inform our community which brands are supporting the company's goal of community empowerment. National brands and companies would look forward to being a part of this list as FAMDO would seek to send these emails at strategic times. The most strategic times to get this information to our community is right before a purchase is made or, during peak shopping times such as back to school or Christmas. The key with this strategy is to make sure these emails are opened by as many as possible, which would assure us of a strong community support of these brands. This type of plan provides a way for African Americans to participate in an unprecedented model of cooperative economics.
Although this type of marketing may be new to our community, we should be aware that mainstream corporations and marketers are beginning to acknowledge the need for new ways of getting customers to buy their products. Observe what A.G. Lafley, chairman and CEO of Procter & Gamble said: "We need to reinvent the way we market to consumers. We need a new model."4 Procter & Gamble is the world's largest advertiser. Also, note what highly-respected marketer Sergio Zyman stated: "The trick is to find ways of creating content that can actually communicate the benefits of a brand to consumers. The answer isn't going to be a lot of commercials. We have to devise new methods to connect with customers, to give people information about why they should buy one product vs. another. That will require both traditional media and the Internet."5
Messrs. Lafley and Zyman, FAMDO agrees: new ways of getting consumers to purchase product are needed, and FAMDO has provided an efficient way of reaching the highly-targeted African-American consumer.
down with the fam