Ann Poulose of Epsilon explores cultural complexity, media fragmentation, artificial intelligence, and the human connections reshaping marketing.

In a new episode of The New Mainstream Podcast, Mario Carrasco, Co-Founder of ThinkNow, sits down with Ann Poulose, Director of Growth Operations and Multicultural Media at Epsilon, to discuss the evolution of multiculturalmarketing and what brands need to remain relevant in an ever-changing marketplace.

Drawing on Ann's experience helping build Starcom Hispanic and its evolution into Tapestry, the conversation explores the relationship between culture, business growth, media fragmentation, and emerging technologies.

Multicultural Marketing Is a Growth Strategy

Throughout her career, Ann has witnessed the industry's shifting interest in multicultural marketing. Investment and attention have fluctuated, but the need to understandculturally diverse audiences remains.

One of the conversation's most important points is the distinction between multicultural marketing and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Although the two concepts can overlap, Ann explains that multicultural marketing serves a specific business purpose: identifying growth opportunities by understandingdifferent consumer communities.

This distinction becomes especially important as brands reassess their priorities and the role of multicultural strategies within their broader business objectives.

Multicultural marketing isn't just about who appears in a campaign. It's about understanding who you're trying to reach and building relevant connections that drive business growth.

There Is No Single Multicultural Consumer

Hispanic, Black, Asian, and other multicultural audiences are often analyzed as distinct segments. Yet within each group exists a wide range of identities, experiences, interests, and perspectives.

During the conversation, Ann reflects on her experience as an Indian American and how personal history influences cultural identity and a sense of belonging.

She also shares experiences outside the advertising industry that reinforced an important lesson: understanding people requires listening first, rather than making assumptions about their lives.

The takeaway is clear: understanding an audience means moving beyond broad demographic categories and recognizing the complexity within each community.

This is particularly relevant as brands seek to develop more precise audience segmentation and communication strategies that reflect how people actually live.

Media Has Changed. Audience Strategy Must Change with It.

When Ann began her career, reaching multicultural audiences often meant working with a more concentrated set of media channels. Today, attention is spread across streaming platforms, social media, content creators, digital communities, and an expanding range of entertainment and information sources.

This fragmentation has made connecting with consumers more complex.

At the same time, advances in data and targeting create new opportunities to understand consumers through additional dimensions, including their interests, behaviors,and passions.

As Mario points out during the conversation, the evolution of audience intelligence makes it possible to address the complexity of multicultural consumers with greater precision.

The challenge is understanding where each audience's attention is, what motivates engagement, and how brands can become relevant in those spaces.

In a recent conversation on The New Mainstream Podcast, ThinkNow Co-Founder Mario Carrasco sat down with Matt Lawler, VP of Data & Insights, Global Partnerships at AEG, to talk about fandom, live entertainment, data and the changing ways brands understand audiences.

One idea stood out:

Knowing someone’s demographic profile doesn’t necessarily tell you what will move them.

A demographic label only tells part of the story

Lawler argues that brands can become so focused on “diversity” that they miss what actually connects people.

Race, ethnicity, gender and age are important signals. But consumers are also shaped by beliefs, behaviors, interests, communities and cultural affinities.

His example is simple: Kobe Bryant.

Put Kobe in front of Lakers fans and people from completely different backgrounds can immediately share a connection. The cultural symbol becomes a unifying force that cuts across other differences.

That matters for marketers because the most relevant audience may not always be defined by a traditional demographic category. It might be defined by what people share.

From demographics to behavior

Technology is making that distinction even more important.

Lawler points to the rise of personalization and increasingly precise targeting.

Brands can understand interests, behaviors and mindsets that reveal much more about what might drive someone toward a purchase.

The question becomes:

What characteristics actually predict the behavior we care about?

That could mean identifying people around an artist, a sports team, a lifestyle, a hobby or a particular mindset rather than relying primarily on broad demographic groups.

Smaller cultural communities can also become disproportionately influential. Lawler points to sneakerheads as an example: once viewed as a niche subculture, theynow influence some of the world's biggest footwear brands.

Today’s niche audience can become tomorrow’s mainstream consumer.

Culture gives brands the “why”

For brands,deeper audience intelligence starts by understanding the beliefs and behaviorsbehind an identity.

· What does this community value?

· What brings these people together?

· What role can the brand authentically play?

Lawler's advice is especially relevant for brands trying to enter cultural spaces: understand what is already happening, listen to the community and identify where the brand can genuinely add value.

Because ultimately:

Demographics can help tell you who your audience is. Culture and behavior can help explain why they act.

And understanding that difference may be one of the biggest opportunities for marketers trying to reach the audiences shaping what's next.

The United States spent $5.3 trillion on healthcare in 2024, approximately $15,474 per person. Healthcare spending represented nearly 18% of the entire U.S. economy.

With a figure of this magnitude, one question is hard to ignore: what are we getting in return?

This was one of the central questions in the conversation between Mario Carrasco and Aaron Fields, MHA, ACC, on The New Mainstream Podcast. For Fields, understanding where value is being created within all this spending is fundamental to thinking strategically about the future of healthcare.