...increased diversity among marketing faculty leads to increased diversity among students majoring in Marketing at all levels, which in turn leads to greater diversity in individuals working in marketing and advertising departments. This in turns leads to marketing and advertising programs that are more sensitive to the needs of consumers from diverse backgrounds.

…with an increasingly diverse population, it becomes questionable whether theories developed and tested for, by, and of the dominant consumer group (i.e., White, Euro-Americans) can be appropriately applied to ethnic minority consumer groups (e.g., African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, etc.), who perhaps differ in terms of household compositions, values, lifestyles, self-perceptions, and aspirations. A significant challenge facing marketing researchers will be to adapt the methods and approaches that have been successful with non-minority populations to the special circumstances of racial/ethnic minorities.

"Traditional advertising is the price of being boring," says Sernovitz. After reading his book, and listening to his truely simple approach about how to make word of mouth (WOM) marketing really work, I think he's right.