iHeartMedia and Wilmer Valderrama on Getting Marketers Out of Their Comfort Zone

Actor Wilmer Valderrama knew when he joined NCIS seven years ago that some members of prestige Hollywood might question his decision. “If you're an actor and you do a procedural show, I mean, that's like, elephants go to die. Right?” Valderrama said on stage at the Adweek X event in Los Angeles this week. “That's literally, that's like the graveyard.” But Valderrama wanted to connect with the show’s large, diverse audience of 300 million Americans, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, making it one of the most-watched shows on broadcast television. “The truth is that doesn't matter. Anyone who can get to the audience—that's the real estate. That's the equity,” Valderrama said. “I love the show. I love the audience that it speaks to. I love the demos ... A lot more Latinos are watching NCIS.” Mattress Firm's Branded Podcast Drives In-Store Sales With iHeartMedia Needless to say, Valderrama’s career did not go to the graveyard. He's the lead in an upcoming Disney+ television adaptation of Zorro. Marketers can learn from Valderrama. Many marketers design creative with their own preferences in mind, whether or not it appeals to mass audiences, according to research from iHeartMedia, which found key differences between marketers and American consumers. "We've never had more data in history, and I really would argue that I think we are making more and more biased decisions," said iHeartMedia chief marketing officer Gayle Troberman, discussing the research findings with Valderrama, a shareholder and executive producer at My Cultura, iHeart’s podcast network dedicated to elevating Latinx voices and stories. In one example, marketers claimed that NCIS is cringey. By contrast, the average consumer considers NFTs as cringey, while 40% of consumers have never heard of the crypto product. “How many briefs did you all send our way demanding that we must have an NFT strategy last year?” Troberman said. “Maybe our advertising is talking a little bit too much to us and not real people in the real world.” Recipe for Disaster: Impossible Foods CEO Says Plant-Based Meat Marketing's 'Wokeness' Hurt the Category The research also found that the average consumer makes one-half as much income as the average marketer and lives in the South, whereas many marketers live in the Northeast. And marketers and consumers differ in the importance of values like free speech, attitudes toward the military and religion. In not considering these values, marketers miss opportunities. Troberman referred to a conversation she had at an event about how shopping after church is a common tradition that advertisers could capitalize on. “Why wouldn't we be using that to market at that moment?” she asked. Valderrama added that Hollywood’s fear of getting out of its comfort zone can lead to predictable storylines. “Many of the individuals who greenlight projects—networks or streamers or studios—show how timid we are to perhaps tell stories that were not organically connected,” Valderrama said. “We forget that when we're the most uncomfortable in telling a story ... you're also inviting most to discover something that can be that common value.”

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iHeartMedia and Wilmer Valderrama on Getting Marketers Out of Their Comfort Zone

The pair discuss research showing how marketers must consider communities outside of their own

Catherine Perloff

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Catherine Perloff