Despite America’s changing demographics, diverse media companies receive a fraction of the country’s advertising dollars. Gonzalo del Fa is on a mission to get these companies the investment they need to compete.
Ever since Gonzalo entered the media business, he’s spent his days passionately telling brands why they should be spending more of their advertising dollars with media that is owned by, or caters to, diverse audiences. “US population growth is coming primarily from the Hispanic, Black, and Asian communities,” he would tell them, “You need to be sure your advertising is reaching and resonating with them.”
Today, as the President of GroupM Multicultural, Gonzalo no longer needs to explain why his clients should be investing in diverse media—he is too busy showing them how. “Because of the work we’ve done at GroupM these past few years and the changes in social awareness, we no longer have to convince anyone,” says Gonzalo. “We just have to help them do it.”
Thanks to Gonzalo, GroupM’s clients now have more ways to do it than ever. In 2019, Gonzalo helped launch GroupM’s New Majority Ready Coalition, a partnership of media brands including Univision, iHeartMedia, Disney, ViacomCBS, Meredith, Twitter, Google, and NBCUniversal that helps brands assess their readiness to reach the emerging American “minority majority.” One year later, he launched GroupM’s Multicultural Marketplace, giving brands easy access to ad inventory with more than 300 Black- and Hispanic-owned media outlets.
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Everyday I get to tell the world’s biggest brands how they can do better,” says Gonzalo. “That is only possible when you work for a company like GroupM.”
Last year, as part of GroupM’s Media Inclusion Initiative, Gonzalo elicited pledges from 20 of the world’s largest advertisers to spend 2 percent of their media budgets with Black-owned media companies. ”This was a direct result of GroupM using its leverage as the world’s largest media buyer to say, ‘We’re going this way. Do you want to come with us or not?’” says Gonzalo.
But Gonzalo is far from done. In addition to working with advertisers, Gonzalo’s position of industry leadership gives him the opportunity to work directly with diverse media companies and content creators, which he uses to show them how to attract a greater share of investment. “Many of these companies do not have marketing teams, so they might not know how to put a deck together or have experience answering the detailed questions in an RFP,” says Gonzalo. “We show them how to play in the big leagues and understand what large advertisers need from their media partners.”
Gonzalo is so passionate about his mission, he’d be working on it regardless of who his employer was. But because he works at GroupM, where he has access to the world’s most influential advertisers and media companies, he is able to see it come to fruition.