percent are black, 7 percent are
Latino, 4 percent are Asian
American and 0.7 percent are
Native American. More than 3,200
of the agency owners are bilingual.
And the company’s brochures are
printed in several languages.
At BCBS of Florida, Zayas says
the company has seen a 75 percent
increase the past several years in the
number of Latino agents or brokers
who offer the company’s services.
Zayas estimates that 60 percent of
the independent agents offering
BCBS are Latino. “We have made
and universities (HBCUs) all over
the country, Pickford says.
The company also attends diversity job fairs, advertises job openings in a wide variety of online and
print sources and recently participated in an Asian job fair in
Washington, D.C.
Allstate also sponsors dinners
and hosts booths at national conventions with diverse audiences
including the NAACP, the
National Urban League and the
National Council of La Raza.
BCBS of Florida says informa-
Allstate sponsored a
booth at the Dragon
Boat Festival to better
connect with Chinese-American consumers.
great strides in
this area,” he said.
“I tell my colleagues in
Jacksonville, take a good look at
what’s happening in South Florida,
because Jacksonville will look just
like this in coming years,” Zayas
says. “So it’s important that we win
in Miami because we’ll be fighting
this same battle for years.”
Unless your company is reaching
out to diverse organizations and
groups, it’s difficult to effectively
recruit salespeople of color. At
Allstate, recruiters attend college
events at historically black colleges
tion on their members is proprietary. Allstate does not track the
ethnicity of customers.
3. Form Strategic
Partnerships. If you look at
Allstate’s television commercials,
you’ll notice that the company has
well-known black actor Dennis
Haysbert as its spokesperson. “He
has resonated very well,”
VanLammeren says.
If you saw a similar commercial
on Telemundo, you’d see Esai
Morales as Allstate’s pitchman.
VanLammeren says the choice of
Haysbert and Morales as company
spokespeople is part of a two-tier
approach to attract customers from
diverse communities.
The first part includes national
marketing efforts designed to
attract diverse customers. Local
Allstate agents can put a tagline at
the end of these commercials that
directly connects them with the
diverse customers targeted by the
commercials. The second part of
the strategy is partnerships with
groups that serve these communities.
VanLammeren says Allstate
works specifically with HBCUs
Howard and Hampton Universities
and with Hispanic-serving institute
The University of Puerto Rico.
Nationally, the company funds and
participates in OCA’s hate-crimes
workshops for Asian Americans.
These partnerships serve a dual
purpose—they create goodwill in
the communities Allstate is trying
to reach and they connect the company’s sales agents with people in
these communities.
When these groups sponsor local
events, Allstate makes sure their
sales agents are there. “This is one
of the ways we directly connect our
salespeople with these groups,”
VanLammeren says.
At the dragon-boat races, for
example, Allstate agents pitched
their services to thousands of
Chinese Americans.
BCBS of Florida also has used
smart philanthropic outreach and
strategic partnerships to its advantage. Recently, a national television
crew was filming a segment in
Domino Park in Miami’s Little
Havana. When the cameraperson
zoomed in on the tables where the
players were sitting, viewers
throughout the country saw the
prominent BCBS logo. The company had donated the tables. DDII
