Marketing to the Underserved

Posted by Mike O'Brien on March 25, 2025 in Postcards from the digital frontier | Leave a comment

Rethinking Value in a World That Ignores Too Many

There’s something unsettling about the word “underserved.” It sounds oddly polite—a harmless label for something that is anything but. Because let’s be honest: this is about exclusion. Systemic, structural, often deliberate. People left out, overlooked, or simply not considered. And as marketers, that should make us pause.

We pride ourselves on connection – on our ability to listen, empathise, and create value. But who are we really creating that value for? More often than not, it’s for people who already have plenty: time, money, access, bandwidth. The digital native, the frequent flyer, the contactless commuter. The ones with the newest phone and the data plan to match.

But what about the rest? The single parent choosing between mobile credit and a meal. The carer balancing two jobs. The refugee trying to rebuild their life from scratch. The neurodivergent adult the algorithm doesn’t recognise. The pensioner for whom digital exclusion isn’t just inconvenient – it’s isolating. These aren’t fringe cases. They are part of the real world, and they deserve better.

Marketing’s Blind Spot

For all our talk of “inclusion” and “customer-first thinking,” mainstream marketing still revolves around convenience, affluence and aspiration. We chase engagement, but only from certain types of people. We define “value” in narrow economic terms. We’re seduced by reach but often forget relevance.

In doing so, we write off entire markets – not because they’re not viable, but because they don’t fit the brief. Because their lives don’t resemble ours. Because they’re “hard to reach,” when in truth, they’re just rarely prioritised.

As someone who’s worked across brand strategy, campaign execution, and analytics, I can tell you this: the underserved don’t show up in the data because the system wasn’t designed to see them. And if you don’t see them, you certainly can’t serve them.

A Personal Perspective

I didn’t grow up in luxury. My family were Irish immigrants – working class, navigating the edge of the system. My father worked in demolition. My mother kept the house running, mostly by sheer will. There were times when things were tight, and there was no safety net. We lived by graft, resilience, and a quiet understanding that no one was coming to rescue us.

That background doesn’t make me unique. If anything, it gave me a glimpse into how many people live – with ingenuity, dignity, and constant adaptation. But it also made me sensitive to how systems are structured: who they benefit, who they exclude. Marketing, like every system, has blind spots. And it’s time we stopped pretending otherwise.

The Commercial Case for Compassion

There’s a strong moral argument for marketing to the underserved. But let’s be clear – it’s also smart business.

The underserved are not unreachable. They’re not unprofitable. They are simply unmet. That’s an opportunity. One that forward-thinking brands are already seizing.

Take M-PESA in Kenya. Developed by Safaricom, this mobile money service enabled millions of people without bank accounts to send and receive money via mobile phones. It didn’t just solve a problem – it reshaped the country’s economy. Within a decade, it helped lift 2% of Kenyan households out of poverty. Not bad for a product built on empathy, insight, and access.

Or consider Be My Eyes, the app that connects blind and low-vision individuals with sighted volunteers via video calls. What began as a grassroots initiative now includes partnerships with brands like Google and Microsoft, offering radically inclusive customer service. It’s not just smart UX – it’s good business, built on trust and belonging.

Then there’s WestJet, whose employee-led volunteer programme, WestJetters, exemplifies what community-driven marketing looks like in practice. More than a CSR checkbox, WestJetters are embedded in local communities across Canada and beyond – building homes with Habitat for Humanity, organising holiday flights for families in need, and offering meaningful support to people often left behind. This is marketing that connects at a human level: brand reputation built not through slogans but through service.

And finally, Kiva – a platform that redefines what it means to help. Kiva allows anyone to lend as little as £20 to entrepreneurs in underserved communities around the world. Farmers in Uganda. Shopkeepers in the Philippines. Tailors in Peru. Its genius lies in repositioning aid as dignified investment, not charity. With transparency, personal storytelling, and tangible outcomes, Kiva gives lenders a front-row seat to the impact of their support. It’s marketing that respects human potential – and shows what value looks like when it’s measured by empowerment, not extraction.

From Metrics to Meaning

If your entire marketing strategy is built around optimising for conversions, you’ll miss the bigger picture. The underserved don’t always behave in ways your dashboard expects. They may share devices. They may not click ads. They may rely more on offline word-of-mouth than digital influence. But they still make decisions. They still shape culture. And they still deserve to be seen.

What if we measured success not just in ROI, but in social return? What if we judged campaigns by their impact on access, dignity, and inclusion?

These aren’t fluffy ideals. They’re the foundations of long-term value creation. Because when you design for the margins, you often create innovations that benefit everyone.

Look at closed captions. Originally created for deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences, they’re now used widely – from noisy offices to silent scrolls and multilingual viewers. Accessibility drives utility. Always has.

ICONIC Thinking: A Framework for Action

When we , here at Jam Partnership, created the ICONIC planning model  – Investigate, Customers, Opportunities, Numbers, Implementation, Contribution – it was built to help marketers cut through the noise and build strategies that matter. It’s never been more relevant.

Here’s how ICONIC applies when marketing to the underserved:

• Investigate: Go beyond personas and PowerPoints. Step into real communities. Understand the lived barriers to access. Who’s being ignored—and why?
• Customers: Don’t define people by what they lack. Celebrate their adaptive brilliance. Co-create, don’t prescribe.
• Opportunities: Where can your brand remove friction? How can you simplify life or restore dignity?
• Numbers: Rethink your metrics. A whispered recommendation in a community centre may be more powerful than a thousand clicks.
• Implementation: Design for access – mobile-first, low-bandwidth, multilingual. Build with inclusion in mind, not as an afterthought.
• Contribution: What are you giving back? How is your brand showing up in a way that adds social value – not just noise?

This isn’t a checklist. It’s a mindset. One rooted in humility, curiosity, and responsibility.

Final Thought: From Ignored to Included

If we want marketing to mean something – beyond short-term performance spikes and brand vanity metrics – we need to look beyond the obvious. We need to start designing for dignity.

The greatest innovations often come not from serving the most privileged, but from meeting the needs of the most overlooked.

The underserved aren’t an afterthought. They are the next frontier of meaningful engagement. But only if we’re brave enough to stop talking about reach – and start talking about respect.

Let that be the new brief.

A deep dive podcast on the above article by Ai – my thanks to Larry and Mandy at Notebook LM