Australia’s never been more diverse, so how do you target multicultural audiences?
What constitutes a typical Australian? Truth is, it’s become almost impossible to answer as the country has transformed into one of the most diverse and multicultural in the world. Today, nearly half of all Aussies (49%) were either born overseas or have at least one parent who was.
More surprisingly, perhaps, one in three Sydneysiders speak a language other than English at home. All of which poses a dilemma for marketers who want to successfully communicate to groups they may not be familiar with, but who live in the country in huge numbers.
Last month, the 28th annual Australian Multicultural Marketing Awards, handed out by the NSW government, celebrated the creatives who did this well. Here, four of the winners give their top tips.
Don’t be afraid to challenge perceptions
KWP! For Surf Life Saving Australia – The Sport Award
KWP!’s video to both promote inclusion at Surf Life Saving and warn of the dangers of the sea is unashamedly terrifying. “I told the director I wanted the camera to be in the water so the viewer felt like they were drowning,” explains the agency’s creative director, Corey Swaffer. “We talked to lifeguards who rescued swimmers and asked them what survivors’ reactions were.
“They said it’s very claustrophobic, so we cut the sound. There’s no screaming. No yelling. It creates that sense of helplessness and isolation. The first time I watched it I got to the end and took a breath. It feels like you can’t breath. That was the creative direction.”
The campaign won SBS’ diversity challenge and, as its prize, received more than one million dollars of airtime. It was designed to challenge a perception that those who join the organisation are typically strong, white and male.
“There’s a cliched image of this bronzed-bodied, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Anglo-Saxon Aussie surfie,” adds Swaffer. “But you look at membership and it’s really diverse. Moreover, the definition of ‘Australian’ is completely different now to what it was in the Sixties and even the Eighties.”
The cleverness of the campaign came in its second function – finding the link between the diversity of the organisation and how the ocean, as the campaign slogan goes, doesn’t discriminate.
“With the joy of the beach comes the danger of the sea. So we wanted to find a common link to get everyone’s attention. It doesn’t matter who you are – the danger applies to everyone.”
Not all of your assumptions will be correct
ABS and Etcom for the 2016 census – winner of The Public Sector Award
There’s all sorts of problems in persuading residents from different cultures to complete the national census, not all of which will be immediately obvious. “Many Asian immigrants live in high-rise apartments,” explains Lou Petrolo, managing partner of Etcom, the agency tasked with the job. “If you’ve got a paper form, it often can’t be delivered under everyone’s door. People just weren’t getting them.”
That was just one of many issues facing the multicultural marketing agency appointed by the government with increasing the previously poor response rate. For instance, some cultures have a cultural sensitivity around sharing details, many lacked a computer to fill out the form online and some simply didn’t have good enough English skills to even be aware of what was going on.
Then consider that, since the last census in 2011, there’s been a huge influx of new migrants to Australia, meaning language groups were as diverse as Dari, Nepali and Telugu.
The scale of the task was not underestimated by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. “This was the largest culturally and linguistically diverse campaign ever conducted for a census,” explains Bindi Kindermann, census program manager. “It covered 30 language groups, included different communication platforms and had a strong level of community engagement.”
Etcom’s solution was to ensure their campaign was as wide-ranging as possible. There were face-to-face meetings with workshops and community groups, engagement with ethnic media, direct phone calls as well as a breathless series of promotions on TV, radio, web, social media and old-fashioned print brochures. “Some 90% of Chinese-born and more than 85% of Indian-born participants completed the Census online,” adds Kindermann. “Plus, it has also allowed us to build stronger relationships within communities which will be invaluable in the future.”
“What we found was that multicultural audiences actually like the census because it makes them feel legitimised,” concludes Petrolo. “They’re nervous, but they embrace it. We made assumptions about which were likely to complete the form online and which would use a paper document. But you just don’t know. Not all our hypotheses worked out how we thought, but we had cultural insights because we communicated with groups and were testing, learning and feeding our findings back in.”
Some words don’t exist in every language
SBS to promote Lunar New Year – The Communities Award
SBS promoted the Lunar New Year across Australia using a competition called ‘Find the Fire Rooster’. The premise was that the bird – the zodiac sign for the current Chinese New Year – would appear as an animation and trot across the SBS website. Its appearance was completely random, but if you found and clicked on it, you would be directed to a competition page.
“We needed something simple and entertaining that would raise awareness,” explains Mandi Wicks, SBS’ chief content officer. “The problem is that not all words have a translation into every language, but we wanted our piece to be for all Australians. We created bumpers for television, online, social media and had on-the-ground events, too.”
The competition resulted in 8,500 entries from language users as diverse as Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese and Korean, while the web page clocked up 32,000 unique browsers and five million impressions on social media. That now exhausted rooster, meanwhile, made more than a million appearances on the website over the course of the campaign.
“If you didn’t see him you would often spot little footprints on the site,” adds Wicks. “If you hovered over them you would be told he was nearby.”
Make sure the tone fits with your target audience
Westpac and Etcom for international students – The Business Excellence Awards
It’s become something of a marketing cliche to focus a large amount of effort on social media. But you’d be surprised how many cultures shy away from Facebook Messenger, Snapchat or WhatsApp in favour of more popular local alternatives. “We developed engaging videos with cultural influencers and Mandarin-speaking Westpac ambassadors that was shared across Youku, Weibo and WeChat,” explains Kristen Pelletier, a head of marketing for the bank with a focus on new arrivals. “Display banners also ran on sites such as BBS Tigtag, which is one of the largest forum websites in China targeted at international students.”
The bank’s aim was to educate prospective Chinese students considering studying in Australia about not just how to handle their money, but the new culture they would discover. Its success wasn’t just in choosing the right channel, either – Westpac worked with influential entrepreneur Benjamin Sun, a Chinese digital marketer, and local artist Luky.
The result was more than 13 million impressions across all the content and a 100% video completion rate. “A key part of the campaign was ensuring our language, tone and content fit with the Chinese culture and appealed to our audience,” says Pelletier. “In order to connect with a multicultural community, we needed to think differently and put ourselves in their shoes, so we had to test and learn as we went and spend the time understanding the cultural differences between China and Australia. One of the ways we did this was through connecting with our customers, and using their feedback to help develop a strategy that would appeal to our audience.”