Stop saying multi-cultural; it’s cultural Australia
How much does a consumer’s cultural background influence the way they respond to marketing? Dentsu Mitchell and Neuro-Insight joined forces to find out, and David Hearn of Dentsu Mitchell reveals the findings.
28% of Australians are born overseas. In addition, 18% speak a language other than English at home. 
More importantly, these groups control over $96 billion or 20% of all Australian household expenditure.
In Australia, we spend approximately $8b on advertising and, while unaudited, $30m is allocated to multi-cultural advertising. With an ever-increasing pressure on the marketing dollar is it possible that the Australia represented in advertising is at odds with what we actually look like?
The notion we even use the term ‘multi-cultural’ allows us to create a segmentation approach to comms. A ‘nice have’ in planning rather than ‘must have’. Are we really ‘multi-cultural Australia’ or simply ‘a cultural Australia’?
Point 2 probably needs some more explaining as to how perception of an event boundary relates specifically to the 38% higher response in Chinese participants. A very interesting read; congratulations on the award and thanks for this piece.
Chinese by and large aspire to be treated on equal terms with Westerners, and in effect to be seen as Westerners, not as Orientals as viewed by Westerners. This is so in Singapore, Hong Kong, the big cities of mainland China, America, and here. Their dislike of ‘Mr Wong’-type imagery in ads or anywhere else parallels the complaints from the Jewish community that they were being stereotyped as Shylocks when an American company advertised with picture of a Hasidic diamond merchant and the tagline “If he doesn’t say it’s kosher…”