Brands need to prepare for the changing face of society, says Loud CEO Lorraine Jokovic, who says if your brand is in the mainstream, you need to be be speaking to people of all backgrounds – especially with a new census around the corner.
While Australia is still a predominantly English speaking country, with 76% of Australians speaking only English at home according to the 2011 census, Jokovic believes with a new census due in 2016, these numbers are only going to shrink further, and brands need to prepare for the changing face of society
“Companies have to address that because we live in a multicultural community and society” she said. “If you consider yourself a mainstream brand and you're not addressing these audiences, when you look at our population break down, then you're not a mainstream brand.”
Jokovic explained that when you look at the census data even further, in half of the local government areas of Western Sydney, English is the second language spoken at home.
The comments follow recent controversy surrounding Optus which removed Arabic ads from a shopping centre at Casula, in south-west Sydney, after threats were made to staff and abusive posts made on its Facebook page. While Optus removed the ads in that particular location on safety grounds, the telco did not remove ads elsewhere and continued on strategy in its response to the abusive tweets – promoting its stance on communicating with people of all backgrounds.
CEO of multicultural marketing agency, Multiconnexions, Sheba Nandkeolyar told AdNews that the fact that the company did not side-step its multicultural strategy is important.
“Extreme views will always exist no matter what the circumstances, but as long as you believe in what you're doing, you're just going to go ahead and do the right thing,” Nandkeolyar said.
“It shows that the brand or the company is serious about multicultural marketing and realise the value in what they're doing. And when you recognise the value in what you are doing it's not a short term strategy that you're looking at, this really is about building relationships.
“Those foundations take years to build, so you don't want to suddenly pull back from one incident.”
Nandkeolyar said that potentially one third of a marketer's audience is coming from outside English-speaking audiences, but that most market research undertaken still aims to understand the mainstream audience.
She said there are “cultural differences which are really deep rooted and that drive behaviour”, especially when it comes to purchase decision making, and marketers who ignore this are missing out on a lucrative market.
“What are we trying to achieve with marketing? We're trying to achieve a drilled down understanding of each consumer so we're able meet his or her needs,” Nandkeolyar said.
“In order to do that, you need to understand the consumer inside out. We need to rally those cultural differences to make it work for us.”
Jokovic said overseas companies don't split their marketing between 'mainstream' and 'multicultural' but rather look at total market communications, and she said it's time Australian marketers look at it in the same light.
“I have seen an increase in companies looking at multicultural marketing, but they’re so far behind the eight ball,” Jokovic said.
“But what brands need to understand is that it's beyond language, it's about culture.”
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