SunRice and Identity win NSW Premier’s award for multicultural communications

SunRice and Identity win NSW Premier’s award for multicultural communications

by | Dec 6, 2019 | Chinese Marketing, Multicultural Marketing

AdNews, 6 December 2019

SunRice and Identity, a division of IPG Mediabrands, have won the Business Campaign of the Year at the 2019 NSW Premier’s Multicultural Communications Awards.

The campaign challenged stereotypes because it didn’t feature the usual cultural icons of red, gold and ‘8’.

Instead, SunRice the Rice Breaker, depicted a Chinese-Australian family sharing a meal with their local Australian neighbours.

Inclusion was a key message – as a rice brand that is universally appealing, SunRice is able to connect people of different cultures over great food.

“SunRice is thrilled our campaign has been recognised with this award,” says Andrew Jeffrey, SunRice head of marketing.

“The outstanding results demonstrate the crucial importance of audience insights in building authentic engagement with our Asian-Australian customers. The audience insight that Identity Communications brought to the table was invaluable.”

Thang Ngo, managing director at Identity: “From day one, SunRice told us they wanted to build an authentic connection with Australia’s Asian community. The client recognised the importance of developing a robust strategy and bespoke creative.”

Other winning marketing campaigns at the NSW Premier’s Multicultural Communications Awards:

Agency Campaign of the Year: Cultural Perspectives – Your Vote Will Help Shape Australia

Voting is a right for all Australians but enrolling, assessing candidates and casting a ballot is a challenge for people with low English language-speaking proficiency. The Your Vote Will Help Shape Australia campaign by Cultural Perspectives aimed to make voting easier and support increased participation by sharing voting information in 30 different languages across print, radio, and online.

AFL NSW/ACT Community Campaign of the Year – Hindu Council of Australia – Deepavali Fair
Aiming to increase Deepavali Fair attendance by 10% to 30,000, the Hindu Council advertised on Hindi satellite television channels, in Indian language newspapers, via social media and through flyers and banners around local schools and major intersections. As well as meeting attendance targets, the Council successfully increased sponsorship revenue by 15%.

Other winners of the 2019 Premier’s Multicultural Communications Awards:

Best Audio Report: Manpreet Kaur Singh, Shamsher Kainth, Avneet Arora and Maya Jamieson – SBS Punjabi
Best Audio-Visual Report: Andrea Booth – NITV, The Point
Best Print Report: Zia Ahmad – AMUST
Young Journalist of the Year: Xinrui (Rena) Li – Sydney Today
Best Use of Digital or Social Media: Sirine Demachkie and Kinderling Kids Radio – Mother Tongue
Public Interest Award: Avani Dias – triple j Hack
Alan Knight Student Award: Nadine Silva
Publication of the Year: AMUST
Lifetime Achievement Award: Antoine Kazzi OAM – El Telegraph

5 tips for your next Chinese Influencer Event

5 tips for your next Chinese Influencer Event

by | Jul 8, 2019 | Chinese Marketing, Multicultural Marketing

By Wei Ng, Account Director 

 

Last week, Identity Communications had the pleasure of bringing together a group of Chinese social media influencers, also known as Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs), to test drive Hyundai’s exciting Electric Vehicle range: the KONA Electric, IONIQ plug-in Hybrid and IONIQ Electric.

The day went down very well thanks to Sydney putting on a sunny face to keep the rain clouds away for our drive into the beautiful Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park.

Here are five tips that will help to achieve a successful event for client, influencers and project planner (i.e. yourself).

1. Do a site reconnaissance before the event day

This will take time out of your diary but it’s crucial if you want the day to pan out to expectations. As much as possible, we scouted possible driving routes to ascertain the best one, visited pitstops and ideate on photoshoots, ensured the lunch spot catered for a big group of guests and clocked the whole journey to see if we could fit all the activities in. Whether it’s a test drive, a sit-down function or any influencer event you are planning for, a full practise run is invaluable to minimise potential hiccups on the actual day.

The morning presentation is set up the day before.

2. Make sure everyone speaks English (or a common language)
On any other occasion, this wouldn’t even cross your mind. But to host an event where your social media influencers and the media organisations are planning to create content in Chinese, it makes sense to ensure that, while they’re well-versed in Chinese, they should also have an adequate level of English proficiency. After all, they will be required to translate your client’s press releases or answers to Q&As into Chinese, and can only do so accurately if they are proficient enough in English. That said, have someone who can be that go-to person for both clients and influencers to interpret information bilingually. For example, we had someone who spoke in Mandarin to the media and influencers throughout the day, for simple things such as rounding the group for a photoshoot with the cars or translating technical words about car specs. It helps to keep the influencers and media at ease when someone speaks their language.

3. Allow plenty of time for influencers to create and share content in real time
You may assume a test drive will merely involve a lot of driving, close-up shots of alloy wheels and peering under the car hood. None of that happened, except for the driving. Instead, there were drones, poses in scenic locations along the route with the cars, influencers gaping in awe as one of the Electric Vehicles self-parked, and A LOT of selfies. After all, it wasn’t about selling wheels. It’s about being inspired and finding the inspirational in these cars. Moreover, the influencers were immediately logging onto their social platforms to share as soon as they finished their selfies. The instant creating and sharing won’t be the full extent of what influencers are giving back to the day, but it is part and parcel. The more time you give them, the more they are able to share with their thousands of followers a taste of what’s to come and to build excitement.

A group shot posted online on the day immediately received hundreds of likes.

4. Engage a professional for photo and film shoots
The influencers are recorders of the event but to do the project justice, have a professional capture the day. This ensures you cover every aspect that’s important for your brand. It’s great for internal press releases for the client to share within the business. Furthermore, such content becomes your client’s property and can then be shared on owned platforms or for you to share with other media and gain additional PR.

A social media influencer being filmed on location

5. Involve the clients
The client is the brand expert. But technical specifications and brand history aside, Chinese social influencers love it when the client team takes the time to go through the whole experience with them, to entertain every question raised and to demonstrate what makes their product uniquely different. It’s akin to special treatment and that is something no press release or gift pack can match. The client will enjoy going through the experience too because if your invited Chinese influencers are being themselves, they’re sure to be entertaining and fun.

Scott Nager, Senior manager of Future Mobility and Government, demonstrating the Nexo’s self-parking capabilities.

A Slice of life in Tokyo, a view from the sushi train…

A Slice of life in Tokyo, a view from the sushi train…

by | May 23, 2019 | Culture

I saw the video below from a tweet by Drew Coffman.

It made me smile.

I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The slice of life realness and the varied reactions of diners are fascinating.

The GoPro image was taken by Vlogger Tkyosam, an American living in Tokyo who captures his adventures on camera.

But apparently not everyone is a fan. Sushiro, the sushi chain featured in in this clip, has banned photography in their restaurants and claim they will prosecute offenders.

Some have claimed there’s a gulf in terms of etiquette between East and West. I’m not sure if cultural differences are a major factor here. Apparently most of the negative reactions have been about privacy and food safety. They sound like pretty universal concerns to me.

Sometimes, it’s harder for people to recognise similarities because they are more concerned about finding differences.

I’d say, enjoy this clip. And smile.

The right balance in multicultural marketing

The right balance in multicultural marketing

by | Mar 12, 2019 | Chinese Marketing, Multicultural Marketing

Since our SunRice campaign launched during Lunar New Year, we’ve had lots of interest from clients and prospects. They’re particularly interested about IDENTITY Communication’s view on multicultural talent in creative.

I always start with this story…

“Box Hill is a well-known Chinese suburb. There are all Chinese billboards on the street and 9 out 10 are Asian faces. You see more international (non-Chinese) people in Shanghai than here” Weibo post. 

It came up in branding work for a large retail client earlier this year. During the insight and discovery phase, this nugget unlocked a crucial insight that had us reassessing our recommendation. Surely, you’d expect Chinese in Australia to love being in an area that is predominantly Chinese, right?

Maybe not…

In higher education, particularly in courses which Chinese international students are the predominant group enrolled, these students are finding that too much of a good thing might not be good after all. Some are craving more diversity in their class and express an interest to mix outside of their group to get a more authentic experience of Australia and Australian education.

That’s lead us to this insight:

Being lumped in with people like you all the time is comforting at first, but before long, you want to explore and experience more of Australia. After all, isn’t that why migrants and international students come to a sunburnt country?

But how should we treat these audiences in multicultural creative? Is it to make sure everyone is represented, like below? 

But what if you miss one group? Awkward. And how do you avoid producing creatives that come across as tokenistic?

Take a look at NAB’s Life – More Than Money campaign above. A well told story that focuses on a universal truth. We all love and want success for our children, don’t we? So let’s tell that story from one perspective, in this case, it’s an Asian-Australian one.

The single-minded  focus makes this creative more powerful, more compelling. It’s one of my favourite ads of recent years.

Context is important, too. Instead of being a United Nations of representation, bringing it back to what’s authentic and real.

The Rice Breaker, our campaign for SunRice, depicted a uniquely migrant experience of inviting your neighbour to dinner for the first time.

It’s real, it doesn’t feel tonkenistic.

Migrants don’t live in their own bubble so we should find ways to represent that in creative.

How does that compare with multicultural creative you’ve seen lately? Where does it fit in the tokenistic/cliche to authentic scale? Think about the Chinese New Year creative you’ve seen lately… red and gold, 8’s, papercut pigs, smiling Chinese family in traditional costume, much?

Oh, and make sure this more inclusive approach is reflected in your media investment. Your media plan should use all relevant touch points; a ‘mainstream’ channel like Out of Home might be just perfect to extend your campaign reach.

I’m glad IDENTITY’s work has inspired and stirred interest. Really looking forward to seeing great creative that genuinely reflects modern Australia.

Seen any other great work lately? Share it with us in the comments. 

SunRice brings cultures together in Chinese New Year campaign

SunRice brings cultures together in Chinese New Year campaign

by | Feb 8, 2019 | Uncategorized

Mumbrella, 5 February 2019

SunRice has launched a new campaign which attempts to bring different cultures together over rice.

The ad, which has been created for Chinese New Year, features a new migrant family hosting their neighbours for dinner. The long silence is broken with the SunRice is brought out.

Throughout the ad people are seen eating the rice in different ways, including with tomato sauce.

The ad was created by Identity Communications.

Andrew Jeffrey, head of marketing at SunRice, said in a statement: “Chinese New Year is the biggest cultural occasion for the community, and we wanted to be there to celebrate this special occasion with them.

“As a proud Australian brand, we want to show our Asian consumers that we understand the aspirations of modern Asian-Australian families. Our Asian family is proud of their heritage, but they are also eager to be part of the Australian community.”

Thang Ngo, managing director at Identity Communications, added: “here are around one million Chinese speakers in Australia, making this audience highly attractive for brands. Just using red and gold colours or number 8’s in creative doesn’t cut-through anymore.

“It’s not new, doesn’t stand out and doesn’t demonstrate an understanding beyond cultural clichés. Brands need to demonstrate more sophistication and deeper understanding if they want to build an authentic connection with this valuable audience.”

The campaign is rolling out on SBS TV and Chinese and Vietnamese channels including Pay TV, digital, print and online.

Credits

Client: SunRice

  • Head of Marketing & Insights: Andrew Jeffrey
  • Senior Marketing Manager: Shannon Cumberlidge
  • Brand Manager: Peta Thomas

Agency: Identity Communications

  • Managing Director: Thang Ngo
  • Head of Studio: Tobias Young
  • Creative Director: Yasmin Quemard
  • Art Director: Rachel Liang
  • Writers: Yasmin Quemard, Brenda Leung and Sean Zhu
  • Translation Management: Brenda Leung, Albert Han
  • Designer: Rachel Liang
  • Head of Strategy: Thang Ngo
  • Client Services Director: Angelica Naranjo
  • Production Coordinator: Murray Wallace
  • Lead Developer: Dipak Sadaul
  • Production Company: Clockwork Film