New migrants are an immediate source of potential consumers for your brand. Brenda Leung, Identity Communications Insights and Production Manager writes about some of the potential.
Australia has been a “nation of settlers” since the European settlements in the late 18th century. Since then, migration has been continuously a major contribution to the annual population growth of the country, resulting in a mix of various cultural and linguistic backgrounds in its population. In the past 5 years, there has been a significant change in the migration regarding the number of new arrivals and the origins of these settlers.
Apart from getting themselves familiar with and enrolled in various systems in Australia, what do our CALD (Culturally and Linguistically Diverse) consumers need? Do they need the same products as everybody else in Australia? Does every single product in the market suit the multicultural consumers? If not, what products are the most desirable in the multicultural market?
REAL ESTATE: No matter how different the settlement plans are from individual to individual, searching for places to rent or purchase is one of the most significant steps of all migrants once they set their feet on the ground of a new country. Migrants from the same cultural backgrounds tend to cluster in the same areas creating a familiar environment. They also place high regards on peer-to-peer endorsement of services in their own language, which has created a niche industry of influencers. It is not surprising when you find out the Chinese speaking estate agents actually outnumber the English speaking in suburbs like Hurstville.
TELECOMMUNICATIONS: migrants want to stay in regular contact with family and friends back in home. Naturally, migrants over-index for international calls (landline and/or with mobiles), SMS and various interactive and social media channels. Being heavy users of the telecom products could mean the multicultural consumers have to be price savvy. Coupling with the desire to retain the existing customers, bundled telecom products at special price offered by the service providers have become the focus to cater to the need of the multicultural segments.
CALD consumers are always on the lookout for new mobile phones with new features and functions. Changing handsets to keep up with the latest is common among the young age group. Key CALD communities that over-index in their intention to purchase or upgrade their mobile phones include Arabic (ix 145), Greek (ix 160), Mandarin (ix 120) and Punjabi (ix 112)1.
BANKING AND INSURANCE: While migrants stay in contact with their original homeland, they also look for a bright future with a sense of security in the new country. There is a desire for a well established and reliable financial institution that can help them to plan and grow their wealth, providing a brighter, more secure future for their family.
Young skilled migrants with a high education level and self-funded middle-class specialists have provided Australia strong skilled human capital and resources. Sound financial management and growing wealth are important for this CALD segment.
Banking products that help manage their financial needs along the settlement process will certainly be popular, including credit or debit cards, daily transaction accounts, wealth creation/investment products.
ANZ Lunar New Year Campaign, 2018.
Buying property as the first home or investment with home loans offered from the bank to secure a financial future, or for the next generation, is not uncommon amongst CALD communities, so investment loans and packaged products are appealing to their “palate”.
New migrants show a greater propensity to setting up new businesses of their own. According to the 2018 CGU Report, on thrid of small and medium business owners in Australia are from a multicultural background2. Business loans products would be of interest to this entrepreneurial group.
Online money transfer is also one of the high demand services as it is common for the migrants to continue sending money back to support their parents/family back in their home country.
FMCG: With such diversity in the cultural backgrounds of the Australian population, it is important for retailers to cater for the need of the lucrative multicultural consumers. It is not uncommon to see special sections with various Asian, Indian, Halal and Kosher products on the shelves in the big supermarkets, or individual community grocery shops with focus put on unique cultural merchandise. With different cultural festivals or celebrations like Chinese New Year, Passover, Diwali, and more happening during the year, shop managers can see increases in sales for specific food products related to the cultural festivals at certain times. Brands are getting into the festive spirit with decoration and stocking popular items for the occasion such as watermelons (below).
Lunar New Year Woolworths Cabramatta
Spend on FMCG retailing amongst the CALD consumers displays a faster growth rate than the Australian born group. In the next 5 years, the Asian-born consumers will play an important role in the sales in the grocery sector, accounting for 57% of the total growth, with distinctive differences in food preferences. 32% of Asian CALD consumers’ grocery spend is allocated to fresh food when compared with 26% amongst the Australian-born consumers. They are also keen on the options of seafood, fresh herbs and healthier food in general. So meeting the needs of the Asian-born consumers is essential in developing new business opportunities. Brands that are in play and being able to connect with the Asian consumers through strategic communications will make their mark early on this growing group and obtain advantages over their competitors in enjoying the benefit of these lucrative and savvy consumers3.
AUTO: Just like the FMCG sector, with the change in the demographic regarding the cultural backgrounds in the population mix of Australia, being aware of the need to reach out and engage with the CALD consumers is crucial to thriving vehicle sales. Different CALD groups have their own preferences when it comes to the choice of vehicles and brand preference from the home country. Different communities have different priorities when it comes to value, safety, performance and reliability. A recommendation through “word of mouth” from friends can often cut-through, so building brand awareness and preference with existing migrant groups can help. _________________________________________________ 1 Roy Morgan data, December 2017 2 CGU Migrant Small Business report, 2018 3 Asian-Born Australians Driving New Opportunities in Food Retailing, Nielsen Ethnic-Australian Consumer Report, June 2017
Tailoring your creative to specific multicultural audiences will deliver a 100% increase in engagement, says Thang Ngo. Marketers need to see the value in true bespoke multicultural creative to capture the attention of their entire audience.
Almost five million Australians speak a language other than English at home, according to the 2016 Census – up 20% from five years ago!
Brands looking for new growth opportunities are increasingly eyeing their multicultural marketing potential. But when the ‘rubber hits the road’, marketers and their agencies rightly devote time and resources to getting the media schedules right but often default to running their ‘mainstream’ creative assets when clearly bespoke creative would be considerably more effective.
How effective you may ask? We are seeing a 100% increase in engagement in some instances when culturally relevant creative work is introduced.
Advertising basics recognise the complementary contribution of media and creative in an effective campaign. But at the first creative development hurdle for their multicultural campaign, advertisers are often signing off on less effectiveness by running mainstream creativity.
Many clients think it’s too hard or costly to develop bespoke in-language creative for their brands, overwhelmingly opting to translate their existing ‘mainstream’ creative. I am sure that instinctively clients know that a lack of relevant creative reduces the performance of their campaigns.
Their media schedule might provide great reach and cost effectiveness, but the creative could turn the audience off.
Of course, one size does not fit all. Budget, timing and other factors come in to play in the real world. Here are some considerations that might help focus more attention to multicultural creative development:
Budget – If the marketing budget is limited, it might not be feasible to invest in bespoke creative because it might take a disproportionate share of the budget.
Timing – In-language creative often takes longer to produce, sourcing the right talent from a limited pool and translation lead time might complicate your logistics.
Creative capacity – There isn’t the breadth of creative and production talent compared to mainstream, so this may impact on the quality of the message you are crafting.
Collaboration – Consider if your current creative agency could work with a cultural consultant during creative concept and development.
Face to camera – If it’s just a voiceover, then consider re-voicing the commercial.
Customise static assets – TV production requires a larger budget, but if you’re doing a print advert that has talent, consider shooting the mainstream material with a mix of talent or shooting talent that’s from a relevant community for your campaign.
Product benefit – Particularly in the beauty category, a well-known culturally relevant talent may be the inspiration for this audience, so maybe subtitling is all that’s needed. However, if the benefits of a beauty product might be better demonstrated on someone with a skin tone similar to your target audience, the talent choice may not be appropriate.
Your brand – If you are a major multinational, and you’re investing a significant budget in media, is there an expectation that you should develop tailored creative for the target community?
Brand sentiment benefits – In an environment where creative is almost always translated from mainstream, consider the significant uplift in positive brand sentiment from investing in bespoke creative.
ROI – Brands that appreciate and focus on tailoring their creative to multicultural audiences will reap the benefit of a little extra investment. It’s advertising 101.
Ignore the importance of multicultural creative development at your own peril.
Thang Ngo is managing director at Identity Communications.
Well it’s not. Some you you might have heard of Songkran in Thailand. If you haven’t then you really, really should look at the video below. It’s too fun for words.
What’s Songkran? Songkran is a three day festival which celebrates Thai New Year which starts on 13 April 2018. April is the hottest month of the year so not surprisingly water features prominently. But it’s not (just) about getting wet and wild, when Thais throw water at you it’s not because they don’t like you and want to wet your best tourist clothes. The idea is to wash away back luck from the previous year so you can start the new year fresh.
But it’s just not Thais who celebrate new year at this time. Khmer, Lao and Tamil communities celebrate their new year at during this time also.
Where can you celebrate in Sydney?
Leumeah’s Wat Pa Buddharangsee in Sydney’s south west hosts one of the biggest Thai New Year celebrations in Sydney (above), with food stalls, opportunity to make offerings to monks and of course, it all ends with one big water fight – make sure you dress for fun.
Wat Phrayortkeo Dhammayanaram, Edensor Park (above) is where you should go for a delicious Lao new year. The food is soooo good.
If you want to celebrate with Sydney’s Khmer community, why to visit the Wat Khemarangsarm in Bonnyrigg.
So what are you waiting for? Let’s celebrate the New Year all over again.
Just in time to welcome the Year of the Dog, Brenda Leung, Identity Communications Insights and Production Manager writes about New Year gift giving.
Gift giving plays an important role in Asian culture, especially during cultural festivals and special occasions. The Lunar New Year is the perfect time to prepare something special for your loved ones. It is essential to get something heartfelt, and at the same time meaningful with a good will message embedded in the gift. So choosing an appropriate and presentable New Year gift could be a headache; ranging from wines to food and tea, and to suit a variety of tastes for young and old.
Here are some quick ideas for the two most popular gift choices for you to consider.
Traditionally, Chinese and many other Asian cultures believe taking a precautionary approach is the most effective way to maintain good health conditions, and the most common practice to achieve this is through consumption of natural herbs or food with good nutritional values. For this reason, no other gifts can be better than any nourishing and nutritious herbs/food that can benefit one’s health with good nutritional value or natural remedies outcomes, especially if that gift is for the senior member in the family.
To make the process of getting the herb/natural food gifts easier, there are supplements of various brands available in supermarkets and pharmacist’s shops where you can find nutritious herbs and medicines such as various types of vitamins, fish oil, wolfberries, jujube dates, black sesame seeds, ginseng root and royal jelly. They’re stacked on shelves taking up the entire aisle, usually in gift boxes and are ready to give away as gifts. There are always the supplements that are suitable for certain age groups or one for the whole family.
Nowadays, supplements are the “modern form” of the traditional natural herbs and remedies, and can also make fantastic Lunar New Year gifts. They are particularly well received by people living in cities than those in rural areas, who are leading a busy life and are more likely to show others that they are always in the new trend.
Red Packets
For children, red packets with money inside are the most popular gifts during New Year. Who isn’t happy to get additional pocket money? Or for those parents who have long-run plans for the next generation, it is a good time to open a bank account and start the whole financial management journey for their children, with an educational purpose behind the whole idea.
No matter what gifts you are going to present to your family and friends, what’ most important is the loving thoughts – goodwill wishes of happiness, wellness and prosperity.
Money talks! How these brands are cashing in on Chinese New Year.
Even though the Lunar New Year is celebrated by many communities such as Vietnamese and Korean, the sheer size of the Chinese dollar, or should we say Yuan, means many brands conveniently only recognising it as Chinese New Year.
Here are a few examples of brands cashing in on the Lunar New Year in 2018. Come back regularly, we’ll update this post as new campaigns launch.
City of Sydney
While most other Sydney council celebrate Lunar New Year, it’s Chinese New Year for the City of Sydney, which speaks volumes about their the People’s Republic of China’s generous in-kind support of the Festival as well as the abundant investment and business potential.
Chobani Chobani’s Chinese New Year Batch combines mandarin with Greek yogurt decorated with red and gold packaging as symbols of good luck and prosperity which also features a dragon composed from mandarin.
The Star
Sydney’s Casino is cashing in (pun intended) with food, competitions and promotions featuring lots of 8’s.
ANZ
Park your dollar with the ANZ in either a term deposit for 8 months for a special interest rate or open an online savings account for a special rate for the first 8 months.
Woolworths Selected stores are going red and gold for Lunar New Year (Cabramatta store below).
BWS Score 888 Woolworths Reward points if you spend more than $30 at BWS.
World Square Lunar New Year 2018 via augmented reality.
Sydney Tower Eye
All you can eat dumplings as you watch Sydney go by.
Luna Park Between 16-18 February experience lion dances and firecrackers before you go on a hair raising ride.
Lotus Dining We all have to eat right? Restaurants are ready to feed your belly for Lunar New Year.
Camera Electric
Online retailers are getting into the act. Camera Electric has specials on Leica camera, lenses and accessories.
