If this story resonates with you, I think you have a career with Identity Communications – the intelligent multicultural marketing agency. Read on and you’ll see what I mean…
Sure these songs are ultra pop with incredible talent, dancing and over the top production value. If you’ve watched Big Bang’s Fantastic Baby music video (images above and video below) you’ll be impressed by the big budget, epic production.
The naysayers had their doubts:
There just wasn’t enough Korean teenagers for a feasible audience.
WRONG. While there were a few thousand Korean teenagers in Australia back in 2011, Korean Pop (Kpop) was a phenomenon that was spreading across Asia, particularly South East Asia, China and Japan. The Kpop wave was infectious. So the potential audience in Australia includes local Koreans, Asian-Australian teenagers and also local teens.
It’s in Korean limiting the audience base.
The doubters warned that local teens wouldn’t get Kpop because the lyrics are in Korean. When I asked a local youth in Phnom Penh why Kpop was so popular in Cambodia when the songs are Korean, he shrugged and said “we don’t understand that much English and we like American pop. Kpop shows that Asians can be cool and sexy too”. A quick scan of SBS PopAsia’s facebook page today shows the diversity of the show’s fan base.
These clips were available free on YouTube so why would this audience tune into a TV show?
On the surface, this objection made a lot of sense. I was confident the show would work because SBS PopAsia wasn’t just a two-hour TV show, it was a community. The avid fans of Kpop at the time thought they were the only ones in Australia who loved Big Bang, 2NE1, 2PM, Girl’s Generation and other Kpop groups. They were watching it on their own, on their laptop in the isolation of their bedroom. SBS PopAsia was the first Asian pop music show on free to air TV. It wasn’t a secret. To build engagement, for the first 6 weeks of the show, I managed the twitter account while other members of the team managed the Facebook page. Our purpose was to engage with the fans and encourage them to engage with each other, to build a thriving, exciting community. They also had a chance to interact with the show with selected viewer tweets and Facebook comments appearing on TV.
The other reason the fans told us they loved tuning in was that they could watch their favourite show on the big TV screen, in glorious hi-definition and pump the music loud through the lounge room audio system.
SBS doesn’t have a budget to pay for these music videos.
At the time, Australia was the #3 country in terms of illegal Kpop music downloading. In negotiation with the Korean music labels, we argued that SBS could build the Kpop market further via our TV show and they could commercialise it by setting up Australian iTunes stores. I had no real negotiation experience, but the logic was compelling enough for these music labels to agree to supply SBS with their music clips.
What’s the moral of this story?
At a superficial level, some may see challenges and it’s easy to find reasons to say ‘no’. Others can’t see past the surface. At Identity, we’re about insights not anecdotes. We believe a multicultural marketing agency shouldn’t speak in shallow cliches. Our team looks beyond to understand the real reasons that motivates our audience. Our recommendations come from considered strategy that have been built on available data and insights.
Join Us
Due to a string of new business wins, we’re looking for a strategy/channel planner. Starting a pop music TV show isn’t a prerequisite, but a wide-eye curiosity and desire to understand “why” is a great start.
Our core behaviours, the ones we encourage you to employ daily, are also the ones you will be rewarded for. We’d love you to be:
Open-minded
Collaborative
Positive
Knowledgeable
Good
If this is of interest, call a taxi, Mr Taxi (watch the clip below) and submit your application here. It’s a great role and one that doesn’t come along everyday!
What creative should I use for my multicultural campaign?
The answer is easy, and not easy. Identity Communications, the intelligent multicultural agency, has some food for thought…
When it comes to a multicultural marketing campaign, marketers and their agencies rightly devote time and resources to developing the media schedule. When it comes to creative assets, clients think it’s all too hard or costly to develop bespoke in-language creative. Overwhelmingly clients translate their existing ‘mainstream’ creative.
Take for example, Bayer’s Elevit pregnancy multivitamin (below) targeting Chinese-Australian women. The investment on Youku Chinese video social media is significant, just about every pre-roll served this week uses either Elevit or Menevit material. In this case, the audio was left in English with text copy translated into Chinese.
Another example is our recent work for Johnson & Johnson’s Neutrogena Ultra Sheer (below). The mainstream creative, featuring Jennifer Garner, was subtitled into Chinese.
A much rarer approach is developing bespoke in-language creative, particularly for TV. Reckitt Benckiser’s current campaign for Finish Quantum Ultimate dishwashing tablet (below) was developed and produced by Identity Communications especially for the Chinese-Australian audience. Concept and copy were developed in Chinese and translated to English for client feedback and approval. We sourced and selected local Chinese talent and shoot location. Judging by the comments across video and social media channels, the audience is resonating strongly with this bespoke creative approach.
Of course, it’s not one size fits all. Budget, timing and other factors come in to play in the real world. Here are some considerations that might help you decide:
Budget: if it’s a limited marketing budget, do you really want to spend 80% on creative and 20% on media?
Timing: in-language creative often take longer to produce, sourcing the right talent from a limited pool and translation lead time will add to your timeline
Creative capacity: there isn’t the breadth of creative and production talent compared to mainstream, so this may impact on quality
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 revoicing the commercial
Customise static assets: TV production requires a larger budget, but if you’re doing a print advert which has talent, consider shooting the mainstream material with a mix of talent or shooting talent that’s from that community for your campaign
Product benefit: particularly in the beauty category, a well-known ‘mainstream’ talent may be the aspirational inspiration for this audience, so maybe subtitling is all that’s needed
People like me: then again, if the benefits of a beauty product might be better demonstrated on someone with a skin tone similar to your audience, maybe the ‘mainstream’ talent, especially if they aren’t well known, 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 a world where creative is almost always translated from mainstream, consider the significant uplift in positive brand sentiment from investing in bespoke creative
We’re experienced in the creative scenarios outlined above. If you have a question about multicultural creative development please contact us.
How to reach Chinese audience in Australia with WeChat
Are you interested in Marketing to Chinese consumers? Nolan Yu, a former PR ninja in Shanghai, now a media warrior in Sydney, writes this guest post about WeChat, the Chinese social platform that ‘rules them all’.
You might not use the WeChat, but I am sure you’ve heard about this Chinese instant messaging app, which The Economist has labelled the “one app to rule them all”. The 2017 WeChat User Report from Tencent revealed the average time spent in WeChat is now 66 minutes per day, creating little doubt that WeChat is the no.1 platform to reach the Chinese audience today.
Last year, The New York Times posted a video calledHow China is Changing Your Internetwhich perfectly demonstrated the mind-blowing functions WeChat can offer and how this app changed Chinese people’s day to day life. You can even order a meal in a restaurant that has no wait staff or menus.
Today in Australia, users can’t do all of those cool things on WeChat, because some functionality aren’t available outside of China. What functions can we use in Australia? How can we leverage those functions to reach the local Chinese community?
If you want to know the answer, please keep reading…
Why use WeChat?
Even though I have WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and SnapChat on my phone, I rely on WeChat to stay in touch with my Chinese and some non-Chinese friends. In Australia, some Chinese SMB owners use the ‘group chat’ function to reach and directly communicate with customers, and in app functionality allows you to easily share and scan the group’s QR code to spread it among contacts to join the chat group.
As WeChat is called the “one app to rule them all”, it refers to a features that at a minimum, can do whatever Facebook can offer, including ‘Page’ and ‘Timeline’. They call these functions ‘Moments’ in WeChat. This is where I maintain my loose relationships through that news feed and posting pictures, liking and commenting on others’ posts. ‘WeChat Moments Ads’ (sponsored posts) are available for advertisers, unfortunately, this tool hasn’t been rolled out to Australia yet to target Australian users. Advertisers can however, target Chinese users in China with this feature, and potentially those who are tourists.
The good news is the first-ever ‘Moments Ads’ was just launched in North America, so I reckon we don’t have to wait too long for it to arrive in Australia. I reckon it will open a new door for Australian marketers to reach local Chinese.
BMW’s Moments Advertisement
WeChat is also the main source of information for most Chinese, including myself, as I try to catch up with the latest trends in China while living in Sydney. For example, on my way to work, I read articles and reports from LinkedIn and The Business of Fashion (BoF) by simply subscribing to their official accounts (almost all major publishers and brands have their own accounts).
Nolan’s WeChat subscriptions.
I also follow some Chinese influencers such as one of China’s top fashion blogger, ‘gogoboi’. The latest post, sponsored by YSL, has exceeded 100,000+ views (the largest number can be shown in the post).
gogoboi’s post sponsored by YSL
The feature of the official account is not limited to just posting articles, as WeChat has opened their ecosystem to brands and developers. You can actually consider it as a web browser, where brands can plug in their online store, offer 24/7 customer service and enable chatbots to serve their official accounts. It means users don’t need to leave the app to make the transaction, which is powered by WeChat’s online payment platform, WeChat Wallet.
More and more Chinese businesses operating in Australia have started supporting WeChat Wallet (or their biggest rival, Alipay), where users can pay by scanning a QR code. There are three leading payment mPOS and POS systems in Australia that are enabling retailers and advertisers to connect to these Chinese payment systems – PayLinx, Dinpay and Royal Pay.
WeChat Wallet
Australian Brands on WeChat
The recently released June 2017 Census data shows that there are over half a million Chinese-born residents in Australia with NSW being home to about half of this population. So you shouldn’t be surprised that there are publishers curating localised content for those Chinese residents.
Some Australian businesses like Westfield Australia, David Jones, and Qantas have their own official WeChat accounts to build brand awareness and manage customer loyalty.
David Jones’ Official WeChat Account
Local official accounts also mean opportunities for advertisers to target local audiences. Unfortunately, WeChat’s display advertising service is not yet available in Australia (it’s planned for Q4 of 2017). But just like how you work with Australian bloggers, you can directly contact those official account representatives to purchase banners built in their posts, or more easily, through IDENTITY Communications, the intelligent multicultural marketing agency.
WeChat Sponsored Posts
In addition, if you have a higher budget, you can also develop native content, or organise a brand sponsored event with those publishers. The challenge here is that there are not many local publishers with a strong subscriber base. Two major Sydney publishers are WeSydney and SydneyToday.
Sydney Today’s WeChat Display Banners
QR Codes & HTML5 on WeChat
The last thing I want to mention are QR codes and HTML 5 campaigns. To be honest, I am surprised that I still haven’t seen any QR Code Outdoor campaigns or HTML 5 WeChat campaigns yet in Sydney, which I think could be an opportunity for Australian advertisers.
JD.com WeChat html5 campaign
There is a code scanner embedded in ‘WeChat’, which is commonly used in Chinese OOH campaigns that include the QR code in their creative assets and message tag line as a call to action to drive a direct response. By scanning the Code, users can be directed to the campaign web page, or the brand’s WeChat official account. More importantly, Chinese audiences are familiar with this format, since they have formed this behaviour in China. So when you include the QR code in your campaign, your brand will create the opportunity for a direct communication channel with them.
Kindle OOH QR Code Campaign
QR Code WeChat Campaign at Metro Station in China
But it doesn’t mean you should simply include the QR code in every campaign and expect Chinese people scan it. Your content and the way you incorporate a QR code definitely needs to be interesting, engaging. It should offer a value exchange to give potential customers enough incentive to pull out their phones and scan the code.
Hope it helps, please feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions.
Credit: Main image from Business Insider all other images provided by Nolan Yu.
Think more than just advertising when you’re planning a multicultural marketing campaign, writes Brenda Leung, IDENTITY’s Insights Manager.
Below The Line (BTL) activities should be part of an integrated communication strategy, complementing Above The Line (ATL) components whilst being relevant and specific to the multicultural communities drivers. While ATL advertising is important in creating general awareness, a strategic non-media/public relations approach is critical to build credibility, understanding and engagement through positive environment and stakeholder participation.
An effective BTL campaign should be able to create a pull by identifying core drivers to create interest and drive urgency amongst the target audiences, encouraging action amongst the communities.
Why do BTL activities work well for CALD (culturally and linguistically diverse) audiences?
When we understand the characteristics of CALD values, we will see the opportunities.
Diwali, Federation Square Melbourne. Image credit Indian Link
Collectivism is a predominant basic cultural element amongst many CALD communities. They value the importance of cohesion within social groups. Goals are more possibly achieved through collaborative efforts through participation from a group of people rather than individual. Understanding this mindset of “partnership” and “companionship” amongst CALD communities, group activities that involves group participation can be more effective.
Family orientated and communal group of people, especially the Asian and Middle East communities, tend to settle in suburbs that are highly populated with the people from their community, forming segregated communities. This provides location advantages in implementing local area engagement such as community/cultural events which are always taken as a chance to socialise with someone who shares the same cultural backgrounds.
Tapping into these local events is a key tactic to engage within the comforts of their environment. Taking ‘stall’ and sponsorship options at these festivals enables more effective engagement across a higher number of CALD community attendants. Some festivals attract over 100,000 people.
The presence at these local community/cultural events can be used to not only provide an official ‘information source’ of brands at grass root level, but also build awareness on ground and further drive responsiveness by engaging the target audience.
Credit: Where Australia’s immigrants were born, SBS
Other support tactics include multilingual letter box drop in local areas with large population size of target communities. CALD grocery stores also play a major role in information dissemination to large numbers of people. These stores frequently have bulletin boards where bi-lingual posters for local community residents are posted. Bi-lingual flyers are made available at the check-out counters for store visitors to pick up, or to be put in the shopping bags.
Community/Religious leaders and professionals are highly regarded by the CALD communities, who initiate engagement with new schemes, products and services, playing an important role during their process of decision making.
Influencer engagement can be done by identifying the key spokespeople from the community and engaging them to support key messages, providing a solid basis in building the credibility. Their presence at interviews and local events can provide the local and in-community face of the campaign to engage with the public.
The CALD audience are closely-knit groups of people, in conjunction with the ease and comfort factor in dealing with people within their network. Members in personal, community, religious or social groups are regarded as one of the most reliable sources of information. We want to get the target communities to engage with the campaign through creating greater understanding and awareness, subsequently it helps create a multiplier effect through word of mouth with friends and family.
There is visible dependency on own community media as a core information tool amongst the CALD communities, which should be leveraged. This kind of media outreach activities, such as media release and live reads, can significantly impact the success of changes in awareness and attitudes as the ethnic media are credible and trusted information sources.
CALD communities are passionate, and non-advertising tactics can facilitate an emotional connection with your campaign.
IDENTITY Communications are predicting the multicultural marketing industry in Australia will change dramatically in 2017. Here’s why.
We’re not talking about terminology and semantics which have changed over time such as NESB (non-English speaking background) and LOTE (languages other than English) being replaced by CALD (culturally and linguistically diverse), refugee with asylum seeker, ethnic marketing with multicultural marketing.
Beyond descriptors, we believe there are five key trends in multicultural marketing that will change the industry forever. And it will happen in 2017.
1. Census 2016 The multicultural industry relies on Census data to quantify the size of the opportunity. Size and English language proficiency are two data points referenced frequently by multicultural agencies. While Census 2016 isn’t in itself a trend – it’s the trend in the data that will make a big splash.
We predict when the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) releases the full 2016 Census data on 27 June, the multicultural opportunity will be more compelling than ever before. We’re predicting it will show the Chinese speaking community in Australia will pass 1 million people for the first time and that Mandarin, followed by Cantonese, will be the two most spoken languages in Australia (other than English). Our modelling suggests Australia’s population will increase by 11% between the 2011 and 2016 Censuses, however, the China-born population will increase by 90% during the same period.
2. Data, Insights & Strategy While Census 2016 will help multicultural marketing agencies get in front of the client, the general lack of CALD data and insights to inform strategy will continue to be a major set-back. Roy Morgan, with relatively small migrant sample sizes, is of limited help. There are still no independent media consumption data sources for in-language print, radio and TV (most print publications are not audited) and consumer insight research is severely lacking for CALD audiences.
Similarly, it’s not enough to respond to a client brief with a media schedule. Those days are over. Clients expect data, insights and strategic thinking to inform the agency’s recommendations.
Multicultural marketing is more than translation and agencies that invest in data, insights and build up their strategic offering will gain a significant competitive advantage.
3. Collaboration & Consolidation
Multicultural agencies have tended to work independently of ‘mainstream’ media and creative agencies. That’s another agency in addition to media, creative, digital, PR, social and search agencies for a time-poor client to manage. There’s been a trend back to the full service agency model, and we believe it will impact the multicultural marketing sector. Multicultural agencies that understand how mainstream agencies work and can collaborate seamlessly, will reap the rewards. Similarly multicultural agencies that are part of a larger mainstream marketing communications group will benefit by being a part of that group’s comprehensive offering.
4. Shift from Traditional Media The shift from in-language traditional media to digital, social and mobile is on. It’s no longer enough to spend the bulk of a client’s budget on ethnic print or radio channels. And increasingly, it’s not enough to recommend a couple of Facebook and WeChat posts as add-on. Programmatic, data, retargeting, building ‘look alike’ audiences, community management, influencer marketing, search and SEO are expertise that will distinguish successful multicultural marketing agencies from the also-rans.
5. Multicultural is dated? Just as multicultural replaced ethnic, CALD replaced NESB, there’s an argument that multicultural is an out-dated concept. Supporters of the change argue that multicultural often refers to different ethnic backgrounds, but if we’re talking about embracing diversity what about sexual orientation, indigenous, age, ability, etc. In California, Latinos have outnumbered Whites since 2015 – what’s multicultural and what’s mainstream in this context? Rather than differentiating with multicultural, should we not look at cultural marketing that recognises similarities and differences? Some say polyculturalism should replace multiculturalism.
Whatever term we’ll end up using in the future, the undeniable truth is that cultural diversity is here to stay and clients are looking to their agencies for effective strategies to reach this valuable and growing market.
Thoughts?
That’s our view. Do you agree? Are there any other trends in multicultural marketing that you’ve picked up? We’d love to hear your thoughts.
