Let’s face it, many parts of the world are a melting pot.
With people from all walks of life, cultures, and backgrounds, businesses need to adapt their marketing and advertising game to connect with these diverse audiences.
That’s where multicultural advertising comes in.
Multicultural Advertising, Put Simply
Think of multicultural advertising as customizing your ad or message to fit different cultural nuances that your audience might have.
It’s not just about translating your ad copy; it’s about truly understanding the values, beliefs, and preferences of your target audience.
It’s also about realizing that your brand could be missing out on valuable revenue uplifts during periods of the year that matter a lot to specific cultures, and creating a plan to tap into these new revenue streams.
For instance, just knowing that Indians will likely do a lot of online shopping and eating out during Diwali isn’t enough. Your brand should be able to recognize the period of time when it makes most sense to target Indians before Diwali (it varies each year). You should then be able to weave festival- and culture-specific messaging into creatives/messages that target these niche and often, high-spending audiences.
And it’s not just festivals. Sporting events, cultural and movie icons, in-language messages and uniquely relevant experiences are all powerful ways to connect with these audiences.
Why Should You Care?
1. Bigger Audience, Bigger Profits: By tailoring your message to different cultures, you can reach a wider audience – potentially audiences whom you’ve completely missed before – and boost brand awareness and sales.
2. Building Stronger Brand Loyalty: When people feel seen and understood, they’re more likely to try, remember and stick with your brand.
3. A Better Reputation: Showing that you value diversity and inclusion can make your brand more appealing to a broader range of consumers.
Tips for Rocking Multicultural Advertising
• Do Your Homework: Understand the cultural nuances of your target audience. Avoid stereotypes and clichés that might backfire. Be familiar with what really resonates with your target audience.
• Localize Your Message: Use language, imagery, and storytelling that resonates with your audience’s culture.
• Understand target websites: Where does your target audience go to get news? For social media? To shop? These could be vastly different from where your traditional audiences go.
• Partner Up: Collaborate with cultural influencers and organizations to build trust and credibility. Work with ad agencies who get multicultural advertising and have access to the right ad inventory.
• Data is (Always) Your Friend: Use data to track the performance of your campaigns and make informed decisions. This should happen in all your campaigns, multicultural or otherwise.
Look around the market where you operate – if you see a melting pot of cultures, you are missing a trick if you aren’t looking into multicultural advertising.
Brands which recognize and harness the value of multicultural advertising will always have an advantage over brands which don’t.
