It is an interesting dichotomy. The U.S. is considered a melting pot, yet companies like JCPenny, McDonald’s and MillerCoors, just to name a few, all have executives devoted to multicultural marketing. Yet in Canada, a nation celebrated for being a cultural mosaic, few companies outside of telco and financial services have marketers tasked with reaching ethnic populations.
Take Toyota Canada, for example. Linas Balaisis, the automaker’s national manager, marketing, says they don’t have anyone in-house who is an expert in reaching multicultural markets. “We rely on our agencies for that,” says Balaisis. For some brands, that may be enough. But executives at multicultural ad agencies–as well as at companies that have successfully targeted ethnic groups–say companies can’t fully tap into the buying power of this market without someone in-house who can truly champion for the target.
Most marketers who dabble in ethnic marketing treat it as an after-thought, says David Innis, president and creative director, Fat Free Communications.
They may hire a multicultural ad agency, and have them translate some English ads or create a couple of ads celebrating cultural holidays. “Most marketers just don’t want the irritation or complication of dealing with something they don’t know anything about,” says Innis. “The defensive position of many companies is, ‘Can my target read this? And is it not going to offend them?’ What a brand should be asking is: ‘Is this memorable? Is it insightful?’ ”
Only once, says Innis, was his agency allowed to do truly breakthrough multicultural work–for IKEA Canada back in 2005, and that was because the marketing manager, Nandini Venkatesh, was a champion of the market (she now works at Marks & Spencer in India). Such marketers are few and far between, he says.
To be fair, however, there are a number of hurdles that can prevent a CMO from making even small investments in the market, says Saul Gitlin, executive vice-president, strategic services, Kang & Lee Advertising, an agency focused on the Asian market with offices in Toronto and New York.
For starters, the economy has squeezed marketing budgets. Also, the industry lacks strong, syndicated research about ethnic populations. And third, ethnic media is largely unaudited (although the industry is slowly addressing this), which is part of the reason multicultural marketing budgets are cut first because it can be hard to measure return on investment. “So even if a marketer gets past those first few hurdles, he’s then going to say, ‘Wait a minute, you want me to invest a million dollars in ethnic media but you can’t guarantee a level of [audience] delivery,” explains Gitlin. “They will say: ‘I cannot secure funding internally based on you just telling me it will be a strong program.’ ”
Still, that doesn’t explain the discrepancy between Canada and the U.S., given both countries face similar challenges. Ken Wong, marketing professor at Queen’s University, says it is really a numbers game. “It just comes down to the size of the market–it’s that simple,” says Wong.
Consider that Hispanics, the largest ethnic population in the U.S., number 45.5 million people, representing about 15% of the nation’s population, according to the 2007 Census. When a U.S. company generates strong results from a test market of the Hispanic population, it can immediately see the opportunities of scaling out the initiative. “The company then says, ‘We need an organizational structure and people in place that will allow us to do this,’ ” says Gitlin.
In Canada, based on the 2006 Census, the largest ethnic minority group is South Asians at a comparatively paltry 1.26 million (or just under 4% of the population). “But the Asian markets are growing,” points out Wong (see sidebar on page 40). “And I think as the population increases, we will start seeing more marketing departments devoting more energy to them because they’ll be able to justify the spend.”
The industry may be seeing evidence of that already. Last summer, for instance, Loblaw appointed Trinh Tram as its first senior director of ethnic marketing. Before that, Tram was the grocer’s senior director, merchandising.
“Loblaw recognizes the growing demographic of our multicultural customers,” says Tram, who has slowly been building up the grocer’s in-house multicultural marketing capabilities. “And as a company, we are developing programs to reach these customers with distinct messages that resonate and have impact.” Loblaw isn’t the only company ramping up its ethnic marketing. The Home Depot recently launched its first multicultural marketing campaign, which ran in Richmond, B.C. to celebrate Chinese New Year, Feb. 14. The campaign, created by Publicis Diversité, featured in-store events, in-store signage (including scrolls of good luck messages that hung from walls) and local radio, TV and newspaper advertising in Cantonese.
“By reaching out to a group of consumers that we haven’t directly communicated with before, and doing so in their native language, we hope to build strong relationships with the local Cantonese-speaking community while giving them the confidence to invest in their most important asset–their homes,” Peg Hunter, vice-president of marketing and communications for The Home Depot, told Marketing. “As a result of the campaign, we hope that the Cantonese-speaking community will have the confidence to complete their home-improvement projects.”
A second multicultural campaign focused on the South Asian population in Brampton, Ont. The effort also included do-it-yourself workshops, in-store signage and bag stuffers, in addition to local ads in Hindi and Punjabi. “We will continue to look at how to bring similar multicultural campaigns to other communities across Canada,” said Hunter.
Gaye Mandel, director of advertising, The Home Depot, says the marketing department has been able to make multicultural markets a stronger focus–in part because of internal systems the company has in place to promote diversity.
Key among those systems is a diversity and inclusion council, which was established just over two years ago and is made up of 13 employees from across the organization. Among its recent initiatives, the council conducted a workforce census of the company’s 28,000 associates to better understand their demographic characteristics.
The voluntary census, which garnered an 84% participation rate, showed that 43% of employees identify with more than one ethnic or cultural group and that 41% speak a language other than English. While the internal census is aimed at creating an environment that is inclusive to everyone, Mandel says the council also helps “keep multicultural top-of-mind” in the marketing department, in terms of supporting both the customers and staff they serve.
So just what are the benefits of having an in-house multicultural champion? Just ask the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, which had such a champion in Mike Forrester when he recognized the potential of the market back in 2002. During his seven-year tenure as TSO’s VP, marketing and business development, Forrester grew the orchestra’s audience base beyond a largely white, older demographic. When TSO launched the Sound Check program in 2001 to target customers 15 to 35, “our early research indicated that close to half of attendees were born in a country other than Canada and their household’s first language was not English,” recalls Forrester, who last year joined Dancap Productions, which brought the hit Broadway show Jersey Boys to Toronto.
“We saw a lot of potential in the different ethnic communities. Many of these groups just needed an opportunity to come.” At first, the TSO targeted the Chinese community, and after the success of reaching that group, Forrester says they had a playbook they could customize to help them reach other ethnic groups. Ads weren’t simply translated into other languages; many were written from scratch, since many ethnic groups prefer ads heavy with copy. To reach the city’s Russian community, TSO hired a broker to sell tickets, since culturally this is their preferred method of purchase. It also hired customer service representatives who could speak Mandarin and Cantonese, which also meant the internal staff makeup of the company better reflected the city it operates in. By the time Forrester left the organization in 2009, “our multicultural programs were well entrenched.”
Indeed, sales manager Jen Bryan, who is now responsible for multicultural marketing, says the TSO is wellestablished among many ethnic communities, particularly the Russian and Chinese. It also has a number of ethnic groups represented within its organization, so she doesn’t have to rely strictly on her agency for intelligence.
“The fact is our multicultural efforts sell a lot of tickets,” says Bryan. An Asian-themed program last February, for instance, sold 75% of its 4,000 tickets to the Chinese community. The TSO was able to track that result by using a promo code in its Chinese advertising.
Loretta Lam, president of Focus Communications, the PR firm for TSO which was originally hired by Forrester, says the TSO wouldn’t be where it is today without having had a passionate, in-house marketer to champion multicultural marketing in the first place.
“The companies that are going to do well in this area are those that don’t just rely on agency intelligence. Agencies can only push the needle so far,” says Lam. “In-house multicultural leaders can see and successfully push for opportunities in their businesses that others can’t.”
