We thought we’d give readers one more excerpt from Migration Nation (co-authored by Kathy Cheng, Environics’ vice-president of cultural markets, and Robin Brown, senior vice-president of consumer insights and cultural markets) that shows how a major marketer uses “ethnic insights” to inform a broad strategy in one of the most competitive business sectors in North America.
There’s a lot of talk in business and marketing circles about the “new mainstream,” the “new majority,” and the “minority-majority” (“visible minorities” constituting demographic majorities) in Canadian cities. True, the numbers are impressive. But for us the key point isn’t the ascendancy or even the dominance of “minorities”; it’s the cultural cross-pollination between groups formerly understood as “ethnic” and “mainstream.” Canada’s cultural diversity is reshaping all Canadians’ expectations about culture and affecting the kinds of messages they find appealing. This multi-directional exchange is what really defines the new mainstream—and it’s the cultural shift that Canadian companies and organizations need to monitor and mirror. Paying attention to this interplay is the foundation of a total-market approach.
There’s still much debate over what it means to adopt this “total market” strategy. One feature seems to cut across most definitions, however: a total-market approach brings culture into the centre of strategic planning. In Migration Nation (as in other diverse societies), “culture” encompasses both specific ethnic cultures and the interplay of ethnic cultures.
That interplay — as manifested in the work of comedians like Russell Peters and Margaret Cho, and in movies like Bend It Like Beckham and My Big Fat Greek Wedding — is a central cultural dynamic and preoccupation of our times. Organizations’ communications don’t have to be about this dynamic, but nor can they completely ignore or exclude it without seeming out of touch. A total-market strategy is rooted in an awareness of — and ideally an ability to go with the flow of—this dynamic. It looks at a diverse population as a landscape in which widespread or universal needs (for food, leisure, services, and so on) are filtered through ethnic cultures that overlap and influence each other.
“We lead with ethnic insights.”
This striking statement comes from Neil Golden, the CMO of McDonald’s. What does it mean to “lead with ethnic insights”? Sometimes when we conduct research focused on one ethnic group, our client realizes that the insights emerging from the research are actually relevant across their entire market—they’d just never thought about it before. We think this happens because culture itself can be invisible; people can be blind to the habits and preferences that shape their daily lives. But sometimes looking through the Cultural Lens of a specific group can bring wider cultural insights into view. This is how “ethnic insights” can actually drive a whole strategy—and not just enable the targeting of a narrow segment.
As a team of Millward Brown researchers has argued in their book Marketing to the New Majority, communications developed on the basis of “ethnic insights” can have widespread appeal. People belonging to an ethnocultural community depicted in and targeted by an ad are likely to embrace that ad.
Notably, however, people outside that group don’t necessarily view the ad as not for them unless there are explicit cues to that effect—for instance, that the ads are in a language they don’t understand. “Mainstream” consumers in a given market are generally open to ads featuring people who don’t look like them. They may even find that such ads appeal to their sense of living in a modern, interesting society. At a minimum, they usually won’t be offended by them. In fact, many “mainstream” Canadian consumers, especially youth and urban dwellers who tend to celebrate and brag about cultural diversity, expect advertising to reflect the culturally diverse world they live in. Such advertising is often perceived to be more authentic, aware, and engaging. Appeals to this generalized sense of ease with diversity have been evident in, for example, Heineken’s recent “Open Your World” global campaign and Coca-Cola’s 2014 “America the Beautiful” Super Bowl commercial.
In a sense, the total-market approach to multicultural marketing is the application of the best global-marketing practices at a domestic level. In global marketing, one of the biggest challenges marketers face is to find the right balance between standardization of products and offers and customization for local markets.
Efficiency is compromised with too much localization, while without adequate customization, the effectiveness of offers and messages in local or national markets can suffer. Finding a balance between efficiency and effectiveness in the world of “borderless marketing,” then, is a variation on the total-market challenge that multicultural marketers experience in places like Canada.
When companies reach out to global markets, the goal is to reach growth markets worldwide. When companies reach out to multicultural markets in Canada, the goal is to reach growth pockets within the country that haven’t yet been fully tapped with existing (“mainstream”) marketing activities. The importance of global or overseas markets doesn’t diminish the importance of home markets, just as the importance of “ethnic” markets doesn’t diminish the importance of the “mainstream” market. Keeping all these balls in the air is the objective of both global and multicultural marketers. In Migration Nation, effective total-market strategies will transcend the borders or boundaries between ethnicities and between ethnic markets and the mainstream. Transcending the boundaries doesn’t mean pretending they don’t exist. Rather, it means understanding that they’re porous and flexible; ideas and tastes move across groups.
This text is adapted from the new book from Environics Publishing, Migration Nation: A Practical Guide to doing Business in Globalized Canada by Kathy Cheng & Robin Brown. To find out more or order the book please visit: MigrationNation.ca
