Communication in Multicultural Settings

Commical – Episode title: Communication in Multicultural Settings

Published 29/07/2020 on Chasing Albert website, spotify and apple podcasts.

Marie 00:00
I bet that unless you're working for a major government body or multinational corporation with deep pockets, you haven't given multicultural communication much thought. Personally, I've given it plenty of thought, just never any action. But as a multicultural community, are we missing a trick by neglecting the many different cultural groups around the country? I speak with Adrienne Meakin, a respected leader and multicultural communications expert from Melbourne-based LOTE Agency. She lays bare the reasons why multicultural comms should be a given and not an afterthought. Oprah, Steve Jobs, Andrew Denton, and Odie to me - these guys are masters of communication. The rest of us - well, mainly you, because I'm a pro - fumble our way through. Commical examines this funny little thing called communication that can either tear us down or make us soar. Join me. I'm an amateur comedian and a communication expert. Join me and listen, learn and laugh through the experiences of my very talented guests.

Marie 01:01
Welcome, Adrienne. Thank you. So happy to have you here. I really have, for my entire career, admired what professionals in multicultural comms do, although I'm ashamed to admit I've never worked with anybody in multicultural comms. It's not surprising, isn't it? No. Talk to me. Firstly, let's start with just how multicultural Australia is. Can you kind of set the scene for us?

Guest 01:01
It's a massive question with a massive answer. In short, we're hugely multicultural, more than a lot of people care to admit. But we're a little overdue - well, we're due - for a new census, so the data that I'm about to reel off is a bit dated, but still: almost 30% of our country were born overseas. So that's seven and a half million people born overseas. More interesting than that, about 50% have parents who were born overseas. And beyond that, 75% of the people who live in Australia identify with an overseas ancestry.

Marie 01:01
Even 75%? Totally. So what is multicultural communication? I think about what you just said then, about 75% of Australians identifying with another ethnicity. Is that an audience that requires multicultural comms? What is it, and where is it of real value?

Guest 01:01
You like asking the big questions. Let's break them down.

Marie 01:01
I'm a bit excited, Adrienne. This is the problem.

Guest 01:01
It is quite a dynamic answer, to be honest. My company believes - and the way we've built our business reflects this - that we're a fusion of communication strategy and translation services. When I go out into the world to learn more about the industry, I go to both translation and interpreting or globalisation conferences, and also standard PR, marketing and advertising conferences. That's what multicultural comms is all about.

We've actually just done a little bit of a rebrand because, over the years, I've discovered that we're not really multicultural marketing anymore. We're multicultural - we're an agency. We do what we have to do to reach multicultural audiences. So it's not just marketing. A lot of the work we do is research. When clients come to us and say, "Hey, we've got a full-scale campaign to translate," a lot of people think, "I just need to translate this material and get it out." So they want newspapers, radio stations, SBS, all the community stations. But it's so much more than that.

We're talking about accessibility, for a start. Is your audience actually literate in their own language? Have they been educated in their own language? If we're talking about migrants who've come from refugee backgrounds, that's not often their strong suit. Or maybe you've got cultures where speaking to them in a female voice is inappropriate. There is so much to consider. Then when you consider the reasons why they migrated as well - perhaps they're highly skilled migrants, and you need to speak to them in a respectful tone, or you're speaking to people who've come from war-torn environments, and speaking to them with a tone of authority is going to scare the hell out of them.

When we speak to clients, we're not just translating content. Maybe your information is taboo. One of the jobs we did a few years ago was for a government department that was pushing out information about how to be smart with your money. There were roughly 10 topics: credit, contracts, getting a tax file number - all kinds of basic stuff that I'm going to assume you and I kind of learned from our families. But if you're a first-generation migrant living in this new Western world, all of that information was too far down the chain for them.

They didn't know what a credit card was. They didn't understand their liability with credit. Some of our communities were having telecommunication providers door-knocking and trying to sell internet - this is 10 years ago now - and they were signing up every single member of the family in the same household to a different internet plan because they realised the people in that house didn't have English as a first language. They signed up 14-year-old daughters. They signed up Nana who lived in the house. They signed up mum and dad. These poor people were spending a lot of money on internet because they'd been taken advantage of, and they had no idea what a contract was.

So instead of just pushing that information out for that campaign, we ended up sitting down with them. We did heaps of community research. We found out that they thought banks were corrupt because banks were corrupt back at home, so they didn't use banks. They didn't trust banks. We found out that they thought credit cards were free money. They didn't know they had to pay them back. They were too scared to sign contracts because they thought they might get kicked out of the country for signing a legal document they didn't understand. There's so much basic information.

Marie 01:01
Well, that answer went really a lot further than I expected it to. It's so funny because it's actually really complicated, isn't it? You think that when you're working on a marketing or PR plan, there are a lot of audience insights you need to gather, but then there's a whole other level with different multicultural groups that you have to consider.

And then, with my agency hat on, I can't help but think that starts to add a lot of expense, right? So if I'm running a campaign - if I'm a Telstra or an Optus and I'm running a big national campaign - that's one thing, but then to make that campaign relevant to Chinese audiences, Arabic audiences, et cetera, now I'm spending a lot more money. I think it's money well spent, but is it generally accepted in Australia that multicultural comms should always be part of your PR and marketing plans, or is it something you have to fight for? Does it depend on the client?

Guest 01:01
It depends on the client, 100%. To be honest, we've been in business since 1998 and, over the years, most of our clients have been government and not-for-profits. Government has policy. They have to spend some of their advertising dollars on multicultural audiences, so they're required to. And it depends, team to team, when you come across the comms department or the PR team. It depends how much they get it and how much they care. So yeah, it really varies. But to be honest, it's usually a requirement. The requirement does not necessarily favour multicultural audiences.

Marie 01:01
Gotcha. So normally it would be rather serious stuff that must be communicated to these audiences. Does that mean, from a commercial perspective, I don't know, think of fun brands - Maya or David Jones, Target, Kmart or what have you - would they typically consider a multicultural audience? No. Should they? Is there a commercial reason why they should that you've seen?

Guest 01:01
Well, the stats don't lie. Half of our country identify with a multicultural background. I think the answer is definitely yes, they should be communicating with these people. But I think big brands are just as squeezed as small brands. Just because they're big brands doesn't mean they're a healthy business. It doesn't mean they've got a lot of money to throw around. So yes, they should be doing it, but it's a really long path. We're a long way along it in terms of Australian multicultural comms from where we were, but I personally believe it's got a long way to go. We should be talking the talk and walking the walk. We've got all of these multicultural people identifying as Australians, and we're welcoming them into our country, but we don't seem to be actually talking to them when they need to be spoken to.

Marie 01:01
Yeah, it kind of feels like they're left out of the fun stuff.

Guest 01:01
Yeah. If there's a health announcement they might get it, but the fun stuff - come on.

Marie 10:11
I know. The photos, though, I will say that diversity is coming a long way in terms of what we see. I know a lot of brands now are making an effort to get visually diverse-looking environments in their marketing, which is good.

Guest 10:11
It's a small step.

Marie 10:11
It is. Yes, a small step, but a good one. I've noticed that too. I mean, this is such a silly example, but I've got really massive curly hair, and I remember growing up never seeing anybody with really massive curly hair. I was also quite hairy, and I never saw hairy models, which bothered me. But with actually big hair, I never saw curls.

Now I've got two daughters, and my eldest has curls. We see curly girls in ads left, right and centre. Really cool. It makes me feel really happy.

Guest 10:11
And curly hair - Mariah Carey had curly hair.

Marie 10:11
That's true, she did. But there were some stars, definitely. You were never going to open a catalogue or Dolly magazine and see somebody with an afro. Very rare. There was no content on how to manage it. It was just never really covered.

It's funny, now there's a movement - I don't know if you've been seeing it - where hairdressers were coming out saying, "We went through the TAFE system. I've got curly hair. I didn't even come out learning how to do my own hair." It's not covered.

Guest 10:11
Yeah. Oh my God. But it's an actual thing. You guys need your hair cut differently.

Marie 10:11
Yes. But you speak to people with curly hair and it's just one bad story after the other. So it's something now that's just starting to gain a little bit of traction, and I think that's really great.

Guest 10:11
That's awesome. More diversity of services too.

Marie 10:11
I think, okay, well, if I didn't understand English or I didn't happen to be on Instagram, how would I learn about this? How do people learn? Yeah, it's very interesting.

Guest 10:11
I was just going to say that Instagram and social media these days are a huge opportunity for diverse audiences, and unfortunately I think the powers that be, in a lot of cases, don't understand what great value it could be.

Marie 10:11
Where does Indigenous comms fit in this? And excuse my naivety - I'm going to admit up front that I am absolutely naive when it comes to Indigenous comms and relations. One of the things from the George Floyd tragedy and the Black Lives Matter movement that came after that was a real shame for me, because if you were to ask me about African American culture and their fight for justice in America, I would know more than what I do in my own country.

So I swore to myself, that's it. From now on, I'm unfollowing - and I did unfollow - a bunch of Americans and started following a bunch of First Australians who seemed to have some really interesting content I could learn from. Small steps, you know, but I've got a very long way to go. So I'm just going to say up front that I know nothing, so you can speak to me like a baby. Do we consider Indigenous comms to be part of a multicultural comms mix?

Guest 10:11
I can't answer for "we". Some people do. Personally, I put them in their own category. Again, that's a very generalised comment because within Indigenous Australians there are hundreds of cultures. It's not that every Aboriginal person is the same as the next. They're all Aboriginal, but that is an incorrect statement.

Something like roughly 3% of the population identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. Within that group there are hundreds of different cultural groups, and they all have their own different languages and unique cultural traditions. A lot of their languages are verbal only, so they don't have a written version of their language. Some of the cultures are located so remotely that if you wanted us to help you translate something for them, we would have to physically go to their location, and we can't just walk in there. We have to be invited, and then we would have to learn their language so that we could communicate your message. So it is so cost-prohibitive for groups, governments and clients to communicate with them.

Marie 10:11
So if someone comes to you, do you just refer them on to a specialist agency?

Guest 10:11
Yes, absolutely. We're on government panels, which means I get to meet lots of other cool agencies doing lots of cool work. When I meet up with some of the other agencies, there are a couple of awesome Indigenous agencies that do an amazing job, and they're on government panels, so they're pretty well known in the right circles. But yeah, that's what I do. I recommend them to somebody else.

Marie 10:11
Awesome. Do you feel that when you're speaking with clients - well, obviously with government bodies they actually have to do a level of multicultural comms - have you ever been in a situation where, or do you actively try to convince people to do multicultural comms?

Guest 10:11
Well, I don't do non-multicultural, so no. But I do work with other agencies, and what I'm starting to see more of is mainstream agencies wanting to offer our services as an add-on to hopefully win pitches and add more value. It's awesome. I'm particularly seeing boutique agencies wanting to offer this, which is really cool.

Marie 10:11
Why do you think that is? Where's it coming from?

Guest 10:11
Do you mean why boutique agencies?

Marie 10:11
Yeah.

Guest 10:11
I think, being a small business owner myself, I know how much easier it is to be dynamic when you run a small business. You can just go, "Hey, today we're going to try pink." And everyone goes, "Cool. Let's do pink." Big agencies don't have that luxury, so that's what I think it is.

Marie 10:11
Right. What about from an internal comms perspective? There'd be so many - and I'll give you an example. My mum works for a company that shall remain nameless, but they provide home care, and a lot of the workers are from non-English-speaking backgrounds. They were dumped recently with a whole bunch of new systems. My mum's 60, from an Arabic background. She speaks English, but she's terrified of technology. Everything's moved to email, meetings have moved to Skype, they've got 100 different forms and stuff that comes through, and she feels completely overwhelmed by it. Shouldn't internal comms also be a massive opportunity for multicultural communications?

Guest 10:11
Yes, and yes. Actually, I would say after government and health messaging and not-for-profit messaging, that's probably our next biggest client base. We have a couple of mines, for example. A few years ago, one of them bought a new mine in a country they'd never worked in before, so they inherited hundreds of new staff who didn't speak their language in the middle of Africa. It was pretty inaccessible as well. Not only did they speak another language, but they had a whole different set of health and safety regulations that this mine in Africa now had to abide by.

So we worked with them on heaps of levels, actually. First of all on health and safety messaging, but then all the way through to softer comms like their internal staff magazine. All comms for their new mine and their new cultural group of workers were coming through us, and it was awesome. It still is awesome. It's still a really good client of ours. So yeah, internal comms is huge, especially in a culture like ours in Australia, where we have a massive workforce like your mother's company.

Marie 10:11
Is this something that a smaller business should consider? If I had a team and I only had 20 people and I had one guy who's absolutely great at what he does, but there are certain areas where we just can't get through to him, is it a consideration even one-on-one, from an interpersonal perspective?

Guest 10:11
I think so, definitely. I'm obviously in comms. Again, I'm a huge empath. I'm all about communicating one-on-one. I prefer it, and I would love to meet up with a client that had one team member they needed to reach on a more authentic level. It makes perfect sense to me.

Marie 10:11
So in those scenarios, you could assist like this? That's a scenario where you can step in and help structure that conversation and assist with the approach?

Guest 10:11
Yeah. We've worked with a lot of councils.

Guest 19:48
We've worked with a lot of councils in creating guidelines and opportunities because councils in some areas - particularly Melbourne and Sydney, in the outer areas - have huge multicultural communities that are constantly growing and evolving. They really need everyone in that community to be singing out of the same hymn book in terms of how they're all communicating with each other, and the types of services that should be available to everyone in that community across the board, regardless of what language you speak or your education level.

Years ago, we did this really interesting one in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. From caseworkers and social workers, they discovered that some of their newly arrived migrants had never seen a supermarket before, and they didn't know what was edible and what wasn't. They were going into supermarkets with not very much money and finding the cheapest thing they could find, and that's what they would eat. Beyond that, they were in the fresh fruit aisle and didn't recognise a single thing, because that's not the fresh fruit and veg they had where they grew up. Really, really basic stuff that we take for granted.

With that council, we made this awesome booklet. It was so simple and so cool. We took photos of each of the items of food, and then we had a grid system with pictures of whether it should or shouldn't be cooked, and how you could cook it, and what it should look like when it's cooked. It was this cool grid system. It was so simple and so satisfying. These people were empowered by such a simple comms tool. It was amazing.

Marie 21:36
You are on such an interesting and heartwarming side of comms, I have to say. It's so fascinating, and I would love to do some work with you and your agency and think about how we can push our clients to consider audiences outside of the ones that we just assume are the biggest or the most important.

Guest 21:58
Well, actually, that's something else I was going to mention. So many of our clients will say, "I need to translate this into the top five languages." And we're like, "Cool, but who's your audience?" They'll say, "Oh, you know, I'm in mental health and we're trying to push out information about how important mental health in the elderly is." And we're like, "Okay, cool. So you don't actually need the top four languages because they maybe aren't elderly, or maybe you have other communities with a far greater need for your information." So we'll actually work through that with them as well.

Marie 21:58
What happens, Adrienne, if the message does not suit the audience? For instance, you've used that example of communicating with the elderly around the topic of mental health, but that may not even be a topic in the first place that matters to that particular culture. Is there a point where you say, "You can't just translate a document and tick a box. It's not going to work"?

Guest 21:58
Definitely. There's actually been plenty of occasions where we've worked with clients and gone, "You know what? The campaign that you've designed is not going to work." We actually need to change this, whether it evolves into a research project for them to find out what to do next year rather than just push out something this year, or whether it becomes an animation campaign as opposed to a more information-heavy campaign.

Sometimes we've designed campaigns that are important to be absorbed quietly. For example, we did a campaign with Crime Stoppers where we needed to communicate to international students that abuse is not to be tolerated. We needed to reach international students with information that would be quickly absorbed, and in a way that they were already using media. We were like, "Cool, they've all got mobile phones. They don't necessarily all have computers, but they do all have mobile phones." So we designed a really simple animation, and instead of - well, as well as - doing audio, we also put subtitles on so they could absorb the message without audio. If they're sitting on the train or sitting in a share house and they don't want people to hear them educating themselves about abuse, they can still access it. So all kinds of things mean we end up changing a campaign specifically for our audience.

Marie 21:58
Fantastic. Makes perfect sense. And I can already think of three different opportunities within my client base that would be really worth stopping to have a think about - where can multicultural comms fit in here?

What's surprising is that when I think of my entire career - I've been doing this for 20-something years - I don't think I can think of a single campaign, maybe one, maybe one telco, that involved multicultural comms. And maybe that's because I haven't worked much in government relations, because it seems heavily driven by government relations. But I still feel like maybe this is the ethical side or the moral side of me that thinks, okay, we shouldn't be excluding different groups, and they're enormous groups in this country, with huge buying power as well. Beyond their human rights needs, they've got huge buying power, and I think a lot of people overlook that.

Guest 21:58
I've been pushing this for years and years and years. I really, really want my business and my client base to expand more into that area. It has been like pushing something uphill with a fork stick that's cross-cultural. Completely understand.

Marie 21:58
On that, right, so trying to convince people to think more about multicultural comms: are we talking different channels, or the same communication channels, just different languages or messages or images? What are the mediums? What are the ways in which, if I'm speaking to a multicultural audience, is it also changing the vehicle I'm communicating with? Is it via social? Is it the newspaper? Is it the same newspaper that I'd use? Is it the Daily Tele, but with a different message and a different image? What are the different ways that multicultural comms can work?

Guest 21:58
It can work in exactly the same ways that mainstream can work, and it's as varied as our clients' desires, our clients' budgets, their audiences' communication preferences, and what's available to them. The landscape has really evolved over the last 20 years. In the early days we were very heavy in the media. Every campaign we did was on radio and in ethnic press, and that's because that's where the founders of the company really came from - a traditional media background.

But as you know, the last 20 years has exploded in terms of communication channels available to people. In terms of multicultural comms, I find that in most cases grassroots is often the best. A lot of communities don't have newspapers. The Chinese community has hundreds of newspapers and used to read a lot of them, but in recent research we've been doing, particularly younger Chinese people under 30 or 40 have said to me, "Oh no, I don't read the papers. Too much advertising." So we've done that one, have we? We've overused it.

In some areas we've even used the local Leader, where we've negotiated to put multicultural information into the local Leader. For example, for road closures and stuff like that, we've negotiated with the Leader and created a full-page ad with one portion in English and another portion in the language we're targeting. The Leader's down with that because they're there to reach their local community. Even though the majority of the Leader is in English, we know it gets read and reread and left around. A lot of multicultural people have kids or friends or neighbours who speak English as their first language, so that ad has some cut-through even though it's in an English publication.

We've got so many different channels available to us. Radio used to be strong, but it depends on where you are. If we're going to put information on 3CR, for example, it's not necessarily going to get to people outside of that physical signal. So every campaign is always different in terms of the channels that we pick. In the 10 years I've been running the business, I would say I've never rolled out the same campaign twice.

Marie 21:58
And I wish I could. Nope, you've got to work for it, lady. That's awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that with me, Adrienne. Honestly, I know my questions may have sounded so basic, but I have to be honest and say it is such a specialised area - one that I've never worked in, one that I'm fascinated by, and one that I'd love to do more with. So thank you so much.

Guest 21:58
My pleasure.

Marie 21:58
Have a great day.

Guest 21:58
You as well, and sorry about your lockdown.

Marie 21:58
Oh, thanks.

Marie 29:59
And that's Commical for this week. If you'd like to join the show, suggest a topic or ask me a question, hit me up on Instagram at marieledgar, or email me at comicalpodcast@gmail.com. Thanks so much for listening. See you.