Quote EndQuote Cross-Cultural Strategy

Confusion in Commercials: When advertisers don’t do their Cultural Homework

Posted by Vanessa Vachet | 03.09.15

 

75% of North-Americans find Commercials Confusing

75% of North-Americans find Commercials Confusing

 

These days, companies seem to be obsessed with reaching target audiences in a one-size-fits-all approach. In a misguided attempt to reach multicultural markets, they plug in a minority actor or a mixed-race character into a commercial, hoping that viewers will relate to these fabricated multicultural families. Yet, these attempts at diversity are often epic failures. People are confused. In fact, three-quarters of North-Americans (75%) say they have found a commercial on TV confusing, while one in five (21%) often find commercials on television confusing. Is this because of the lame attempt by advertisers to be everything to everyone? Why don’t advertisers do a better job of representing the modern family? The sad fact is, major retailers don’t often see their mistakes and can adopt strange advertising practices as a result.

 

Picture this ‘scene’ in a commercial, because, trust me, I’ve seen this before: There’s a family get-together. Everyone’s sitting around the dinner table, chatting, smiling and enjoying themselves. You may see various ethnic actors in this scene: typically an Asian mother, often coupled with a Caucasian father. That’s not uncommon. Mixed marriages and multi-ethnicity families are an ever-increasing reality. In fact, according to a 2006 StatsCan census, 289,400 mixed common-law and married couples exist in Canada, with over 86 per cent of those households made up of one visible minority person and a partner who is not part of a visible minority. And considering the huge influx of immigration in most Canadian cities, that number has been steadily growing.

 

Reality Check: 289,400 mixed couples exist in Canada!

Reality Check: 289,400 mixed couples exist in Canada!

 

It’s great that advertisers want to acknowledge that fact, but, it starts to get weird when the baby or child featured in this fictional family is not half-Asian/half-Caucasian, as you would expect, but Latino or African-American. People watching this commercial are left wondering: whose baby is that? And audiences play the guessing game, while the message of the commercial gets completely lost.

 

The Canadian Family has changed greatly since the Fifties

The Canadian Family has changed greatly since the Fifties

 

Don’t get me wrong. It is important to show diversity in advertising. In fact, Cheerios did just that in their 2013 Super Bowl advertising campaign (click to see clip). Based on the mixed reception of this mixed-race ad, the topic of intermarrying is still controversial. But, if you want to reach a wider, more culturally diverse audience, you can’t just take a mainstream commercial and plug in ethnic actors, hoping that your weak attempts at multicultural advertising will win the day. That’s like throwing darts in the dark. You may hit the target once or twice, out of sheer luck, but a lot of those aims will fall short of the mark.

 

Sadly, many advertisers just take the same old messages from previous campaigns and wrap it in a ‘multicultural’ bow. Yet, these garbled, mixed-race families provide no real insight into what a multi-ethnicity family is actually about. Consumers search for a similarity with these on-screen families and come up empty-handed. After all, what family has a representative of each and every race or cultural background, other than Anjelina Jolie’s?

Advertisers need to Engage Multicultural Families

Advertisers need to Engage Multicultural Families

 

In order to reach multicultural markets, you must first understand the modern, multi-ethnic or multi-racial family, as well as the different cultures of which they are comprised. Were you aware that older generations or even modern generations of Korean viewers would find it offensive for a TV family to be comprised of a Korean/Chinese mix? Did you also know that marriages between Persian people and those of Indian descent are sometimes controversial? If you did your cultural homework, this would not be news to you.

 

Don’t despair, though. There is a right way to showcase multicultural families in commercials and it starts with research. Take the time to learn about your target audience, do some digging before you jump into the fray. You don’t want to make the same blunder as Procter & Gamble? They launched a television commercial in Japan, featuring a woman bathing, while her husband enters the bathroom and touches her. The Japanese considered this ad an invasion of privacy and viewed it as vulgar or in ‘poor taste’. A perfect example of advertisers who didn’t do their homework. For more examples of Cultural Blunders in Advertising, see this article.

 

A good way to learn about a culture, especially multi-ethnicity families, is to reach out to invite them to share their stories and experiences. Do competitive comparisons. See what your rivals are doing wrong or right and learn from their mistakes. Talk to various cultural groups and do sampling, interviewing, or create focus groups, to obtain the cultural insights you need. A good marketing company will do this work and do it well. The insights you gain will be invaluable and will lead to a better more personalised advertising message, one viewers will respond to. If a commercial shows a true reflection of a multicultural family, you may even create an emotional bond to your product or your business; one that will last long after the commercial is over.

                                                                                                                                                  

Sources:  (Images courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons: Top to Bottom: Rachel Carter, DIBP images, BiblioArchives / LibraryArchives, Stefanus Ming)