Sophisticated strategies help reach diverse audiences
The face of our country is changing before our eyes with staggering consequences for communicators of all stripes.
For more than the first 100 years of its existence, the population of Canada was quite homogeneous. Apart from Indigenous communities, Canada was largely white and Christian.
This is no longer the case. Walk through many Canadian city neighbourhoods and you are just as likely to hear conversations in Tamil, Punjabi or Mandarin as you are in English or French.
The implications of this demographic shift are enormous for anyone trying to craft messages aimed at reaching these diverse audiences.
Canadian political strategists have been undertaking multicultural outreach since the 1970s. Back then, many newcomers naturally affiliated with the Liberal Party of Canada because of its proimmigration policies. Over the years, however, both the Conservatives and New Democrats have made concerted efforts to chip away at this Liberal support base. Today, all major parties have fulltime staff dedicated to multicultural community and media outreach.
Given the rapid demographic changes of the past 20 years, today’s communications strategists need to develop even more sophisticated approaches to appeal to these unique audiences because of their many divergent needs, histories and ideological backgrounds.
It is no longer enough for political and corporate brands to be represented at cultural and religious festivals, especially when trying to reach second- and thirdgeneration Canadians like me who do not necessarily care about seeing messages in our parent’s languages. In order to reach this fast-growing, and upwardly mobile generation of Canadians who were born here to immigrant parents, messages must be relevant to their unique life experience and values.
As Drew Westen, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, points out in his seminal work on political psychology, The Political Brain, voter (or consumer) behaviour is often influenced by emotion over rationality. This means that political parties and corporations need to study and analyze how the emotional triggers of newer Canadians differ from those who have been here for generations.
For example, many newcomers leave prestigious jobs back home to work in precarious circumstances here. Communications professionals will need to figure out what emotional factors drove them to make this life-changing move. What are their aspirations for the future? What keeps them awake at night? In some cases, the answers will mirror those of older-generation Canadians. In some cases, the differences will be quite stark.
In most of our big urban centres, minorities have now become very visible majorities. Take, for example, the city of Toronto, where more than half of respondents to the 2016 census, 51.5 per cent, self-identify as coming from racialized backgrounds. This is up from 49 per cent who identified that way in 2011.
The numbers in Toronto’s outer suburbs are even more telling. Close to 57 per cent of Mississauga, 60 per cent of Richmond Hill, 73 per cent of Brampton and 78 per cent of Markham residents now identify as visible minorities.
This is not just a GTA phenomenon. Our entire country is getting more diverse. Statistics Canada reports that, as of 2016, 22 per cent of Canadian residents were born in another country. As of last year, Canada is home to people from more than 250 ethnic origins. In short, we are no longer a country dominated by the founding English and French nations.
Over time, our country will only continue to be more diverse. Ahmed Hussen, Canada’s Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, recently announced revised immigration targets that would see our annual intake of immigrants increase 13 per cent by 2020. This means that the face of our country will keep changing.
Politicians and business leaders who fail to understand the implications of this new reality will live to regret it.
John Boynton DIRECTORS:
John A. Honderich Chair Campbell R. Harvey Martin E. Thall Elaine B. Berger Daniel A. Jauernig Alnasir Samji Paul Weiss Linda Hughes Dorothy Strachan Daryl Aitken John Boynton Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Torstar Corp.