Multicultural Festivals & Brand Positioning

New patterns in shopping behavior have precipitated changes in the marketing strategies of various companies. Up until a decade ago, Christmas season was the major shopping season and all new products were planned & launched accordingly. In recent years, the focus of the retailers has started expanding to include ethnic festivals celebrated shortly after Christmas. 28 New Years are celebrated across Canada at different times of the year by various from dozens of other festivals.

Immigrants are usually very receptive to new traditions and lifestyles in their adopted country. They spend the first couple of years learning about the local culture, nuances, geography and economy. But at the same time, they are motivated to continue with their customs and traditions as that is what defines them. As soon as they identify homogenous groups, they start looking towards reestablishing themselves culturally. This is how a number of ethnic festivals have gained widespread recognition all over Canada.

The celebration of Baisakhi is an important cultural as well as a religious event for the Sikh Community and South Asians as a whole. Thousands walk together in a procession, adorned with saffron head covers or wearing tradition attire, chanting from the sacred verses and greeting each other. Various social and religious groups organize stalls offering free refreshment and cultural souvenirs to the devotees. Similarly, the Chinese New Year which is the most important Chinese holiday is celebrated very enthusiastically by the diaspora. It is also known as the spring festival. It normally spans over a few weeks and is largely characterized by ethnic food, dance, colourful costumes and family get-togethers. Chinese tend to shop more during the Chinese New year especially because of the traditional exchange of “red pockets” containing money.

Over the years, these festivals have developed further importance by providing media, politicians, marketers and all those who would like to tap into ethnic communities, an opportunity for a close encounter. Apart from these lobbyists, ethnic festivals are being increasingly valued by the neo-ethnics or Canadians belonging to blended ethnicities as an occasion to renew their ties with their ancestor’s culture or to simply enjoy an exotic celebration.

Multicultural intelligence has a pertinent role to play in today’s marketing strategies. Companies need to position their brands based on multidimensional scaling; a glimpse at the multi-faith calendar can give a fair idea as to how to plan their target market. A popular strategy these days is to partner with another agency which specializes in multicultural marketing. However, it is important to look for agencies with team members who have a thorough understanding of festivals or important occasions and know well enough how a particular product could be paired with a liked stimulus in order to hit the spot. A good communications or marketing agency catering to the ethnic communities will have in-house multilingual translation & production services as well as a creative team that understands the nuances of the community it is catering to. They will know which opportunities to tap into and how the potential market can be developed into a real market.

Sometimes, we see a strong disconnect between the opportunity for brand positioning and the ad campaign. If the ad campaigns are not designed keeping in mind the relevance of the product with the particular occasion or the community’s mind set, it will not bring the desired results. Also, tokenistic or stereotypical ad campaigns are known to put off the potential customer. We normally have a tendency to perceive another group as more homogenous than our own and we tend to over-generalize. When we build our marketing strategies geared towards a particular festival, it would be important to learn about any significant individual differences within the culture. Similarly, if a brand is seen to be disproportionately associated with a country or culture, it could even polarize a particular market. So, brand positioning in each market brings forth its own set of challenges which need to be dealt with prudently. A well-entrenched multicultural agency can go a long way in bringing success to the marketing strategies of any company.