Food for thought

An exhortation to the Canadian grocery industry

Trigger warning.?

You may feel uncomfortable when you read this article. It elaborates on the answer I gave? Justin Poy 伍雋雄 ?at yesterday's? Grocery Innovations Canada ?2023 Conference and Trade Show.

You can view the panel discussion in its entirety here: https://youtu.be/KRSSf2CWN2A?si=jf35TjxYrsp9k3sm

Justin posed a direct but extremely important question: how do marketers from western backgrounds (as most marketers in this country are) reach multicultiural Canadian consumers? How should they make better use of ethnic media?

Before I elaborate on my answer with you in this article, I have a question of my own for everyone in grocery retail whether brand or retailer: are you even using media to serve diverse consumers?

I thought so.

I will address this “if you build it they will come” mentality again. But let’s set it aside for now.

Fear ignorance more than failure.

To understand how to think about ethnic media vs. gen pop media, we need to understand that ethnic audiences are underserved.?

It’s my observation that most Canadian marketers wilfully continue to underserve these consumers — even though they know they do so at their own peril.

In the grocery sector, though this is most often true for other sectors too, these consumers are underserved because too few retailers serve them.

They are also underserved because there are too few brand offerings on the shelf and in the “ethnic” aisle that meet their needs sufficiently.?

And finally, they are underserved because of how poorly brands in this country communicate with them — this last point is either the first or last nail in the coffin, depending on the privilege of your perspective.?

There is such woeful inadequacy when it comes to serving racialized grocery customers effectively in Canada.?

Unlike racialized Canadians, white Canadians are not forced to shop at 3 or 4 different locations to complete their household shopping list. Racialized Canadians (and this is an exact example of systemic racialization) are excluded, segregated, and reduced to another, lower, more difficult standard when shopping for their families on top of all the other discriminatory barriers they face.?

Shopping at more than one store for them is not a matter of choice but necessity. Yes, there are exceptions to this, but they are exceptions that prove the rule.

When we move on to ethnic or multicultural media specifically, even well-meaning retailers and shopper-marketing brands completely miss the mark.

The first issue is the heart of all prejudice and discrimination: ignorance. Most brands (whether retailer or product) inadvertently discriminate against multicultural media because they don’t understand it well enough. These marketers default to gen pop media. For sure, these media are also consumed by multicultural consumers, but to a lesser extent and this type of media choice provides less value or impact. Messages tend to be delivered in random, non-contextual environments where consumers are unmotivated to act or where algorithmic fraud is rife.

Add to this the brand safety concerns that arise from the poorly trained “machine”.

Do you really want your frozen dim sum promo appearing in Chinese alongside an article in English on India-China border skirmishes in an India-based publication, however massive its readership? Does your Canadian media buying agency even know there are India-China border skirmishes?

In this zone of media planning, most decisions in the end, are really about marketer comfort rather than true outreach and engagement of multicultural consumers.?However, in this case, comfort is not synonymous with safety. We know that algorithms and AI have embedded biases. The decision-making cycle that relies so heavily on big martech and programmatic rather than human-scale, community-centric choices perpetuates racism in the machine.

Dismantling the racism in the machine?

It’s time to think about the societal impact of our decisions as marketers on ethnic media.?There’s no kind way to say this.

Every single time a big brand turns off its investment in ethnic marketing and ethnic community media, they silence the voices of the ethnic communities that ethnic community media sustains.

Those press conferences that announce your investment in the black community or the indigenous community or the South Asian community? Are they accompanied by paid advertising in ethnic community media that explains to these communities how they can access this funding, this food, this breakfast program? If the answer is "no", your motives are transparent to the community. You, as a brand, are virtue-signalling and ethnic consumers will be the first to see through the performative hypocrisy because most of them are better educated and have more diverse life experiences than most Canadians.

?

Think like a human and in new, human ways.

It’s time we stopped thinking in conventional terms like newspaper, radio, out of home and online.

We need to think like the people with whom we are communicating.

We need to be present in the community and in the store.

In the community, we must be present at the grassroots level, supporting community activities. We need to be present in community media, supporting community voices, and in gen pop media, supporting and welcoming the community as an integral part of Canadian society.

We’ve all heard of the Moment of Truth.

Outside the store, we need to create a Moment of Discovery — that a brand exists for me, the ethnic consumer, that a brand intends to serve me, the ethnic consumer.?

In the store, on the shelf, we must create culturally inclusive?moments of truth, guided by this sage observation from multicultural marketing pioneer, Tom Burrell,?"Black people are not dark-skinned white people."

To do this we are required to immediately put an end to “If you build they will come” thinking. All platforms and channels must be put to work to deploy this, not just the token investment that we see currently.

We need to acknowledge and welcome the multicultural consumer — not just their bigger shopping carts and unusually large wallets. Not just at the times that they serve our corporate and business interests best — but at all times so we can serve their interests better. We must acknowledge their hearts, their minds, their languages, their needs, their preferences and their cultures.?

How much is this going to cost me?

It won’t be cheap, but that’s not your consumer’s or your agency’s fault. It’s your fault. Okay, not you personally, but it’s your brand’s fault.?

Whoever led you over the last 20 years was asleep at the wheel. There were plenty of indicators that this change was coming.

The fact is, brands need to flag their presence for multicultural consumers, on the shelf, at the till, in the coupon, on their sites, in their ads and in their stores and branches. The deadline for this was yesterday.

In Canada's big urban markets — Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Vancouver —?brands need to spend a minimum of 40% of their big urban marketing budgets to do it right. Both, in the community and in the store.

Nationally, brands need to ensure their multicultural investment is at minimum of 25% of their national budget. Instead of the shameful and systemically discriminatory, dismissive 1 to 2% they currently invest.

My advice: do it now or lose forever. The big retailers from home countries are circling, and they will steal your lunch.

If Aldi and Lidl haven’t already.?

Food for thought.

Grocery Innovations Canada #GICShow23 #grocery #ethnic #justinpoyagency #gavinbarrett #lorettalam #donseo #jiechen Barrett and Welsh Inc