In this op-ed, Charlie Tannous, managing director of Diverse Communications, explains why the government’s newfound embrace of diverse casting in their ads doesn’t go far enough.
Our government has addressed some challenging themes in its advertising recently. Including consent, respect for women, and coercive control. These are important topics, and it’s vital they get them right.
Unfortunately, when it comes to Australia’s ethnic population, they often don’t.
Let me start by saying the unsayable. When it comes to topics around sex, gender respect and relationships, the behaviour-change needed in Australia’s ethnic population is greater than in the ‘Aussie’ population.
The reason for this is simple. Many of Australia’s immigrants come from countries where the cultural norms around gender-relations are different.
Domestic violence, for example, is more tolerated in certain ethnic communities. Because in their countries of origin, the culture accepts it. There’s a code that says ‘The man has to be the man, and the woman has to listen’.
The community that I grew up in was riddled with domestic violence. But if the woman were to leave, their family would disown them. Cultural norms again.
Today, it’s a little different, and divorce is increasing quite rapidly in ethnic communities. But it isn’t changing as fast as it should, even though many ethnic minority Australians are now second- or third-generation. The problems persist because even if someone from a minority ethnic group was born in Australia, they grew up in a household where their parents were immigrants or children of immigrants, and so they were socialised in a different way to the Anglo population. For example, they may well have experienced less mixing of the genders during their upbringing, especially within Islamic communities.
So how to tackle the problem, and deliver communications that will change the behaviour of ethnic minorities?
Diverse casting is a good step – you’re more likely to respond to an ad if it features someone who looks like you – and government advertisers have made great strides here. Translation is also a good idea, i.e. running the same ad, but in-language, in ethnic media. But the truth is, these steps don’t go far enough.
The messaging has to be culturally informed too.
For example, a few years ago, when Australia was going through a drought, the government instituted a hose-pipe ban, and created an ad campaign to publicise it. While compliance in the Anglo community was high, there were huge problems getting certain ethnic communities to conform to it. In many ethnic cultures – for example, Greeks, Yugoslavians, Italians – there is a preference for concreting the front yard and driveway. They’ll then hose this area down every day, or every other day, to keep it clean. Because all of the government’s communications about the hose-pipe ban featured lawns, the message hadn’t cut through.
At this point in the conversation, a lot of government communications specialists, unfortunately, relegate the ‘cultural question’ to the too-hard basket.
They’d rather not do the work to uncover ethnic insights, or create separate campaigns for different communities.
But the numbers say they should.
Because although it may seem arduous to reach what is a ‘minority’ of the population, we are talking about a very sizeable minority nowadays.
The share of Australians who were born overseas has in fact just passed 30 per cent, for the first time since 1893, following record migration in the last twelve months.
And the 2021 Census found that almost half of all Australians have a parent born overseas (48.2 per cent). At 48 per cent, our ethnic ‘minority’ is barely a minority at all.
Obviously, these matters need to be handled sensitively. If the government were to call out a specific community as having a problem for a certain type of behaviour, they would risk massive blowback. (Although to some extent, this could be mitigated by creating communications that run in targeted ethnic media).
But having to tread carefully is not a reason to avoid taking steps that are necessary.
Especially when it comes to the hugely important topics our government has been addressing recently.
