Building Trust Through Multicultural Marketing with Alan C. Middleton PhD

How can understanding cultural nuances impact your international business success? Tune into this episode to find out! 

Join Sharifa as she sits down with Alan Middleton, a celebrated Canadian author and marketing veteran, and former President and CEO of J. Walter Thompson in Japan. In this episode, Alan shares his invaluable insights into multicultural marketing, especially from his time in Japan. He emphasizes the significance of listening, and recognizing a collectivist work culture that prioritizes team cohesion over individual acclaim.

Through his personal experiences in international business, Alan highlights how to build rapport at all organizational levels, and why reverse mentoring is a critical tool to foster deeper understanding between generations and among immigrant employees.

Biographies

Guest: Alan C. Middleton, PhD is a renown author, speaker, consultant, and Marketing Hall of Legends inductee. He is the former executive director and distinguished adjunct professor of Marketing at the Schulich Executive Education Centre. He also served as past president and CEO of JWT Japan, and is a former board director of JWT Worldwide.
 
Host: Sharifa Khan is the visionary founder of Canada’s multicultural marketing discipline. She is ­­the founder and CEO of Balmoral Multicultural Marketing, the country’s largest agency of its kind, whose groundbreaking work continues to shape the marketplace today. Sharifa is also an inductee of the prestigious Canadian Marketing Hall of Legends.

Books by Alan Middleton:
Marketing Matters for Small & Medium Enterprise: Now More Than Ever!
Reputation Matters: Why Branding & PR is Not Enough

Subscribe now and never miss an episode, featuring top industry experts and thought leaders on their multicultural marketing journeys (and don’t forget to rate and review this podcast).

Social Media: (Follow: #Balmoral and #MulticulturalMarketingPodcast)

LinkedIn:

Sharifa Khan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharifa-khan/

Balmoral Multicultural Marketing: https://www.linkedin.com/company/balmoral-multicultural-marketing/

IG:

@sharifa7147
@balmoralmulticultural
@kekadasgupta

Resources:
www.balmoralmkt.com | 416.364.0046 | inquiries@balmoralmkt.com


Credits and Acknowledgements:

· Keka DasGupta – executive producer

· Daniel Ho, ReMarketing Company Inc. - video and editing services

· Rima Maamari - podcast advisory services

Transcript

Sharifa: 0:05

Welcome to Canada's first ever multicultural marketing podcast. I'm Sharifa Khan, founder and president of Balmoral Multicultural Marketing. In each episode, join me as I interview high-profile marketing executives, where they will be sharing their experiences in reaching Canada's diverse community. Gain valuable insights and lessons and grow your multicultural affluence. Let's get started. Hello everyone, I'm Sharifa Khan, president and CEO of Balmoral Multicultural Marketing. I'm so delighted for our podcast today that I have my good friend, A lan Middleton, who have answered and be our guest today, and, of course, a lot of you in the marketing world, y ou know who Alan Middleton is, of course. Alan is a renowned Canadian author, speaker and lecturer and also is one of the M arketing L egends inducted and also executive director of the Schulich Centre Education Centre, and not to mention his long experience as the president of JWT in Japan and also sit on the board of JWT Worldwide. A lan, thank you for being our guest today and you are actually my first guest for this podcast. I'm so honored that you're here. and you've traveled the world and you have so many interesting stories in your experience, not just in Japan, but also you can name a couple of the countries that you serve as executive in advertising on behalf of J. Walter T hompson, and other marketing agency. A and what is, I think, you always mention about being the President and CEO of J. Walter Thompson in Japan and what experiences that you have that we must have in targeting to Japanese and on behalf of brands over there, and maybe you can share some of your experience with us?

Alan: 2:25

Yeah, I was obviously sufficiently unpopular in different places in the world that I had to keep moving. So I've actually lived in Norway, I've lived in the US, I lived in Japan, I lived in Canada and I've been an immigrant for a number of years. Of the European and North American experiences, we'll talk about that a bit later. But there's things you learn from every culture. But to your question about Japan - J japan was fascinating because whilst I'd asked the company could I learn a little more about the language before I went, they said no, we need you there tomorrow. So I started learning Japanese

Alan: 3:08

hen! arrived in Japan, on the ground, on the ground, my organization it was about 1500 people, only five Westerners. All the rest were local Japanese hires. So we had a very good interpretation and translation department who were my sides. But the first thing I'll comment on was my first management meeting, which was kind of interesting. So I was the president. The management group was about eight people the head of media, the head of creativity, the head of accounting, etc. Etc. And the first thing you learn in Japan is short meetings do not occur, long meetings occur. So my first management meeting, was in the West, would have traditionally been an hour, maybe two hours at most lasted three quarters of the day.

Sharifa: 4:02

Wow.

Alan: 4:02

And I'm going you know we're going through the agenda and I better not say too much because I've only just arrived here and I won't need to listen and lots of discussion going on. And I got to the end of the day and we broke up and my head of HR, my head of personnel, I grabbed him and said how was that meeting? Did it go well? He said, oh, sacho-san. Sacho means president Sacho-san. It was very good, good meeting, I said. But Maeda-san, who was the head of media, he didn't say anything. They said, oh, yes, yes, but is that bad? Oh, alan-san, he was there and that was the totality of it. And this was a guy who'd been running the union for the organization before he became the media director, and the fact he hadn't said anything was showing agreement. He was listening, showing agreement.

Alan: 5:00

So the first thing you recognized in Japan is Westerners make a lot of noise and they talk too much. Different countries in the West talk more than others, but in Japan silence is not bad and silence can register thoughtfulness and it can register agreement. Very rarely does it register disagreement. But you have to learn that. So you have to learn to listen a lot more. I would argue that's a key thing for any cultural experience. Don't spend your time talking, like I'm doing at the moment, but you spend your time listening to people. One other thing I'll mention and back to you, sharifa, the other thing you learn about.

Alan: 5:47

Japan was in and I lived in Tokyo, but I traveled around a lot trying to learn the language and looking on and I was struck by the orientation towards work by people. Now that's changed a little since I was there, because it's 15, 20 years since I was there last, but that commitment to defining who you are by how well you work and how well you get on with the people at work. So the team orientation, the individuality level and we know this from other surveys is much lower in Japan. It's much more a collectivist culture. And when you're moving from a more individualistic culture the UK, north America to a collectivist culture, it means that you have to understand that the way you get things done, you're seen as a group. The way you get things done, you're seen as a group.

Alan: 6:44

So one of the things that you have to work on is listening to people. As a leader, you're expected to make a decision, but in Japan it's much more important that you talk about what you've heard from your group and what has led you eventually to make the decision in a certain way. But the ideal is to nudge people. So I'm a big fan of mentorship as a management practice, nudging people in the direction by your own persuasiveness and that becomes more and more important depending on the culture you're in, but I'd argue that's important in all cultures, that you need to listen, that you need to listen, that you need to nudge and that extreme individualism that you see, in particularly North America and the UK, is something that you need to keep under control.

Sharifa: 7:36

I've heard also in the business environment, as you mentioned collective culture giving everybody a say that even the CEO and the president are sitting in the open office next to the junior clerk, you know, and there's no special office whatsoever in Japan, and that's what you're talking about to have equity in the organization.

Alan: 8:03

And it's also respect for the people we're working for. A quick, other Japanese story I had a chauffeured car in Japan, but occasionally I used to walk to work. It was only about half an hour and I had nothing special that day. I used to walk into work and I'm an early bird, so I'd be walking into work about 5.30, 6 o'clock in the morning. I'd be walking into work about 5.30, 6 o'clock in the morning and on my way to work one day the almost deserted street and the chauffeur-driven car comes and drops somebody who's clearly a senior executive off at the front door of his office.

Alan: 8:37

The guy gets out of the car and he looks down the street and there's somebody cleaning the road and Tokyo is immaculately clean. They keep it beautifully clean and you can tell he's the local sweeper because he's in a uniform, he's got white gloves and everything else and he's done a magnificent job. On the street and this guy is obviously a senior exec Turns towards this gentleman and bows A mark of respect for the work that he's done and that to me struck that you know it was so evocative of. You'd noticed they was there, you'd noticed the effect they'd had on the street and they were owed a mark of respect, and I wish more of our executives in senior management would understand and learn from that.

Sharifa: 9:27

And Alan, thank you for sharing with us how business is being run in Japan. We know all the success stories all the big brands that come out of Japan and adopted internationally all the cars, all the household appliances that are at a lot of the household in here. So how has your experience in Japan and knowing what they do, influence of how you see multicultural marketing here in Canada?

Alan: 9:53

Absolutely. Now Japan's struggled a bit since I was there, so there's some issues in Japan. Mostly let's get the bad thing out the way they were incredibly bad at utilizing female capability, so the ratio of male executives to female executives in Japan is still way out of reason. Numbers, yeah. So you had very smart women doing things in their community but not contributing to business, and that was one of the bad things that was happening. Some of the good things that was happening was that Japanese drive for innovation. That was happening. Some of the good things that was happening was that Japanese drive for innovation. That was there. They managed. So you know, you're right.

Alan: 10:37

They looked at post-war the car industry from the UK and they said, well, I'm allowed to say this, I'm an expert the UK's making crappy cars, so we'll go and do our own. And of course, we know the success of Toyota over time and Nissan and everybody else and Honda, but so that orientation towards the next generation that was there was one thing Secondly, that you were listening to people across the silos. One of the big traps to me of North American business and no, it's not just North American, I'd call it Western business is too siloed. We don't listen to people going across the different disciplines. Marketing, which is my specialty, has got to listen to accounting, it's got to listen to sales, it's got to listen to production and it's got to be all part of the decision-making process. The Japanese used to do a much better job at that, so that's the other thing we can learn.

Sharifa: 11:36

And how do you feel that, looking into what you have experienced there and looking into the glimmers of the Japanese business world and the marketing world, then how you describe yourself, a Canadian in a British origin, in there, and how do they view you and were they accepting you at the beginning?

Alan: 12:01

it varied, and one of the things that JWT which, as of today, is no longer because WPP's changed it all One of the things JWT did well in Japan is they hired smart women, so we had a much higher ratio of female executives to nearly any other equivalent advertising agency. It was one of the things we'd done well. So, based on that and based on the assumption about who I was, and then my early conversations, I tended to get well accepted by the younger part, the under 40 part of the organization. Where I used to run into the occasional problems not too many though was with some of the older executives, not the senior management.

Alan: 12:51

My oldest son, who must have been 65, head of media, the guy I mentioned earlier. He and I became very good friends. I used to go to him. I used to get him to mentor me because he's been coming up through the union. There was a wisdom. He'd been with the company for a long time and they knew people listened to him and he had touch points.

Alan: 13:13

So, with the senior management, my finance director Tachibana-san was wonderful and he was just great. He used to come in and say Alan-san, can we talk? That's when I'd made a bad mistake and the other thing I did to overcome this was I had a very, very good personal assistant who was Japanese, but she worked for some time in the West, which is why her English was fluent, and she'd also be my touch point into the organization as well as walking around. So I instituted management by walking around, partly because it had become a popular thing to do, but I learned to enjoy it, yeah, and I used to go out for drinks with them at night. It took a while, but actually one of my big leaving parties. I don't think there was anybody at my apartment over the age of 30 at my leaving party.

Alan: 14:04

They had a special event for me so I enjoyed that. So mostly it was good acceptance because fairly quickly what became known is Alan at least listened to you, so that was part of it.

Sharifa: 14:18

Well, I totally agree. By being as president and CEO of Balmoral, my number one job, I feel, is constantly be walking around in the company, not to watch whether who came to work, but basically actually talking to each and every one of them and find out what is happening at home. You know, are they having challenges at work? Being from the multicultural community, I have a lot of. Them are in their 20s and 30s and they always respect the hierarchy. I'm the president, right. So at times they said they wouldn't say anything. But you do have to make the effort to make them feel comfortable because there are a lot of times, in being in Asian and South Asian background, you just don't talk about your trouble that much at work.

Alan: 15:09

But it's just that through these conversations I understand better, they have a better rapport, they're not fearful of me and I think that having this connection with your employees just as the way you did in Japan is so important, and if you've demonstrated so strongly with Balmoral, it's because of the world we were chatting about this earlier, the world of social media with all its disadvantages of what's fact-based, what's not fact-based, what's rumor-based, how you get across things to people.

Alan: 15:40

The younger generation is more adept at dealing with that than perhaps an older generation not necessarily you, but definitely me. So when I moved on to teaching and mentoring, I recognized that there's something called reverse mentoring, and reverse mentoring is I recommend to any senior exec, and in fact I'm working with a group in the US right now where they're putting their whole senior executives through reverse mentoring on immigrant groups, senior executives through reverse mentoring on immigrant groups. So they're getting younger people who joined the organization to talk to them about either what the immigrant experience has been or, based on their background, what issues they've had within the organization. And they're the mentors, they're the ones teaching the senior executives. So we've been careful about how we choose the initial senior execs, so we knew people who are willing and volunteering to do this. But the early signs is there's a lot of learning going on. We live in a flat hierarchy world. You don't send orders from the top any longer. That's not the way effective organizations Particularly post-COVID.

Alan: 16:48

I don't think that works at all.

Sharifa: 16:53

And just a little bit. I want to say that Alan Middleton and David Kincaid of Level 5 are actually the initial collaborative and founder of the mentorship program at the AMA Toronto chapter and, of course, throughout the years Alan have mentored so many people, young people in particular, who are usually at times lost in their ways in the career, and also mentoring new immigrants, which I think it's so important 80% of the people I've mentored have been immigrants. And these are the ones that actually have a lot of experience back home professionals.

Sharifa: 17:32

And when they came here, when they gave up everything, their connections, they're actually totally mentally lost and, like our Canadian business world, the first question HR would ask them do you have Canadian experience? And a lot of them are so bewildered and said, what about the 10, 15 years that I had back in India or China? What are you asking me? But then they would not give them the first chance to have, so how am I ever going to be able to do that? But then the AMA and Alan have done tremendously great work, done tremendously great work to her, and we've seen a lot of these immigrants and mentees that are able to get the first job because we sort of and I'm so privileged that I have been on the mentorship program and help a few of them land their first job with great advice.

Alan: 18:24

A lot of the mentorship has happened. In fact, there's one guy, um, I won't mention his name to not embarrass him, but he was an immigrant from Morocco who arrived in March 2020. Now, those of you may remember that's when the pandemic was officially announced. The poor guy, right, he had a great background in Morocco in marketing and brand building, but, of course, arrived and got exactly the phrase you're talking about, which is really impressive, but no Canadian experience. So after two or three sessions with him, he said how do I overcome that? And I said, well, you can take courses, you can do. We went through a whole bunch of things. Then he said I want to ask you a blunt question and I said, yeah, go ahead.

Alan: 19:09

He said do all Canadians lie a lot? And I said explain what you mean by that? He said, well, I contact people and they say well, you know, there's really nothing at the moment. Then I see on a head hunters roster there's two or three jobs they're putting up and they're just lying to me.

Alan: 19:29

So for the next two or three sessions, we went through a bit of a task, not just helping with job hunting, which she eventually did very well, but talking about Canadian culture, and Canadian culture is not to confront and you get many organizations. It's interesting. My mentee this year is a lovely young South Asian woman who'd worked in Germany for a while and she found the same difference even coming from her German experience to here. The Canadians will duck and weave around an issue. Mostly it's not done to be cruel, it's done to avoid confrontation, not to hurt your feelings. Yeah, you have to work your way around that. So there's elements in this complex culture. As you know, 52% of Toronto is not born in Canada, so we're a wonderfully immigrant society, but we haven't yet learned to use it properly or to understand it properly, and we got to keep going on that.

Alan: 20:24

We're doing a bit better than we were 10 years ago and 20 years ago, but just got to keep going.

Sharifa: 20:28

So some way to go. So you have been on so many corporate boards and have been consultants to so many brands, but then there's some brands that are still hesitating in getting you know multicultural marketing, be able to be able to speak into them and of course you know, in their own way they want to get more market share. Obviously, what's stopping them to be sitting on the fence, is it? They're fearful.

Alan: 20:58

Shall I be very un-Canadian? No, but here's why. Because here's the base question about dealing with an immigrant group or a multicultural group. It all goes back to what should be the fundamental tenet of marketing, which is getting to know your target customer. Getting to know, to understand them, to be able to communicate with them in a way that they understand and that motivates them. It doesn't mean yelling, it doesn't mean all proof points, it means understanding.

Alan: 21:33

So, when you're dealing with the very complexity of immigrant groups, whether it's first, second or third generations, and we see, from the same ethnic backgrounds, huge difference between different generational groups, and there's research that backs that up, and you've got to understand that and work with that.

Alan: 21:51

So why aren't they doing it? Well, yes, there's a cost to it. So you know. But we've long since left the days where you just do an average cost per thousand in deeming and sending messages out. You've got to be much more targeted, much more focused and much more on this complex role between how much you talk about you and how much you talk about the needs of the customer. And that will partly depend on, you know, the establishment of the brand. How long has it been around, what's it doing? But honestly, what I'm finding is the understanding of what builds strong brands is declining and we seem to be making the assumption, with multicultural groups as well as non-multicultural groups, that just sending general mood messages out and making them feel better isn't the only way of doing it. So I'm sorry, I think it's ignorance.

Sharifa: 22:48

And also at times I've chatted before and mentioned many times, is also, they don't know what they don't know. But also, at the same time, they're so fearful of making mistakes, and I think that some of them actually have dipped their toes in this water, but, of course, not doing it the right way and ended up with bad results. So some of them have tried and failed and they just said well, they basically just write it off, you know, and yet not, at the same time, be able to spend the time to know how to entrench in this community and I've talked about, as you say, not just sending that advertising out there and be able to be part of the community, ingratiated community find out more about them, what they think, what's the cultural nuances, how's the behavior, what are things that are near and dear to them.

Alan: 23:40

If they make that effort, they are going to make headway into it, absolutely, but it's really the focus that they have to focus and take time, because with new technology products where there's clearly a huge advantage, you may just want to get that message out, but for most things in life, canadians tend to be all types of Canadians tend to be slower adopters of new products than our friends south of the border. So you need time to get people in. And what you're doing with great branding is building trust. And the way you build trust with different communities varies. It varies with different ages, with different genders, with different ethnic backgrounds, and what we need to understand is the path to build that trust so that people start adopting you. In most instances, you don't want them to just adopt you once, but to repeat purchase, and there's a lot of research that's gone on that that first buy, which is a huge task, if it's not followed up properly to get that repeat purchase, you've wasted a lot of money.

Sharifa: 24:44

So and that requires that understanding- and you've been a long time professor and you've taught so many marketing students, I think you just said I'm old and seasoned professor that you have been with so many students marketing students and some of them, god, they're already executives in so many brands and they have different perspective. They have different background and also personal horizon. What have you learned from your students and is there any stories that, as you say, reverse mentorship? Yeah, right so what have you learned from your?

Alan: 25:22

students. Yeah, I watched the difference between leaders that have come up a silo and leaders that have had the advantage of moving for responsibilities across an organization and I think there's a huge difference there. So I encourage expertise and learning in a discipline. But I'm going to use a friend of mine, john Doig, who's a senior executive for Scotiabank, who comes up through marketing. But Scotiabank was very smart, they moved him around, so he's got good understanding of general banking. And John gave me a great understanding about Canadian banks. He said not all Canadians will learn to like their banks, but we can learn to like their bankers, and it's insights like that that you learn on the way up. So great leaders have that ability of connecting people and connecting disciplines.

Alan: 26:12

Now there's still the need to be decisive. Yes, but the definition of decisiveness is not just individualistic. It's as your team, as your board of directors, as your senior management group, as your department heads, whatever it is, that that's the way forward. So it doesn't mean you slow down or are indecisive. It means your process of getting there considers and listens to people, and I think that's one of the big things that's been missing from a lot of business school training, in particularly in the US with the top schools. There's so much focus, because of a North American culture oriented towards individualism, that they've confused collectivism with slowness or not making decisions, and that's wrong. The challenge is to allow your organization to set longer term strategies, a path to get there that pays attention to changes in the environment but doesn't just rely on your personal judgment. It's you and others, and if you read about some of the great entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and some of the people like that, they didn't do it themselves. They were often pairs or teams and the literature has underestimated that.

Sharifa: 27:32

And actually, as you say, individualism. From what I know, from my background and all the multicultural friends that I have, in many of their culture there's no such word as individualism. You know it's always a collective decision. It's always a collective decision. It could be a generational decision. It will be a community decision at large to make it together. And individualism if ever there is a word in their language, it means selfishness. So you're absolutely right. One of my stories.

Alan: 28:04

I was romantically involved and also professionally involved in Thailand. I've been home for a long time, in fact. My ex-fiance was Thai and I taught there a lot. And one of the early experiences I had in Thailand was working with a group in executive training of a middle management group and going this is a really great idea. When are you going to recommend it to senior management? And the response from this very bright group was well, alan, that's not our job. And I said but I don't understand that You've come to a wonderful analysis and decision. No, it's their job to do that. And I said okay, how do you influence that? He said well, if we're asked for it, we would give it.

Alan: 28:47

And I realized that the traditional Thai structure was. It's based on Theravada Buddhism background and it's a lot that says authority is really very important and in Thailand at this time this is 10 years ago this was very important. So what you had to do was to move the senior executives into asking for that viewpoint, otherwise it wouldn't have got forward. And in order to work in Thailand, you need to understand that, because there's no point in steaming in like one of the big consulting companies and saying brilliant work, guys. You go ahead and do it, because it would never happen that way.

Sharifa: 29:23

So it's quite different from Japan.

Alan: 29:24

Very, oh yes it, because it would never happen that way.

Sharifa: 29:26

So it's quite different from Japan. Yes, you say Japan has been, you know, over many years far ahead of North America. Instead of having the collective decision, equality in Thailand is actually quite hierarchy, quite hierarchy.

Alan: 29:40

Yes, yes, quite, quite different. And in fact Thailand's a bit of a contrast because the Thai background is actually Southern Chinese from many, many, many centuries ago. So it's an interesting group of people. I happen to love Thailand. It's a wonderful country and it's got so many really smart people, but it's quite a contrast to some of its neighbors, so very different from the Myanmar or Burmese experience. On one hand.

Sharifa: 30:08

And they have to…. Or even the Vietnamese? They still have royalty, they do you?

Alan: 30:13

can't be rude about your royalty there.

Sharifa: 30:15

Still the king there?

Alan: 30:16

Yeah, I could be very rude about King Charles, but I'm not allowed to be rude about any of the Thai royalty.

Sharifa: 30:22

So, alan, you know it's such an honor recently you become one of our board advisors on my board and can you share what and want leaders to know in advertising about this discipline and what are the opportunities? And I really value the advice you have given me because you have such vast experience, not just in Canada but globally, so maybe if you can share what leaders should know, yeah, yeah, there's no simple formula because life changes, but I'm going to draw it down to a number of areas.

Alan: 31:01

Number one always be impatient with your whole organization, not just you personally, but looking for the next step, which means thinking ahead strategically.

Alan: 31:12

One of the great things at the Schulich School of Business with its previous, just retired- three years ago, dean Dean Deja Horvath, and one of his great strengths was thinking strategically about where business education was going and then making the changes in order to get there. So he wasn't responding to what was happening at the minute, but thinking about the future. So that's one area, that medium-term, two to three-year perspective. Second, though, get restless Because, although what I've just said, you need to be thinking about the strategy for the future, stuff happens that changes the world Last year, the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, now the Middle Eastern situation, all with their knock on economic and political effects. You have to learn to respond to those you were saying. You're about to go on a vacation and you're having to change your vacation plans in Europe because of some closures of some areas. So you're changing your vacation strategy based on that. Organizations have to do that. It shouldn't detract them in most cases, from what they're building as an organization or a brand, but they need to pay attention to it. Third area love your people Doesn't mean they're always going to agree with you. It doesn't mean they're always going to do the right thing. It means if they are running a big car company, unless you pay them reasonable wages, they're going to go on strike and they're going to force you to something that will interrupt your production. But there's a reality that you need. They're the people driving your business, either with the customer or with the production, or whatever it is.

Alan: 32:48

I personally think we've allowed the gap between what we pay senior executives and people and what we pay the average wage and people has gone far too great. We used to be much more compact 20 years ago and I think that was a better model. I think we went into what I call the post-Reagan era in North America, the greed economy, where you pay lots of people money for just moving money around. Yes, that's important, but not when you give troubles with affordability of healthcare, affordability of housing, affordability of food and beverage. You know right now Canada's going through the biggest use of food banks for decades and part of that gap. So, yes, listen to your people, but also make sure you pay them living wages and recognizing accomplishment, not just age and position. And then the last thing I'd add for the overall is recognize you're dealing not just with employees at work but with human beings, and COVID, I think is funny enough, really helped that process.

Sharifa: 33:59

Yes.

Alan: 33:59

Because as we now mix home and work attendance, we're having to recognize that we need to make allowances where we can, and there are some areas you can't in production, for instance, we can make allowances for people to be at home, which means we need to understand a little more about their family situations. So maybe people with young kids at home maybe you'll allow them to work from home more. Maybe if you're older and they don't mind, they can come into the office more. It's those kind of balances. So in the same way we segment our advertising appeals to customers, I think we have to raise the importance of the role of HR, the role of personnel, in dealing with more specific differences of people. We need to build the teams, but what we also need to do is to recognize them as individuals coming forward.

Sharifa: 34:54

And um, I just want to go back to the question about um. You know, as you said, you've been on so many boards, so many brands as consultants. Also, what would you like to share with the leaders of advertising and community industry to know the importance and the discipline and opportunity for them in Canada right now, particularly with our vast diverse population? Yeah, absolutely.

Alan: 35:21

Two things, and I'll throw a statistic out which was in one of my books recently, which is as a proportion of sales. Canadian small, medium enterprises and even some big ones on average spend half the amount of money on marketing that their US counterparts do. In fact, I was gonna title that book. I've got this great idea but I'm not gonna tell anybody, and that's in a way. We have very good startup successes in the medium business, but one of the things we're not so good is scaling up, and that's one of the reasons why.

Alan: 35:58

So one of the things we got to do is we've got to recognize that, within affordability, even if it's borrowed short term or medium term, one of the things we need to do is not only keep that development going, but also keep going on the development process of its communication, of its marketing, and marketing's not just advertising. It's the way you think about the pricing. The distribution systems have changed dramatically. I'm gonna say something nice about an American service industry right now, because I just ordered a bunch of stuff on Amazon and as I was coming in today, I got my note on my iPhone saying it's arrived. You know, my God, I only ordered it on the weekend. So that kind of delivery system is spectacular. So keeping up with the technology and keeping up with that ability there.

Sharifa: 36:46

A lot of times I've noticed that their brands have said well, I just, yes, I'm doing multicultural marketing, yeah, I'm going to put different, diverse talent into a TV commercial or OLV, and that will be my checkbox, that I'm doing. I've answered the diversity and equity. And then a lot of times I would ask okay, so that's what you do, but what's the message? Is it going to be a message? You know how to resonate with them and also, most importantly, what's the medium you're using? So you use all these diverse talent, but you are using the medium of the mainstream media, which really don't connect with them.

Sharifa: 37:27

So I think there's a lot of mistakes out there, but I'm sure a lot of brands learned. But there are so many questions I feel that they should ask themselves Are you doing it just because you feel your company said, oh, you just got to do multicultural marketing? Are you doing it seriously to look into the community as to what turns them on? Why would they even pay attention?

Alan: 37:52

to you Over what period of time? Back to the earlier conversation how are you developing trust in your brand or service within this? Community, so it may not pay back? Here's the issue. Community, so it may not pay back. Here's the issue. It's much cheaper, obviously, if you develop a mainstream activity and you say, oh, we'll either subtitle it or we'll include some different looking talent in it. That may or may not be appropriate Mostly it won't be, because you're mixing a mainstream message without understanding what turns on the community, and it may be different things.

Alan: 38:33

I was always struck when I was teaching my classes and the classes would tend they were multicultural classes, but they would tend to sit in their groups and I was struck by how each group grabbed onto different things in cases that were important, and you'd get one group over there who'd say, well, this is the key issue, and another group over there would say, well, no, it's not.

Alan: 38:56

And then I realized it wasn't the intellectual power, it was that they were seeing different things in the different scenarios. And that's what you've got to be looking for Now. You have to make the ultimate economic decision, which is is it worth doing something separate? Now the answer is yes, it always is. It does not necessarily need to be of the same scale as your mainstream, but if you start doing something one year that appeals, maybe it's in the ethnic media, maybe it's in a particular media, maybe it's in a particular influencer and how they work. But if you start doing and you build it over time, you've begun to build a bit of a connection. That's what you should be looking for. So culture and connection.

Sharifa: 39:39

Yeah, and building relationships in the long run and not be just a shotgun approach. Absolutely.

Alan: 39:45

And not changing it. And the other thing that goes on with organizations is you get a new chief marketing officer in or a new person responsible, and when they get moved on, somebody else comes in. The new executive wants to change it to make their impact, and you get that kind of stuff going on.

Sharifa: 40:03

We've been through a lot of those. So you are such a well-known Canadian author and you have been author of, you know, quite a few books and of course, recently, last year, the ones that you, you know, sort of so nicely supported AMA. This was the one they call Marketing Matters for Small and Medium Enterprise. Now more than ever, it's on Amazon and actually about a week and a half, two weeks ago, your second book not really your second, but second in this series third, reputation Matters, which was just launched, and those I said to the audience. Those are excellent read and it's really taking what Alan has done throughout his life, all these wonderful advice actually circulating around. The subject that we're talking in these broadcasts is about marketing.

Alan: 40:59

And the important thing about those books, one third to 50% of them are interviews with people who have succeeded, so it's not just my viewpoint. So you know, I've done what I tell other people to do, which is I go out and do the research and put that in the book.

Sharifa: 41:17

What have been their journey and what have been their success?

Alan: 41:20

Reputation matters. There's interviews with L'Oreal, there's interviews with lawyers, there's interviews with a public relations company a number of people of how you manage your reputation better, because it's more than just branding or advertising. But that's such a critical part of it too.

Sharifa: 41:35

And I have to say, in my years of in marketing and in my niche, multi-council marketing, this one of the disciplines that I would always put in an integrated campaign is the public relations and community relations, because it's so important to these communities that you are outreaching to them and also knowing who are the leaders, the who's who, and building bridges of understanding and to let them know what you're doing, because there's always sort of a doubt why are you in here, why are you with us? So building a good relationship and building your brand among community leaders and community organization is so important. That's what you call. Reputation matters, right, and I think that a lot of brands do omit the part of community relations. It's got to be both together.

Alan: 42:31

Yeah, Because marketing communications includes promotional activity, price offs, but it's also public relations, both with the target group but also influencers and leaders in the community, as well as the advertising. And unless you're doing these things combined, you're not maximizing the value of doing that.

Sharifa: 42:51

So, alan, is there anything else? You're such a pool of great information to be shared by our audience, who are so interested in the marketing world. Is there anything you would like to share?

Alan: 43:03

Well, it's always astonished me that multicultural marketing has not received much greater prominence in Canada because we are such an immigrant society. One of the favorite things I used to do with a cultural anthropologist friend of mine is we used to go walking through neighborhoods in Toronto and when we were visiting other places, do it there as well. And unlike the US where you tend to get these concentrations of immigrant communities Canada, and Toronto particularly it's much more subtle and that subtlety is important because it's an understanding of the community that they're not purely Indonesian or purely Malaysian or whatever they're blends and then that come together and that's the complexity and that's why it's such an important part of understanding for the future. So I would regard this as an essential part of having public relations, advertising and promotion working together, but also having anybody who's got good experience in multicultural marketing working together as part of the same teams the general process.

Sharifa: 44:11

At the table.

Alan: 44:12

At the table thinking about these issues and helping the organizations find out about how that works in this particular community or this style of community.

Sharifa: 44:22

Yeah, so, alan, thank you so much and being, uh, part of my advisory board and such a pleasure working with you at ama, with ama, with the mentorship program and viewers out there, make sure you go on amazon and pick up this book. It's not expensive, it's actually a work from the heart from alan and proceeds are actually going to AME and it's for marketing matters for small business and median size entrepreneurs and also, more important than ever, and reputation matters, and they are such good read and please go on Amazon and pick it up on management capability.

Alan: 45:02

The first book was mentorship matters, so that that was the there was a management style.

Sharifa: 45:07

So that's a bit about multiple. So three, three, three books in a row. That's wonderful. Who can do that?

Alan: 45:14

you know, three books and we're actually now, if I was really good at what I was doing, I'd be able to do that in different languages. But as my English teachers told me at high school, you have enough problems in English anyway.

Sharifa: 45:26

Such a wonderful experience chatting with you, alan, and thank you so much, and thank you all of you for watching this podcast. Thank you for joining us today. If you have enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast and rate and review the show. Join us next time for another journey into the exciting world of multicultural marketing.