HereandNow365 – defining Multicultural Marketing, was founded by Manish Tiwari in 2006 and subsequently grew to be the largest multicultural advertising consultancy in the United Kingdom. The multicultural specialist agency has worked with more than 100+ British brands across a range of clients in Fintech, World Foods, Banking, Retail, Media, Health, Charities and Tourism. The raison d’etre for a multicultural comms strategy is to look at market expansion for a brand and broaden its appeal to several new segments of diaspora communities each having its unique cultural moorings and diverse experience of the brand. The multicultural insights help the brand to create a deep and authentic communication where its broader communication might fall short as it caters to a certain sensibility which might not resonate within ethnic target group. Hence, multicultural marketing helps to unlock the value proposition of the brand to a wider audience and create new market segment. Multicultural or ethnic marketing can create phenomenal growth and there are a lot of brands who purely thrive by marketing to multicultural ethnic audiences.

Ethnic Marketing

HereandNow365 defines multicultural marketing via its own process of creating insights, creating communication based on these insights and most importantly closing the loop via feedback from the target group. The integral part of any campaign deemed multicultural is ‘authentic’ and ‘deep’ bonding with the community and not a tick in the box exercise often done to showcase commitment to diversity or multicultural aspirations.

Why Multicultural Marketing – Because it helps to unlock bigger value for the brand and grow its market share based on ‘deeper’ and ‘authentic’ bond with diverse ethnic communities. However, there is another reason why every brand should embrace multicultural marketing as Europe and UK are increasingly representative societies mirroring the global population mix. The globalised developed world doesn’t have a choice but to embrace diversity and multicultural marketing helps to contextualise the brand within this new reality. For example the sales in multiples such as ASDA, Sainsbury and Morrisons register double digit growth during Ramadan and there are several high street retailers who experience a peak during Indian festival of Deepavali; these occasions can be leveraged to create growth for any business. However, multicultural marketing truly works when a brand embraces ethnic communities by ensuring that a strand of its communication constantly engages with them through bespoke contextual media which is not merely window dressing rather a deeper connect.

HereandNow365 in defining multicultural marketing has been inspired by the founder’s quest for a society which is able to give voice to ethnic and minority communities who are often marginalised and subsequently become inconsequential in the media narrative. It is important that multicultural societies overcome divisive and corrosive nature of political discourse as seen in recent times and advertising comms is an important element in bending the reality for a society which is truly inclusive. Hence, Multicultural Marketing can be truly a force for good and a catalyst for a better society.

The multicultural communication specialists at the agency have worked on social campaigns for NHS and won several awards for the same as demonstrated through the GMPHN Campaign to bring behavioural change across some ethnic communities, to respond better towards cancer screening and signs of stroke. A campaign which was subsequently adopted by the Public Health England and taken National based on its remarkable regional success. Similarly, British Heart Foundation was able to influence a significant South Asian population through the multicultural campaigns and bespoke events created by the agency. The agency has created successful multicultural campaigns for global giants including Unilever, Nestle, Telefonica, Virgin, Sky, Barclays, Westmill Foods and several other brands.

The agency has won coveted awards for its multicultural campaigns including the British Asian Media (BAM) Awards, the Billboard Campaign award for the pandemic year, the English Business Awards, the Diversity Awards and the founder was featured among the top 20 Diversity professionals by the Guardian and has been felicitated for his contribution to Multicultural Media and its growth at the House of Lords.