Advertisers Target Multicultural Britain – IPA The New Britain Report
IPA The New Britain Report 2014 – Britain has always been a fascinating country with its vibrant cultural diversity. Today Britain is more multicultural than ever before, and this will only continue to grow– so the time has come for marketers to take a full advantage of the opportunities presented by the growing ethnic population. Multicultural population is more than eight million currently. That’s nearly 13% of the total population concentrated mostly in cities such as London, Birmingham, Leicester, Bradford and in seven others metropoles. Most of this population remains hard-to-reach audiences for many brands as they fail to understand their behaviours and put aside the stereotypes.
Marketing and advertising nowadays is all about how effectively you can engage with consumers, therefore, brands and companies can’t afford to ignore BMEs any longer excluding them from their Marketing Strategies. For over 27 years we have been having discussions, conferences, interviews researches and forums on this subject, and it seems finally the ice is melting, and the brands starting to notice the huge potential of this new untapped market.
IPA has recently released the updated Diversity report on IPA The New Britain Report 2014 (Multicultural Britain) with an in-depth look at Britain’s changing demographics. The report attempts to bridge the information gap between clients and agencies that are still struggling when it comes to communicating within an increasingly ethnically diverse society. Such initiatives are always positive. IPA report predicts that multicultural communities in the UK will double in size by 2025. One-in-four new born babies in England and Wales have a foreign-born mother.
The report highlights the concerns that many mainstream companies are not using a dynamic ethnic media to target BME groups despite research showing that the ethnic audiences would be 60% more likely to buy a product or service if it were advertised in their media. Example, 77% of British Asians surveyed feel mainstream advertising has no relevance to them.
According to Paul Bainsfair, the IPA Director General, says: “The nature of the UK population has changed beyond recognition over the past decade and this presents not only challenges but also great opportunities for advertisers and marketers.”
The country’s ethnic diversity is slowly being reflected in the UK’s Ad agencies where the percentage of staff from ethnic minorities – currently estimated at 13 %, however so much more work needs to be done so we can see more diverse talents at senior and board levels of agencies and clients.
