Australia's Diversity

Australia's unique history has shaped the diversity of its people, their cultures, and their lifestyles. More than a quarter of Australia's 20m population was born in one of 200 overseas countries, and collectively they speak almost as many languages.

Two out of every five people have at least one parent born overseas, and some 75% identify with an ancestry other than Australian, resulting in one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse populations in the world.

This diversity is a central feature of modern Australian life. It presents exciting challenges and opportunities for public service providers and commercial organisations alike.

Now, for the first time, organisations can identify the cultural and ancestral traits of their client groups. The Origins product recognises and analyses names from a list or a database, and assigns a code representing the cultural origin of each.

Origins provides evidence-based data to support improved targeting of services and products to diverse cultural groups, thus playing a small part in achieving a more inclusive society.

Census Data - Strengths and Limitations

The Australian census is an invaluable resource to support public sector and commercial decision-making. Its frequency, content coverage, respondent compliance, and robustness of process, have resulted in the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) being recognised as one of the world's leading census agencies.

The coverage on individual and parental birthplace, ancestry, and religion provide great insight into Australia's cultural profile. Geographically-aggregated data, combined with accessible mapping options, give a clear spatial dimension to patterns and variations across Australia's social landscape.

Without question, the census offers a valuable resource for any marketer with an interest in the culturally and linguistically diverse fabric of Australian society.

However, because the census data is subject to strict confidentiality standards, census data is unable to assist public service providers and marketers who need to understand the cultural origins of their client groups at the individual level.

Even at the local geographical level of the Collector District, census data represents an aggregated view of ethnic diversity. Randomisation rules mean that the presence of distinct cultural groups at low levels of geography is often concealed or misrepresented. Consequently, the ability of the census data to be actioned is limited.

Origins allows marketers and managers to identify cultural and linguistic dimensions of customers, clients, prospects and employees at the individual level. Cultural, Ethnic and Linguistic (CEL) codes assigned to individuals offer a means to analyse, select, and target individual people with appropriate communications to achieve organisational goals.

Ethics and Privacy

Originsinfo holds the view that, in principle, there can be no ethical objection to the use of ethnicity as a basis for customer insight, segmentation, and targeting.

Originsinfo supports and promotes the best examples of positive practice by those organisations seeking to increase opportunity and minimise social disadvantage. Origins is a tool to be used for legitimate targeting of individuals to better meet their needs and secure their rights.

Legitimately, different levels of government in Australia make frequent requests for collection of data in order to monitor the use and experience of services by ethnic minorities. Examples include monitoring the outcomes for school students belonging to different groups, and the monitoring of hospital diagnoses by ethnic group.

In addition to research and monitoring, government now expects public sector service providers to be proactive in targeting communications to particular ethnic groups. This practice of 'social marketing' is a feature of the health sector where, increasingly, ethnicity data is used as a basis for directing messages as well as treatments.

It is legitimate in the private sector to target information to members of those minority groups for whom the products are well suited. For example, targeting information about Asian foods to loyalty card holders of Asian origin; targeting information on Sharia-compliant savings products to Muslim bank customers; and, offering Greek Cypriot competition entrants a prize flight option to Paphos rather than Los Angeles.

These examples represent appropriate and legitimate examples of ethnic marketing.

Nevertheless, there are potential applications and processes which members of all communities would consider as inappropriate. These include ventures that contribute to further residential segregation, or campaigns designed to recruit individuals to organisations whose aim was to promote divisions between cultures.

It is also inappropriate, from a marketing viewpoint as well as an ethical viewpoint, to use names as a basis for selecting the language in which a communication is written. However, such insight would be appropriate if used as a basis for offering a wider variety of language and channel options.

Originsinfo incorporates a specific code of conduct relating to ethical use in the licensing contract which Origins clients are required to sign.

It is also important to note that Origins does not contain personally identifiable information and fully complies with Australian privacy principles articulated in the Privacy Act. Similarly, the product supports compliance with the Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA) code of practice.