Chapter 3: Be Authentic
‘Authenticity is the best marketing strategy there is.’
—GARY VAYNERCHUK, Serial entrepreneur and businessman
IMAGINE delivering a campaign that ticks every technical box—translated correctly, visually polished, widely distributed—only to discover it left your audience unmoved because it didn’t feel like you understood them. After building your case and assembling your teams in Chapter 2, you’re now ready to bring your NX strategy to life and set up your campaign for success. This starts with your audience and the first step is authenticity.
Most people have heard of this golden rule: ‘Know your audience’. But too often in business, government, and even non-profit campaigns, this rule is treated as a tick-box exercise. We translate the words, adjust the visuals, and maybe run it past a community contact—but we don’t always pause to ask the deeper question: Do we truly understand the people behind the message?
Important aspects of your audience to consider include the language they speak, their country of origin, their religious affiliation, and whether or not they come from a minority background.
But authenticity means going further than demographics or language choice. It means recognising the full context of your audience—their history, issues, shifts, and growth—and shaping communication that reflects that reality back to them.
Communication without the right cultural context can cause even well-intentioned campaigns to fall flat. As an example, most in-language communication is done with an emphasis on the needs of the individual rather than the group. This kind of nuance, however, tends to be distinctly Western. Many (though not all) non-Western societies are founded on collectivist cultures centred around the family unit or community collaboration, where cooperation, dependency, and contributing are all more prevalent behavioural expectations.
For public communicators, the stakes are high. Authenticity is a trust issue. Communities notice when services, campaigns, or programs ignore their cultural context. They also notice when messages reflect their lived experience with care.
This chapter gives you the techniques and models to gain an authentic understanding of your audience and set you up for the next stage of your Native Experience (NX) journey. We’ll explore how to work with you NX Ambassador Team to capture highly accurate audience insights and how to weave those insights into campaigns that avoid tokenism and instead foster trust, inclusion, and real engagement.
Getting authentic in-language marketing right doesn’t just mean avoiding the kind of embarrassing translation errors we saw in the last chapter. The literal translations need to be right—but so does the entire context of the language and its surrounding culture. This is where you need to truly understand your audience’s native experience.
In the pages ahead, we’ll explore practical techniques and models for embedding authenticity in your campaigns—starting with how to listen more deeply to the people and communities you serve.
FCK It: An Authentic Ad — In 2018, fast-food giant KFC faced a logistical nightmare in the UK when a chicken shortage forced the closure of many of its beloved restaurants. How did KFC respond to the challenge? They decided to embrace it rather than evade it. They temporarily rebranded their iconic logo to ‘FCK’, openly admitting their ‘chicken crisis’. This move was a stroke of marketing genius and a masterclass in authenticity. It demonstrated to KFC customers that they were not afraid to be vulnerable and real. They leveraged humour and humility to turn a potentially disastrous situation into an opportunity to connect with their audience on a deeper level. It’s a story that underscores the power of authenticity in crisis management, showing that, at times, saying ‘FCK’ can be more effective than pretending to have all the answers. And doing it in a way that resonated with British humour and culture.
NATIVE COMMUNICATION = CONTENT + CULTURE + CONTEXT
Start with Research
Like every other marketing campaign, NX relies on data. Whether it’s analysing click-through rates, audience demographics, or customer feedback, data provides the compass by which a campaign charts its course. This data isn’t just helpful guidance for NX—it’s the difference between success and failure.
For government, public sector, and non-profit organisations, data also plays a deeper role: it underpins equity, accountability, and service outcomes. In these contexts, research is not only about campaign effectiveness but about ensuring that every community—particularly those historically excluded—can access information in ways that feel authentic and relevant.
There are two broad types of data:
You need both types of data to paint a complete picture. For instance, while quantitative data might show a high engagement rate among Hispanic audiences during a particular festival, qualitative data might reveal the sentiments, traditions, and values associated with that festival, guiding marketers on how best to approach this segment.
Always consider governance and ethics when collecting data. Protect privacy, obtain consent, and build safeguarding processes that respect community protocols. For public-facing institutions, data without these safeguards risks undermining trust rather than building it.
Utilising data grants you a window into your audience’s world, revealing what they hear, see, and experience daily—our main objective in this phase. It sheds light on the conversations they’re immersed in, the visuals they’re surrounded by, and the experiences shaping their perspectives. That way, data moves beyond statistics to unfold the very fabric of their environment, enabling marketers’ messages to resonate on a more authentic and personal level.
Understanding and connecting with your NX audiences means stepping into their shoes, grasping their worldview, and appreciating their values. Data acts as the bridge to this understanding. With precise data you can:
In a moment, we’ll explore what type of data will help you get the most authentic perspective and how best to collect it. Before we do that, we need to revisit our NX Ambassador team. They’re the representatives of each individual community, audience or language group, and they’ll be instrumental in helping us sift through our data to ensure we’re concentrating on the right information.
It’s a common misstep for businesses, organisations or brands to lump ‘ethnic’, ‘foreign’ or ‘multicultural’ audiences together in a single monolithic entity. Such an approach is overly simplistic and fundamentally flawed. Each community or language group is a distinct audience with its own cultural norms, values, and communication styles. To treat them as a single, homogenous group is to miss the forest for the trees.
The only thing these diverse groups share is the virtual ‘bucket’ into which they’re all placed. To truly engage with these audiences, it’s imperative to approach each as its own unique entity, deserving of a tailored strategy and individualised attention.
That’s why the NX Ambassador team is so important at this stage. They can help gather data and ensure that it’s the right data, which distinguishes between each audience.
The ambassadors’ responsibilities, now and throughout the whole process, include:
Bringing research and ambassador insights together is what shifts NX from ‘data-driven’ to ‘trust-driven’. This is how campaigns move beyond compliance and into authentic, equitable communication.
Gathering Insights with Quantitative Data
There is a wide range of effective methods to gather quantitative data. For government, non-profit, and academic communicators, the key is to choose methods that are cost-effective, ethical, and proportionate to your objectives. Depending on your goals, budgets, and timeline, you may consider the following approaches:
Surveys and Questionnaires: Structured questions to gather numerical data on preferences and behaviours. Keep surveys short, translated where needed and accessible across devices. Incentives can improve completion rates, especially in communities with survey fatigue.
Publicly Available Data: Government statistics, market research reports and academic studies to provide demographic and market-size information. These sources are especially valuable when budgets are tight, but they must be interpreted with cultural nuance—numbers alone won’t tell the full story.
Social Media Analytics: Built-in analytics tools on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok can track user behaviour and demographics. These insights reveal what content is resonating and which cultural conversations are trending—but remember that not every community is equally represented on social media.
Web Analytics: Tools like Google Analytics can help you track user behaviour, engagement, and conversion rates on websites. Beyond clicks, look at time spent on culturally specific pages or drop-off points that may indicate language or accessibility barriers.
Consumer Purchase or Service User Data: Purchase records, program uptake, or service usage data can shed light on patterns within different cultural groups. In the public sector, this might look like service enrolments, event attendance, or call-centre inquiries segmented by language or region.
Cultural Dimensions
A particular concept worth mentioning when interpreting quantitative data is Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory. Developed by Dutch psychologist Geert Hofstede, this framework uses six dimensions to understand the differences in culture across countries and communities, including your NX audiences. Identifying the varying degrees of importance of each dimension helps you speak your audience’s language and creates messaging that resonates deeply with ingrained cultural norms—enhancing the effectiveness, reach, and engagement of your NX campaign:
PDI/Power Distance: Here we measure the degree to which inequality in power distribution is accepted by the less powerful in a society. A high PDI indicates a societal acceptance of a hierarchical order and significant disparities in power and wealth. Conversely, a low PDI suggests a society that values equality and challenges the disparities in power and wealth.
IDV/Individualism: IDV assesses the relationship between the individual and the larger social groups. In societies with high IDV scores, there is an emphasis on personal achievements, autonomy, and individual rights. In contrast, societies with low IDV scores hold community and familial interdependence in high regard.
MAS/Masculinity: This dimension highlights how much society does or does not strengthen the traditionally held notion that men are the main achievers and power brokers in society.
UAI/Uncertainty Avoidance: The Uncertainty Avoidance Index gauges a society’s comfort with uncertainty and the unknown. A high score indicates a low tolerance for ambiguity, leading to a preference for well-established structures and clear rules.
LTO/Long-term Orientation: This dimension reflects a society’s perspective towards time and the extent to which actions are influenced by this perspective. A high score in LTO indicates a culture oriented towards the future that values perseverance and prioritises long-term success.
IND/Indulgence vs Restraint: This dimension explores the extent to which a society allows for the free gratification of natural human drives related to enjoying life and having fun.
Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are most useful when treated as tendencies rather than absolutes. They offer a strategic lens through which you can fine-tune your efforts to suit different cultural landscapes. For example, in a society with low individualism scores, you might shift your messaging focus from individual benefits to communal or family advantages. In the public sector, this could mean framing a health campaign not as ‘protect yourself’ but as ‘protect your family and community’, as we saw during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Author’s note: When applying these dimensions to migrant or diaspora communities, remember that balance matters. Newly arrived communities are more likely to retain heritage cultural patterns, while established communities may show hybrid values that blend their heritage with mainstream culture. Assume complexity, not uniformity.
Discovery Through Qualitative-Data Methods
Understanding the Cultural Iceberg
Gathering rich qualitative data on the communities you intend to reach relies on the diverse perspectives, unique expertise, and insights of your NX teams. For non-profit communicators and public-facing services, this means drawing not only on internal staff knowledge but also on lived experience from the communities themselves.
We’ve seen in the previous chapter that gathering insights is like exploring an iceberg. At the surface, you might notice visible characteristics—such as food, dress, or language use—that are important but only scratch the surface of cultural identity.
To connect deeply and authentically with your audiences, you need to go beneath the waterline to what really drives behaviour and decision-making: values, belief systems, social roles, power structures, histories, and worldviews. These are often invisible to outsiders but critical for authentic communication.
Surface Characteristics: The Visible Part of the Iceberg
The surface characteristics of a culture are those immediately identifiable traits: language, food, dress, customs, music, flags, and festivals. These traits, while important, only provide a snapshot of a culture. If your work is predominantly in non-profits, government, or public-facing services, it’s easy to stop here—designing campaigns around surface traits like festivals or foods—but doing so risks stereotyping.
Deep Culture: The Hidden Part of the Iceberg
Beneath the surface lies the larger, unseen portion of the iceberg, representing the deeper aspects of culture: beliefs, values, communication styles, religion, concepts (e.g. of time, of family, of work), traditions, and much more.
Being sensitive and respectful towards these deep cultural elements is vital to avoid messages being ignored or perceived as insensitive. This means recognising how trust is built, who holds decision-making authority in a community, and what values guide behaviour.
Diving Deeper
With this understanding of the cultural iceberg, it’s time to begin gathering insights. Utilising available qualitative data, we will:
Analyse Cultural Nuances: Research and understand the preferences and communication styles of our target audiences. For non-profits and public-sector organisations, this might include service access barriers or trust in government institutions.
Assess Communication Channels: Review the effectiveness of existing communication channels and identify gaps. For example, some communities may rely on in-language radio or local WhatsApp groups rather than mainstream platforms.
Understand Stakeholders: Understand the roles and positions of key stakeholders involved in the process, such as campaign working groups, community organisations, peak bodies or professional associations.
These insights will help shape your messaging and choice of communication channels and provide the basis for further research. They’re the foundation of your NX strategy.
Listening to Native Experiences: The Human Element in NX Research
In NX, listening to people with native experiences is a powerful tool to add depth and nuance to your research. While quantitative data provides the broad strokes, community voices reveal the lived realities behind those numbers.
In government and non-profit settings, the priority is creating safe and inclusive spaces where communities can speak in their own words—without fear their input will be overlooked or tokenised.
NX Voice Forums: The New Age Focus Groups
I remember the traditional focus groups we used to conduct in my early years at LEXIGO. They were effective but often felt like a one-sided interrogation. Fast forward to today, and we’ve transitioned to what we call NX Voice Forums— sessions that represent a fundamental shift away from the old focus-group model. Instead of starting with your agenda, begin with theirs. Ask communities what they want to talk about, what matters most to them, and how they want to be engaged.
This shift has major implications for public-sector and non-profit communicators: when communities set the terms of engagement, they are more likely to trust the process and share insights that can shape meaningful policy or program outcomes.
Structuring an NX Voice Forum
Structuring your own NX Voice Forum is straightforward. Here are some brief tips:
Diverse Representation: Ensure that your sessions are representative of the cultural demographics you aim to target. For government and non-profits, this could involve engaging communities who are often under-represented in mainstream consultation.
Cultural Moderators: Work with moderators who are skilled in facilitating discussions and are culturally aware of the community they are working with. Moderators should also be trained in trauma-informed and inclusive facilitation.
Language Accessibility: Make sure that language barriers are minimised. Don’t just translate the words—adapt the format so it feels natural in that language.
Fair Compensation: Recognise participants’ time and expertise by compensating them fairly.
Feedback Loops: Close the loop by reporting back to participants on how their input was used.
NX Voices and the Cultural Iceberg
NX Voice Forums help you explore beneath the surface of the cultural iceberg model. They can reveal the values, traditions, and social norms that drive audience behaviour.
The best way to reveal such insights is to plan and use your NX Voice Forums as part of a series of steps:
Plan: Outline the objectives and questions you aim to explore.
Recruit: Use your quantitative data to identify the right participants. Ensure representation from across age groups, genders, and community roles.
Execute: Conduct the NX Voice Forum, ensuring cultural sensitivity and inclusivity.
Analyse: Collate the findings, looking for patterns or insights that can inform your NX strategies.
Integrate: Combine these qualitative insights with your quantitative data to create a more comprehensive and authentic NX strategy.
NX Voice Forums are more than a research tool. They humanise the data, turning percentages into lived experiences. Most importantly, they provide the ‘why’ to your ‘what’, enabling you to create NX campaigns that truly resonate.
Other Methods to Gain Qualitative Data
Voice Forums are not the only way to gather qualitative data. Many other means can be effective:
In-depth One-to-one Sessions: In-depth, one-to-one interviews offer a focused and intimate setting to explore the complexities of individual perspectives. This method is particularly valuable in NX research into sensitive or taboo topics.
Ethnographic Studies: Ethnographic studies immerse researchers directly into the daily lives and cultural contexts of diverse communities. They provide a lens to view what people say, what they do, and why they do it.
Case Studies: Detailed investigations of specific instances or scenarios, often involving multiple data sources such as interviews, observations, and documents.
Open-Ended Surveys: Surveys with open-ended questions allow respondents to answer in their own words, providing more nuanced insights.
Sentiment Analysis: Analysing text from social media, reviews, or other platforms to gauge public opinion and emotional tone on specific subjects.
In this chapter, we’ve seen how research, particularly when filtered through an NX Ambassador team, can help communicators and marketers achieve authenticity in their engagement. However, it’s important to remember that authenticity is not a destination or something achieved once and left behind; it’s an ongoing practice and a discipline that must be renewed in every campaign.
Authenticity lays the foundation for trust and NX relationships—whether with citizens, communities or customers—to deepen into lasting partnerships and loyal advocates. To move from being heard to being believed requires more than authenticity; it requires trust. And that’s where we’ll turn our focus next.
Recap
• Authenticity in communication goes beyond translation—it depends on context, culture, and community. Only by embedding these elements can your message resonate with the audiences you need to reach.
• Research underpins authentic engagement. Different tools—whether cultural analysis, surveys, or ethnographic studies—offer varying levels of insight, so choosing the right approach for your context is critical.
• Quantitative data reveals patterns of behaviour and preference, but qualitative methods—such as exploring the ‘cultural iceberg’—uncover deeper drivers such as beliefs, values, and traditions.
• NX Voice Forums shift power to participants, allowing communities to voice what matters to them rather than simply answering pre-set questions. This approach produces richer, more actionable insights for campaigns and services.
