Be Inclusive: co-design and creative for every community

‘Inclusivity in marketing isn’t just about the final creative—it’s about ensuring that inclusivity and equity are built into every aspect of the business, every department, every decision.’
—LISA SHERMAN, CEO, AD Council

Welcome to the crucible of creation!

This is where the meticulous planning, strategising, and blueprinting we’ve covered in the last three chapters are put to the test—the moment theory meets practice.

If trust is the strategic cornerstone of a Native Experience (NX) campaign, inclusivity is its creative lifeblood. Inclusivity is not an afterthought in co-creation; it’s the very essence. It means speaking with people, not about or at them. This collaborative approach allows communicators, marketers, and organisations to develop creative elements that are not only visually and emotionally compelling but also deeply resonant with the communities they aim to engage.

In this chapter, the focus shifts to bringing the principles of trust into the creative process—ensuring that every element of campaign development remains cohesive, authentic, and impactful. More importantly, it highlights the transformative power of co-creation. The personas, channel strategies, and trust elements we’ve developed so far will now be put to the test as we co-design, prototype, and create content with our audiences, not for them.

Speaking in People’s Languages: ANZ’s Model for Inclusive Banking

In 2009, ANZ—one of Australia’s Big Four banks—took deliberate steps to deepen its connection with one of the country’s fastest-growing demographics: Chinese-Australians. This move was not only a gesture of inclusion and cultural recognition, but also a strategic investment, grounded in the recognition that trust, equitable access, and cultural resonance drive loyalty in financial services.

Recognising the growing economic and social influence of Chinese migrants, ANZ identified a gap in inclusive, culturally attuned banking experiences. The goal was to create a seamless, respectful, and bilingual service model that addressed both local needs and cross-border financial connections, ultimately building long-term trust and measurable returns through community-focused services.

With Mainland China emerging as a significant source of new migration, ANZ saw many customers maintaining business operations in China while managing their finances in Australia. To meet this dual-market reality, ANZ introduced specialist Asian Banking Managers across 16 branches in major cities. These managers were fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese, acting as dedicated relationship points for Chinese Australians and ensuring customers could navigate financial decisions in a language and cultural context familiar to them—a core element of inclusivity.

To extend this bridge beyond Australia, ANZ established representatives in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, enabling customers to begin their banking relationship with ANZ before even migrating. This was complemented by introducing bilingual phone banking services and online tools to help locate branches offering Chinese-language support, ensuring that language would never be a barrier to participation or belonging.

The results were immediate and measurable:

• Enhanced Customer Experience: Chinese-Australian clients could bank in their native language and culture, building comfort, cultural safety, confidence, and trust.
• Community-Based Marketing: Positive experiences and word-of-mouth within tight-knit community networks amplified brand advocacy organically.
• Increased ROI and Retention: By targeting a specific community with tailored services, ANZ tapped into a niche market, leading to higher customer retention and attracting new customers through trusted community networks. It grew ANZ’s market share among migrant and diaspora customers.

ANZ’s initiative demonstrated how embedding cultural and linguistic awareness into service delivery can build lasting trust, improve brand perception, and drive both social and commercial outcomes. It remains a standout example of how Australian corporates and institutions can strengthen connection, inclusion, and equity through culturally intelligent design.

Representation, Language, and Belonging

ANZ’s banking strategy is one example of what happens when inclusivity is designed into a system. We see similar patterns in the media.

Research from SBS and the University of Canberra shows that multilingual Australians are feeling a growing sense of belonging—and inclusive media plays a key role in that shift. Compared to 2023, more multilingual audiences now say their needs are being met, and more agree that members of their local communities care about each other.

The biggest difference appears when people feel fairly represented. Multilingual audiences who believe their culture and language are represented fairly in news report a much stronger sense of belonging than those who don’t. In other words, representation is not symbolic; it is structural. When people can see and hear themselves—in their language, in familiar stories, in nuanced portrayals—their sense of connection to Australia increases.

The study, based on almost 1,900 respondents across seven languages (Arabic, Cantonese, Italian, Mandarin, Punjabi, Vietnamese, and English), underscores a central truth of NX: inclusion, representation, and access to content in one’s own language are core drivers of trust and social cohesion.

For public sector communicators, brands and not-for-profits, this is a powerful evidence base. When you invest in inclusive, multilingual, and culturally informed communication, you are moving beyond ‘diversity’ and are actively shaping whether people feel they belong.

The Pillars of Inclusive Creative

It’s crucial to have a set of guiding principles that inform how organisations, brands, and communicators co-create with their target communities. These principles form the bedrock upon which creative elements are built. They ensure that diversity is actively embedded across every aspect of your campaign, from planning to delivery, rather than just paying lip service to inclusion.

In this section, we’ll discuss the four pillars that form the foundation of truly inclusive creative. None of the pillars stand alone; they combine to form a holistic approach to inclusivity.

Cultural Representation: In an intercultural society like Australia’s, representation goes far beyond featuring diverse faces in advertisements and calling it a day. It extends to storytelling, tone, the nuances of social interactions, and the contexts in which your products or services are used. If a campaign doesn’t represent this diversity, it risks missing the mark or alienating audiences who don’t see themselves in its narrative. From imagery to idioms, ensure that every element mirrors the aesthetics, lived experiences, and lexicon familiar to the communities you serve.

Language and Communication: Language is more than a tool for communication; it’s a reflection of culture, identity, and belonging. Ensuring that messaging is linguistically accessible is just the starting point. The greater challenge is making it culturally resonant. This means going beyond language and translation to grasp local idioms, humour, and references that resonate across Australia’s many cultural groups. Messages can’t simply be translated; they need to be ‘transcreated’—adapted to reflect community perspectives while retaining the message’s intent, tone, and context.

Accessibility: Inclusivity is both cultural and functional. Campaigns must be accessible to people with diverse needs and abilities, be they visual, auditory, or cognitive. This includes plain-language writing, clear colour contrast, captions for videos, alt text for images, Auslan translation, and compatibility with assistive technologies. Accessibility should never be seen as optional. For public sector communicators, it’s a legal and ethical responsibility; for brands, it’s a signal of integrity and respect. No audience should be left behind.

Community Engagement: The final and perhaps most dynamic pillar of inclusive creative is community engagement. This means going beyond traditional market research and social listening to build genuine collaboration through NX Voice Forums, local partnerships, social media polls, or community panels, events or listening sessions. Whether it’s a council-run consultation, a charity focus group or a multicultural brand activation, this type of active engagement allows you to co-create creative assets that are well-received from the start.

These four pillars serve as the guiding principles for developing creative work that is visually engaging, emotionally compelling, and socially grounded in the lived experiences of diverse communities. But they’re only the first step. The real magic happens when these principles are brought to life through collaboration and co-creation.

Bridging the Pillars and the Process: Why Co-Creation is Non-Negotiable

Bringing the pillars of inclusive creative to life requires one of the most profoundly impactful concepts in the NX Experience: co-creation. Co-creation is the vehicle that takes us from concept to reality—from consultation to collaboration. It’s the alchemy that transforms well-intentioned strategies into authentic, resonant creative elements.

So, why is co-creation non-negotiable in truly inclusive communication? Because it ensures that your creative elements are both culturally valid and practically effective—tested, refined, and endorsed by the very communities they aim to serve. In practice, this might look like hosting a workshop with migrant community leaders to test campaign visuals, co-writing messaging with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communicators, or trialling service materials through multilingual focus groups.

Co-creation is the how of inclusive practice. It’s the mechanism that breathes life into the what of guiding pillars, transforming them from abstract ideals into tangible realities.

Co-creation is transformative for three reasons:

• It brings the title of this entire chapter—Inclusive—to life. When you co-create with your target communities, you’re not just consulting; you’re creating what will genuinely resonate instead of guessing from the outside. This approach reduces the risk of cultural missteps and ensures your campaign is built on real, lived understanding.
• It fosters a sense of shared ownership and accountability. When communities see that their voices are heard and actively incorporated, it engenders a level of trust and loyalty that is hard to achieve through traditional top-down messaging. In public-facing organisations, this also demonstrates transparency and partnership, strengthening relationships over the long term.
• It drives innovation through collaboration. The collective intelligence of a community often reveals insights, solutions, and creative directions that would never emerge in isolation. Co-creation taps into this community knowledge—turning diverse perspectives into a source of creative and strategic advantage for brands, government agencies, and non-profits alike.

By embracing the power of co-creation, you’re adding another tool to your toolkit and adopting a new way of thinking that recognises the exponential value of community intelligence and diversity in authentic representation.

How to Co-Create

Co-creation requires a tailored and flexible approach that considers the unique characteristics and needs of each community. However, we at LEXIGO have developed a method based on five universal stages that can help guide any co-creation journey:

1. Groundwork
2. Co-creation sessions
3. Messaging
4. Creative
5. Test and refine

Stage 1. Groundwork

Identify Community Stakeholders

Before you can co-create, you need to know who to co-create with. By this stage, you know the languages and communities you’re working with, so now it’s time to identify community leaders, influencers, advocates, and everyday grassroots members who can provide valuable insights.

Mapping Stakeholder Networks: Use tools such as stakeholder maps to visualise the network of people and organisations that will be involved. This can help in understanding the dynamics and relationships that might influence the co-creation process. For instance, mapping a campaign on road safety might include connections between local councils, youth programs, driving schools, and culturally specific advocacy groups.

Cultural Sensitivity: Given that you’re dealing with diverse communities, it’s crucial to be culturally sensitive in your approach. Research the community’s history, values, and norms to understand how best to engage them. For example, when engaging Pacific Islander communities, personal introductions through church networks are often more effective than formal invitations. Likewise, when working with First Nations communities, early consultation with Elders and adherence to cultural protocols are essential.

Voices Heard/Challenge Personas: Refer back to the Authenticity stage to ensure that the people involved in your listening sessions match your defined personas and that you have a good sample of participants who are a true representation of their community. As an example, if your campaign targets small-business owners from Indian, Arabic or Chinese backgrounds, check that your participants include a range of ages, genders, and business types—not just the most visible or digitally active voices.

Your NX Ambassadors should already have all this knowledge—or know where to find it. They are an integral part of the co-creation process. In practice, they should lead much of it, ensuring cultural fluency, credibility, and continuity between the community and your organisation.

NX Ambassadors

Gather your NX Ambassador team and assign facilitators. They should know how to facilitate inclusive sessions or partner with a trusted community facilitator to guide the process.

Inclusive Session Training: While your facilitators are community insiders, it’s essential to train them in the art of leading inclusive sessions. They already bring strong cultural competency, but they also need tools to ensure that all voices are heard and that the co-creation process is equitable. Training could cover active listening, trauma-informed engagement, conflict resolution, respectful questioning, managing cross-cultural dialogue, and techniques for encouraging quieter members to share their perspectives. This is particularly relevant when engaging underrepresented or marginalised groups, where power imbalances can unintentionally silence input.

Technology and Tools: Decide on the platforms and tools that will be used during co-creation. Make sure they are accessible, familiar, and inclusive—for example, using Zoom with live captioning, Microsoft Teams for multilingual chat, or in-person tools like sticky-note boards and visual mapping. Keep in mind different levels of digital literacy, particularly among older community members or newly arrived migrants.

Set Clear Objectives

Knowing what you aim to achieve is the compass that guides your co-creation journey. Whether developing a community program, public-awareness campaign, social-impact initiative, or brand rollout, having clear objectives will keep the process on track and accountable.

Lean on the strategy you developed in the last chapter to ensure your objectives are aligned and SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound).

Co-creation objectives should also be people-centred. For government and not-for-profit organisations, that might mean focusing on accessibility, service uptake, or participation. For corporates or brands, it could mean strengthening relationships with priority communities or improving brand trust and reputation.

Ensure that the objectives of the co-creation process are fully integrated with your organisation’s broader business goals and frameworks—from reconciliation action plans to corporate social-responsibility strategies. This alignment turns co-creation from a standalone exercise into an embedded, measurable part of your larger strategy.

Stage 2. Sessions

With your community collaborators identified and your objectives established, the stage is set for the real magic to happen. Whether you’re hosting brainstorming sessions, workshops, or virtual meet-ups, the goal of your co-creation sessions is to develop concepts that are innovative and deeply resonant with your target communities. These sessions should be safe, respectful spaces where ideas can be freely shared, tested, and refined.

Create a Collaborative Environment

Creating the right environment is crucial for success. While digital platforms such as Teams, Zoom or community-specific online forums offer convenience and scalability, in-person engagement remains one of the most effective ways to build trust and connection—especially when working with CALD or First Nations communities.

Whenever possible, opt for community-based venues such as neighbourhood centres, libraries, or cultural hubs rather than corporate boardrooms. These locations often feel more familiar and neutral, helping participants feel comfortable and empowered to contribute.

Physical spaces often foster a level of engagement and spontaneity that virtual environments struggle to replicate. They allow for unplanned, organic moments of creativity—those ‘watercooler moments’ or post-session reflections where some of the best ideas often emerge. The key is to make it easy for community members to contribute, providing a safe and relatable space for honest conversations and workshops.

By emphasising the value of physical spaces, you’re offering a venue for collaboration and creating an ecosystem where creativity and community can flourish in their most authentic forms.

Accessibility: Ensure that the chosen platform or venue is accessible to all community members. This includes considerations for sensory needs and physical disabilities, as well as language, digital access, and literacy barriers for online platforms.

Ground Rules: Establish a set of ground rules that promote respectful dialogue and equitable participation. Make these rules visible—on screen, printed handouts, or signage around the room—and ensure they are discussed and agreed upon at the start of each session.

Acknowledge and Reward

Recognising the contributions of community members is courteous and, more importantly, essential for building long-term relationships and trust. Whether you work in government, corporate communications, or the non-profit sector, acknowledgment must be intentional and equitable.

This could take the form of public acknowledgment, professional development opportunities, or even revenue-sharing models for substantial contributions.

Transparency: Be transparent about how contributions will be acknowledged and rewarded. Outline these details early and clearly—ideally before engagement begins—to set expectations and reinforce accountability.

Cultural Sensitivity: Tailor acknowledgements and rewards to be culturally appropriate. For example, some communities may value collective acknowledgment (such as community donations or event sponsorships) over individual incentives. Understanding these nuances demonstrates respect and reinforces genuine inclusivity.

Conduct Inclusivity Audits

Before embarking on new creative work, take stock of where you currently stand. Evaluate your existing communication and creative assets through the lens of both inclusivity and trust. Ask yourself: Are our current assets culturally sensitive? Do they accurately represent the audiences we’re trying to reach? An audit will highlight any gaps whilst also providing a baseline against which you can measure future progress.

Audit Criteria: Develop a set of criteria that reflect the principles of inclusivity and trust. This could include language appropriateness, representation of diverse groups, and alignment with community values.

Benchmarking: Use the audit to establish a baseline. Document current performance against measurable indicators (such as representation ratios, readability levels, or accessibility compliance). This baseline enables you to measure progress over time and track the tangible impact of your inclusive practices.

Stage 3. Messaging

Pre-Session Briefing

Before you start a co-creation session, provide a brief overview of what the messaging aims to achieve and why community input matters. This sets the stage and ensures that everyone is aligned on the objectives.

Contextualise: Explain how the messaging fits into the broader campaign, program or policy communication, whether it’s a local government initiative, a national awareness campaign, or a not-for-profit project.

Share Objectives: Reiterate the SMART objectives you set earlier to guide messaging development. For example, if the goal is to increase participation among specific cultural communities, clarify how the session’s outputs will help achieve that.

Ideation Phase

This is the heart of the co-creation session for messaging. Encourage community members to share their ideas freely, fostering a psychologically safe environment where every perspective is valued.

Prompting Questions: Use open-ended prompts to guide the discussion and spark creativity.

Examples include:

‘What words or phrases resonate most with our community when talking about this issue?’

‘What message would make you proud to see your culture represented in this campaign?’

‘How would you explain this idea to your family or peers?’

Idea Clustering: As ideas emerge, group them into themes or concepts that could shape future messaging. This helps identify shared language patterns, cultural references, or emotional triggers that reflect the lived experiences and communication styles of community members.

Drafting and Refining

Once a clear set of themes or concepts emerge, start drafting potential messages. Depending on the different campaign elements, these could take the form of taglines, slogans, calls-to-action, campaign headlines or key messages.

Collaborative Writing: Use accessible tools such as Google Docs or shared templates that allow everyone to contribute directly in real time. Provide examples or past campaigns for reference to help inspire structure and tone.

Iterative Feedback: Build in short feedback loops within the session and through follow-ups so messages can be refined and validated. Aim to close the session with two to three strong, community-approved message directions that feel meaningful and locally relevant.

By structuring your co-creation sessions around these stages, you’ll move beyond token consultation to genuine collaboration that leverages the collective wisdom and insights of the community, making the end result—your campaign messaging—truly inclusive and impactful.

While co-creation is a unique process, it doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It’s essential to align your co-created messaging with established communication frameworks such as AIDA to ensure your campaign remains strategic, consistent, and measurable across all audiences and channels.

Stage 4. Creative

As the co-creative process unfolds, it’s essential to remember that inclusivity isn’t just a strategic consideration—it’s a creative responsibility. These are the sensory elements that will bring your campaign to life, and they must be developed with cultural care, representation, and accessibility front of mind. The trust established in the previous stage should now be embedded in every creative decision, ensuring that no visual or design choice unintentionally undermines the relationships, credibility and trust you’ve established.

It’s as easy as A, B, C:

A. Cultural Briefing

Start by providing a briefing that outlines the sensitivities, taboos, and aesthetic preferences within the community. Validate these insights through open discussion with participants.

Cultural Dos and Don’ts: Share guidance on colours, symbols, and patterns that carry cultural meaning, as well as those to avoid. Test these assumptions and invite clarification from participants rather than relying solely on secondary research.

Community Examples: Showcase examples of visuals or campaigns that have connected successfully with the community before—for instance, Kidsafe NSW’s multilingual safety materials or the ATO’s in-language tax awareness campaigns—and discuss what made them effective.

This step should feel organic if your NX Ambassadors are already familiar with these preferences and elements. Here, we’re just validating and testing our ideas to make sure we have our creative asset starting points on the right track so we can refine them to reflect the current environment and sentiment.

B. Visual Ideation

This is the brainstorming phase for visual elements that will accompany your messages. Community members can suggest ideas for colours, patterns, symbols, images, and other visual aspects.

Mood Boards: Create collaborative mood boards where community members can pin images, colours, or patterns that they feel represent the community well. These can be physical or digital.

Alignment with Messaging: Ensure that visual ideas reinforce the storytelling arc and tone established in the messaging framework. Revisit the AIDA framework to explore how visuals can enhance attention, build emotional interest, and prompt action.

C. Drafting and Prototyping

Once the creative direction is set, begin developing draft versions of your assets—posters, social tiles, web banners or videos—that bring those ideas to life.

Collaborative Tools: Use design software that allows for real-time collaboration, annotation and feedback so community members can see how their ideas are taking shape.

Iterative Design: Similar to messaging, allow for multiple rounds of feedback and refinement. Each round should move you closer to visuals that are culturally sensitive and aligned with the community’s preferences.

The 5 Cs

At LEXIGO, we developed the 5Cs model to ensure that creative content is co-created towards inclusivity rather than being dictated or guided down a path that has been pre-determined before the session even takes place. It provides a comprehensive, easy-to-follow checklist to help communicators, marketers, and designers embed inclusivity into every creative decision. The result is work that is visually appealing, deeply resonant, and ethical.

Clarity

Clarity refers to the transparency in your creative process. Be open about the rationale behind your design choices, the sources of your materials, and the lessons learned from any missteps.

For example, when Tourism Australia launched its ‘Come and Say G’day’ campaign, it openly shared the intent behind its creative direction: to reintroduce Australia to the world post-pandemic through a character who reflected Australian warmth and humour. By communicating this clearly, the agency invited audiences to understand the rationale behind its choices and strengthened credibility.

Transparency fosters trust and resonates with audiences. We hear a lot about transparency these days. More than a buzzword, it’s a commitment to openness that can significantly enhance the trustworthiness of your campaign.

This means being open about your creative process, the choices you make and even the mistakes you learn from. Whether it’s sharing the rationale behind a particular design choice or disclosing the source of your materials, transparency fosters a sense of integrity that resonates with audiences. Don’t be afraid to go back to the drawing board during your session; the creative you may have developed for the session is only a springboard, after all.

Credibility

Your creative elements are an extension of your brand and as such, they need the same level of credibility. This involves ensuring that all claims made in your campaign are verifiable and that your portrayal of different cultures and communities is accurate and respectful.

In government and not-for-profit communications, credibility also means consulting directly with affected communities before representing them. When Victoria Police partnered with multicultural community groups to co-design its recruitment advertising, for instance, it wasn’t just promoting diversity—it was showing proof of lived collaboration.

Authenticity and fact-based representation are key here and turn a cautious or sceptical audience into believers.

Cohesion

Consistency is the glue that holds your campaign together. It ensures that the trust you’ve built in the strategic phase is not squandered when you transition to creative development. Every visual element, every piece of copy, and every interaction must align with the trust-based strategy developed in your NX strategy.

Think of the SunSmart ‘Slip, Slop, Slap’ health campaign—still one of Australia’s most cohesive public messages. Its consistency across decades and formats built trust through familiarity, even as the campaign adapted over time to include ‘Seek’ and ‘Slide’ in response to changing health guidance and audience needs. In the same way, cohesion ensures that once trust has been earned, it isn’t diluted by inconsistent imagery or conflicting messages.

Consistency across languages, platforms, and media builds a unified brand voice that Australians recognise and rely on.

Connection

Connection goes beyond words and cultures. It’s the universal language that turns a campaign from a simple transaction into a meaningful interaction. Weaving emotional intelligence into your creative elements means understanding the emotional nuances of different cultural groups, the triggers that evoke specific emotions, and the stories that resonate on a deeper level. It’s less about what you say and more about how you make people feel.

To foster connection, consider the emotional, linguistic, and cultural cues that make your message relatable. For example, the ABC’s You Can’t Ask That series succeeds because it invites communities to tell their own stories—unfiltered and unmediated—creating empathy and understanding through shared humanity.

Effective creative work makes people feel seen, understood, and included—not just spoken to.

Conscience

Conscience underpins every other C—it should guide your creative process, stretching all the way from the representation of different groups to the sourcing of materials and even the platforms where your campaign is displayed.

This might mean prioritising First Nations collaboration in regional campaigns, ensuring fair representation in imagery, or being mindful of data sovereignty and privacy when gathering audience insights.

Upholding ethical standards is the right thing to do, and is also good for business. As communicators, marketers, and organisations, our conscience keeps us accountable to the communities we serve.

How do you apply this to your sessions? Here’s a practical example that can also act as a checklist for using the LEXIGO 5Cs model in your sessions:

Co-creation thrives in an environment where every participant is recognised as an equal contributor, regardless of their role or background. This doesn’t mean that everyone’s ideas are adopted as is, but rather that each idea is given consideration and the space to influence the outcome. When you’re transparent about the rationale for decisions (Clarity) and committed to representing cultures accurately and with respect (Credibility), you’re on the right path.

To keep co-creation at the heart of LEXIGO’s 5Cs Model, it’s worth asking:

• Do these principles genuinely invite and integrate insights from everyone involved?
• Are community voices influencing the campaign direction, not just validating it?
• Is the process transparent, equitable, and grounded in mutual respect?

These questions can help ensure that co-creation is more than a consultation exercise. They distinguish a campaign built in true partnership from one that superficially checks the inclusivity boxes.

Stage 5. Test and Refine

Once you’ve completed stages 1–4, it’s time to move from creation to validation. Develop your concepts and assets as you would for any campaign but instead of going straight to launch, bring your creative back to the community for review through NX Voice Forums, online surveys, or community forums or workshops.

Listen carefully to the feedback and be prepared to revisit or even rework ideas. Co-creation thrives on iteration, and while that can feel slow and at times frustrating, each round of feedback brings you closer to work that truly connects with your audience.

Co-creation is not a one-and-done affair but an ongoing process. Establish clear feedback channels for your community collaborators to tell you what they think, and use the insights you gain to continuously refine your creative elements. Don’t be afraid to release multiple versions of a creative element based on the feedback received. This iterative approach allows you to fine-tune the messaging until it resonates deeply with the community.

Community Validation

Before finalising creative elements, use a variety of culturally informed methods to validate them with your target community. Validation ensures that what’s created with the community remains credible, culturally attuned, and contextually relevant when it reaches a wider audience.

Community Review: Share early drafts with a broader cross-section of the community to gather feedback on cultural appropriateness, tone, and resonance. This might include participants from previous NX Voice Forums or trusted local partners.

A/B Testing: If resources allow, run small-scale A/B tests with different visual elements across channels your audience actually use—such as multicultural radio, community Facebook groups, or regional newsletters—to understand which creative elements perform best in real-world scenarios.

Mini Surveys: Conduct short, multilingual polls or quick-turnaround surveys to capture immediate impressions and identify areas of confusion or disconnect before rollout.

NX Voice Forums: Where possible, hold facilitated NX Voice Forums to explore reactions in greater depth. These sessions can uncover the emotional and cultural responses behind audience preferences and help refine creative direction.

Finalise Creative Assets

After multiple rounds of testing and refinement, you’ll arrive at creative assets that are both inclusive, trusted, and community-endorsed—but the work doesn’t end there. Once approved, the assets should be finalised for public release with the same attention to detail applied to co-creation.

Professional Production: Ensure all creative is delivered to a professional standard—high-quality visuals, accurate translation, and appropriate localisation for different regions or communities.

Accessibility: Adapt creative elements for accessibility across digital and physical formats—subtitles, alt text, readable fonts, Auslan translation where possible, and compliance with WCAG standards.

Iterate and Refine: Treat co-creation as an ongoing process rather than completed. Use community feedback and insights to continuously refine campaign assets and maintain relevance throughout the campaign lifecycle.

Measure Impact: Finally, assess the effectiveness of your co-created elements against the original objectives you set. This will demonstrate the ROI of co-creation and provide learnings for future initiatives.

Path to Prevention: The Settlement Council of Australia’s Cancer Screening Awareness Project

The Settlement Council of Australia (SCOA) partnered with LEXIGO to address a critical need: increasing cancer screening rates among multicultural communities in Australia.

Many barriers—such as language, cultural differences, and unfamiliarity with the healthcare system—often hinder participation in cancer screening programs.

A key element of the campaign’s success was co-creation: developing a strategy that ensured the campaign would be trusted and inclusive of the target audiences.

SCOA already had the team and network in place to be notable and authentic. We leveraged this to engage directly with members of 20 communities across 10 languages: Arabic, Simplified Chinese (spoken Mandarin), Traditional Chinese (spoken Cantonese), Dari, Dinka, Hindi, Karen, Spanish, Swahili, and Vietnamese.

The process involved:

• NAATI-certified translators from within the project’s target communities completing the initial translations.
• Members of SCOA’s network reviewing the translations for cultural appropriateness and relatability.
• Refining the translated materials based on feedback from community consultations.

The results spoke for themselves, including:

• a total of 110 resources produced across 10 languages, spanning multiple channels including explainer videos, radio announcements, social media tiles, and other tailored materials
• over 300,000 impressions across digital platforms
• an 86% increase in intent to screen.

By using co-creation and carefully tailoring campaign materials to the cultural and social norms of each target audience, the project:

• increased awareness with clear, relatable, and inclusive materials that helped communities understand the importance of early cancer detection and prevention
• created accessible resources using QR codes so individuals could easily access culturally relevant materials and connect with important health resources
• was built for community, by community and engagement was enhanced through community-led input and validation processes.

By prioritising co-creation and cultural understanding, this campaign demonstrates how community-driven design can achieve measurable impact and genuine connection. It stands as a model for inclusive communication that delivers lasting public health outcomes.

Prepare to GO

By the time your creative assets are ready to launch, you’ll have already done the hard work. The iterative nature of co-creation requires patience and faith, so it’s a relief to get to this stage. However, the benefit is that you can be highly confident in your creative and in the initial reception it will receive because you’ve taken the time to work with your community partners.

Because the creative has been shaped by lived experience and community input, you can move forward knowing that it will be understood, embraced and shared organically. In the next chapter, we’ll explore how best to manage a launch—and why, in NX, a launch is not a finish line but the beginning of a new phase of engagement.

To illustrate this, let’s use a case study close to home: one drawn directly from our work at LEXIGO.

In 2023, LEXIGO partnered with Australian government agencies to study 14 distinct cultural and language communities and understand community insights surrounding vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We spoke to more than 150 individuals across the communities, with anonymous online contributions from some 300 people. Community members were empowered to craft messages that genuinely reflected their perspective on COVID-19 and broader health topics, a bespoke approach that marked a significant departure from previous government one-size-fits-all approaches.

This co-creation led to the creation of 1,200 assets—posters, social media messages and tiles, and videos—across five pillars in 14 communities. Implementation was by 95 key individuals, including translators, medical professionals, and people of influence, who could create print materials directing readers to in-language media content.

Importantly, this campaign relied solely on grassroots dissemination, with no above-the-line advertising. It reached people where they already were, using a range of online platforms as well as direct community engagement.

Key takeaways

• Inclusivity is the creative lifeblood of every NX campaign. It rests on four pillars: Cultural Representation, Language and Communication, Accessibility, and Community Engagement—each reinforced through genuine co-creation that gives communities a real sense of ownership and inclusion.
• Co-creation has five main elements: Groundwork, Co-creation sessions, Messaging, Creative, Test, and Refine.
• Co-creation takes time. It relies on iteration, feedback, and continuous learning, with constant analysis and refinement. Although this can be frustrating, it produces far more satisfactory results than traditional methods of creating a campaign and imposing it on a community rather than letting the community join the creation process.