Now that you’ve established your foundation—built the business case, assembled your team, and developed cultural intellingence—you’re ready to start building relationships, researching, preparing, and creating your campaign through a structured co-design process.

Trust lays the strategic groundwork, while inclusivity brings that strategy to life through creative execution. This phase works best as an iterative cycle—moving throughTRUSTED, then INCLUSIVE, and back again—refining ideas and approaches until you’re happy with the result and your message demonstrates cultural integrity and audience ownership. 

CHAPTER 3: BE TRUSTED focuses on designing the framework for a successful NX campaign that draws on everything developed in the THINK stage. You’ll learn how to set objectives grounded in audience insight, map the cultural and demographic landscape being communicated within, and define clear personas and channels to use.

CHAPTER 4: BE INCLUSIVE helps prepare your campaign for launch. You’ll use all the information you gathered in CHAPTER 3 to create an inclusive strategy that allows you to develop deeply inclusive creative elements using a process of structured co-creation with your audience.

Together, these chapters will help you move from understanding your audience to creating with your audience, establishing trust and inclusion as the dual engines of every NX campaign.

‘Do the right thing as marketers to build trust.’
^{—JON DICK, VP Marketing, HubSpot}

IN 2007, I found myself in Collins Street, Melbourne, killing time before a pivotal meeting. Born and bred in a city renowned for its coffee culture, I was a 24-year-old coffee snob. I had even dabbled as an amateur barista in my younger years. So, when I saw a newly opened Starbucks up the road, I was sceptical. But with only $3 to lose and time to kill, I decided to give it a go. The experience was both enlightening and amusing.

‘Can I please have a small latte?’ I enquired, wallet in hand.

‘We don’t have small,’ replied the partner, which is what Starbucks calls their baristas.

I was intrigued. ‘OK, what sizes do you have?’

‘Tall, grande and venti,’ the partner answered, gesturing to the cup sizes on display.

‘Do you have anything smaller than this?’ I asked, pointing to the Tall cup.

‘Yes, we have a Short,’ the partner said, reaching for a smaller cup hidden beneath the counter.

‘Great, then I’ll have a latte in your smallest cup size, please.’

Just Because It’s Venti, it Doesn’t Mean It’s Trusted

The interaction was a fascinating study in cultural disconnect. The partner was clearly following a global script that had been imported from the United States, but it didn’t resonate locally. It failed to speak the language of Melbourne’s coffee culture, where authenticity and attention to craft are everything.

By applying an American model to an Australian context, Starbucks lost cultural authenticity—one of the key pillars in the NX framework—and with it, trust.

The result? The closure of 250 Australian Starbucks stores in 2008.

Several years later, the story took another turn. An Australian company acquired the local franchise, rebuilt trust by localising the experience, and aligned with Australian coffee expectations. Today, over 80 Starbucks stores operate successfully across the country—a reminder that cultural resonance rebuilds what standardisation erodes.

The Value of Trust

Welcome to the foundation of any lasting relationship: trust. In a world where people are bombarded with choices, trust acts as the filter that determines which voices are heard. It transforms a passive observer and one-time buyer into an active lifetime customer and advocate. For public communicators and service providers, it is also the bridge between intention and impact.

Trust is earned through a consistent pattern of credibility, transparency and relevance. These are expressed through trust signals—the visible and invisible cues that tell your audience your message is legitimate, safe and aligned with their values.

Key trust signals include:

Fonts: Fonts should be clear, legible, and culturally appropriate across all audiences. Certain typefaces can unintentionally signal foreignness or cheapness, undermining credibility.

Colours: Colour carries powerful cultural meaning. Red might symbolise luck in some communities but danger or warning in others. Choose colour palettes that align with both the message and the cultural context.

Images: Imagery should reflect the real diversity of the Australian community—urban, regional, Indigenous, and intercultural. Move beyond tokenism to show real people, places, and experiences that audiences recognise as their own.

Humour: Humour can connect or divide. In Australia, dry wit and self-deprecation are often trusted, while exaggerated or forced humour can fall flat. Ensure jokes, idioms, and metaphors are culturally safe and relevant.

Channels: Choose communication channels that your audience already trusts. For some communities, that might be SBS or a certain radio station; for others, local councils, social media groups, or sporting clubs.

Accessibility: Making content accessible to all audiences—including people with disabilities and those from diverse language backgrounds—is a clear trust signal. This includes features like closed captions, subtitles, alt text, plain language, and WCAG-compliant design.

Quality Certifications and Awards: Independent validation builds confidence. Government logos, recognised charity accreditations, or awards from professional associations act as shorthand for legitimacy.

Digital Presence: A regularly updated website, verified social accounts, transparent contact information, and consistent tone of voice signal reliability.

Navigating Cultural Landscapes in Strategy

Crafting a strategy is not a matter of ticking boxes or moving a model from one English-speaking market to another. Language similarities can be deceptive: the same words may carry different meanings, tones or cultural weight depending on context.

A clear NX-aligned strategy ensures that every initiative:

Crafting an NX Strategy

Establishing a strategy begins with defining clear objectives and understanding the audience landscape in which your campaign will operate.

#1 Overarching Objectives

Before continuing our NX journey, it’s important to define the destination. NX objectives should follow the SMART framework:

Specific: Clearly outline what the campaign aims to achieve, such as improved engagement, higher participation in public programs, increased service uptake among culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities, or stronger trust in your brand or department.

Measurable: Define concrete metrics. For example, a 20% increase in engagement with in-language content in six months, a 15% rise in participation from intercultural communities, a 25% growth in partnerships with community media, or a 10% improvement in trust scores among key CALD audiences.

Achievable: Ensure goals are realistic given available resources, partnerships, and available time.

Relevant: Align your objectives with broader organisational goals and priorities—such as inclusion, accessibility or reconciliation.

Time-bound: Define clear timelines and milestones so progress can be tracked and communicated transparently.

#2 Assessing the Audience Landscape

Once your objectives are defined, the next step is to understand the ‘terrain’ your campaign will operate in—the audience landscape. Key considerations include:

Demographic Understanding: Australia’s cultural landscape is unique, with more than 300 languages spoken and nearly half the population born overseas or to migrant parents. Understanding which cultural and language groups are most relevant to your goals helps tailor messages and channels effectively.

Cultural Nuances: Cultural nuance goes deeper than translation. Colours, imagery, tone, and even concepts like humour or formality carry different meanings across communities.

Community Dynamics: Beyond broad cultural understanding, it’s essential to recognise community-specific dynamics. How do different cultural communities interact with each other? What are their primary sources of information? What platforms or channels are they most active on?

Crafting a Culturally Informed NX Strategy: From Objectives to Personas and Messaging

By combining the clear direction provided by well-defined objectives with insights gained from assessing the audience landscape, the next step is to translate understanding into strategy—one that reflects Australia’s unique intercultural makeup.

This involves building detailed audience personas, identifying the most appropriate channels and tactics for reaching each cultural group, and developing an engagement framework that reflects cultural nuance and context.

Personas

Armed with the insights and discoveries from the Authenticity phase, you’re now positioned to construct personas from evidence, not assumption. Accurate and culturally nuanced personas translate research into practical guidance for messaging, channels, and measurement.

When developing NX personas, prioritise the following:

Conduct Thorough Research: Go past age/postcode. Capture language(s) used at home and online, dialect/orthography preferences, media habits, migration/settlement stage, faith-based considerations, accessibility needs, and decision-making norms.

Find Commonalities and Differences: Cluster only where behaviours and trust signals truly align. Avoid collapsing distinct groups under ‘multicultural’.

Test, Update, and Refine Your Personas: Schedule a quarterly review to reflect seasonal moments, policy shifts, platform changes, and language evolution.

Step Into Their Shoes: Consider what personas might say and what actions they might take. What are their thoughts and feelings as they navigate their day? By spending a figurative day in their shoes, you gain invaluable insights.

For government, non-profit, and corporate communicators, try these NX persona fields:

To ensure each persona contributes to a trusted, culturally informed strategy, test them against LEXIGO’s 3Rs Persona Criteria:

Relevant: This criterion captures essential background information—gender, age, location, and life stage—to contextualise the audience rather than define them.

Representative: Beyond demographics, layer in social and structural factors such as family composition, community role, employment type, language(s) used at home, faith affiliation, or access to services.

Resonant: Does the persona feel real and recognisable to the people it represents? Resonant personas capture tone, trust signals and motivations—what matters most and why.

Channels

Selecting the right channels for your NX campaign means meeting your target audiences where they already are. Many CALD communities in Australia prefer specific communication ecosystems—WhatsApp, WeChat, Viber, and Telegram for diaspora connections; Facebook and Instagram for local community engagement; TikTok and YouTube for younger or newly arrived audiences.

Traditional Channels

Traditional and community media channels remain powerful and trusted avenues for reaching audiences across Australia’s culturally and linguistically diverse landscape. Australia’s multicultural media ecosystem includes 17 paid and streaming television stations in seven languages, over 100 community radio stations broadcasting in multiple languages, and around 200 in-language print publications serving 47 cultural communities nationwide.

Key traditional channel tactics include:

Community Engagement / Local Collaboration: Engage directly with local communities. Collaborate with local cultural groups, councils, and community leaders who already hold credibility within their networks.

People of Influence / Community Voices: Partner with credible community voices who genuinely represent your audiences—beyond follower counts or media reach.

Cultural Festivals, Events and Sponsorships: Participate in or sponsor cultural festivals and community events that align with your brand, service, or message.

Podcasts: Collaborate with podcasters who focus on issues relevant to your target community. Podcasts provide a trusted, conversational space for deeper discussions.

Community Radio Stations: These stations are often the heartbeat of local communities, broadcasting in various languages and catering to diverse cultural groups.

In-Language Newspapers and Magazines: These publications serve as trusted sources of information for non-English speaking communities.

In-Language Television Channels and Services: Leverage multilingual broadcasters and streaming services to deliver culturally aligned campaigns.

Public Relations and Community Outreach: Build relationships with community leaders through targeted PR and outreach.

Local Community Partnerships: Form long-term partnerships with local organisations, advocacy groups, councils or leaders.

Digital Channels

A key piece of advice when targeting NX audiences is to avoid relying solely on one type of media channel. The true potential lies in the harmonious integration of both traditional and digital channels.

Social Media Platforms: Use Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and TikTok to represent diverse voices, celebrate community achievements, and invite dialogue.

Email Marketing: Send personalised, in-language emails that address specific community needs. Segment audiences by language or cultural interest.

Content Marketing: Create articles, blog posts, videos or infographics that educate and reflect your audience’s values.

Podcasts: Partner with podcasters who focus on community-specific topics to engage more intimately with your audience.

Educational Programs and Workshops: Offer educational content or workshops relevant to specific cultural communities. Position your organisation as a partner in education and empowerment.

Mobile Marketing: Use SMS, WhatsApp, WeChat, or app notifications to reach audiences in-language with clear, actionable content.

Messaging

There are many potential frameworks for shaping messaging. At LEXIGO, the AIDA (Attention–Interest–Desire–Action) model often works best for guiding communicators through a culturally informed audience journey. Regardless of the framework, the principles are the same:

AIDA Model

Using the AIDA model, NX Ambassadors develop messaging that reflects cultural insight:

Attention — ‘This speaks to me.’ The first touchpoint must resonate with the specific cultural nuances, languages, values, and lived experience of the target audience. The goal is to make them pause and think, ‘This speaks to me’.

Interest — ‘This is something I want to learn more about.’ Draw on insights from the Authenticity stage and your personas to address real questions or barriers that different cultural groups face.

Desire — ‘I need this.’ Creating desire in an intercultural context means understanding what motivates your audience. For some communities, it may be family, tradition, collective success or belonging; for others, innovation, social status or independence.

Action — ‘What’s the next step?’ The final step prompts a culturally appropriate response. For some audiences, a direct call to action may resonate; for others, a relationship-first approach builds trust more effectively.

Best practices for messaging development:

Understand Cultural Priorities: Identify what motivates and drives each cultural group—community welfare, individual achievement, or familial bonds.

Avoid Stereotyping: Don’t use clichés, tokenisms or generic cultural references. Personalise content to reflect genuine understanding.

Localise Content: Adapt messages to the local context and sensibilities of each audience or region.

Collaborate with Community Leaders: Engaging local leaders or influencers provides credibility and extends reach.

Avoid One-Size-Fits-All: Cultural and linguistic groups are not monolithic; messages that work for one community may not land with another.

Scoping Out Your Strategy

As the strategic groundwork of our NX journey comes together, bear in mind that what you’ve developed isn’t a final blueprint but a flexible, evidence-based framework. Think of your strategy as a hypothesis rather than a verdict—an informed, insight-driven starting point that can evolve as new data and feedback surface.

When scanning the environment to take the pulse of your NX audience, consider:

Cultural Sensitivities and Nuances: Awareness of cultural holidays, festivals and observances; historical and political contexts; language preferences, dialects and nuances.

Market Sentiment and Trends: Prevailing opinions toward your organisation or sector; social and political events shaping public sentiment; consumer and community behaviour trends.

Community and Social Factors: Community leaders and influencers who shape local perspectives; current social issues resonating across communities; economic or geographic factors influencing participation.

Legal and Regulatory Environment: Legislation impacting how you communicate; compliance and ethical communication standards; data sovereignty and privacy considerations.

Other factors to consider when assessing your environment include:

Company Culture and Values: Alignment with diversity, inclusion, and reconciliation commitments; representation within teams; internal communication effectiveness.

Brand Health and Equity: Current reputation within diverse communities; performance and learnings from past campaigns; consistency across touchpoints.

Operational Readiness: Agility in adapting to demographic change; systems to support multilingual content; dedicated resources for audience research.

Change Management: Upcoming organisational changes; ongoing professional development in cultural competence; leadership commitment to innovation.

Setting the Stage for Inclusion

As we wrap up this chapter, let’s take a moment to acknowledge the ground we’ve covered. We’ve delved deep into the elements of trust: transparency, credibility, consistency, emotional connection, and cultural nuances. We’ve developed personas and channel strategies and explored the AIDA framework to draft messaging tailored to our audiences and objectives.

Yet, for all its depth, this remains a blueprint—a solid foundation, but one still awaiting proof. The next phase is where the framework meets reality, where hypotheses are tested and insights are validated through real collaboration with the communities we aim to reach.

In Chapter 5: Be Inclusive, the focus shifts from planning to participation. It’s where communicators, marketers, government agencies, non-profits, and brands bring their communities into the design process—co-creating, not just consulting.

So get ready to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in. The most exciting part of our journey—for me, anyway—is about to begin.

Recap

• Trust ensures your message doesn’t just communicate with your audience but resonates deeply with them.

• A culturally informed NX strategy is built on clear objectives and an understanding of the environment you’re operating in.

• Personas help identify and understand your target audiences, ensuring that communication reflects lived experiences rather than assumptions.

• Messaging frameworks such as AIDA keep your communication consistent, targeted, and culturally attuned.

• Your NX strategy is a compass, not a fixed map—it should remain adaptable as new insights emerge.

• Building trust at this stage lays the foundation for collaboration in the Inclusive phase.

‍