There's a growth engine sitting right in front of Australian marketers, and most are barely tapping it.
Here are the numbers. Over 51% of Australians now identify as culturally and linguistically diverse. More than 5.8 million people speak a language other than English at home. The CALD consumer market is worth an estimated $240 billion annually. And in Sydney alone, over 11% of residents identify as Chinese Australian, with Melbourne close behind at nearly 9%.
Yet most Australian brands still treat multicultural marketing as an afterthought. A translated ad here, a festival sponsorship there, maybe some red and gold packaging in February.
Lunar New Year 2026 falls on 17 February, marking the Year of the Horse. For retail, grocery, banking, and telco CMOs, this isn't just a cultural moment to acknowledge. It's a concentrated window of high-intent audiences, measurable behaviour, and real-time brand experimentation that can inform your strategy for the entire year ahead.
Procter & Gamble's Chief Brand Officer called multicultural marketing the single biggest source of market growth in FMCG for the next several years, perhaps even decades. That observation applies just as strongly in Australia as anywhere else.
Consider what's happening in the Australian market. Around 30% of Australians are first-generation migrants, with another 21% being second-generation with at least one parent born overseas. The fastest growing language communities include Punjabi, which grew by over 80% between census periods, along with Mandarin, Vietnamese, and Cantonese. These aren't niche segments. They're mainstream consumer groups with substantial purchasing power.
Multicultural consumers over-index in key retail categories. They're often earlier adopters of technology and digital services. They have stronger word-of-mouth networks within their communities. And they respond disproportionately well to brands that demonstrate genuine cultural understanding rather than surface-level acknowledgment.
The problem is that most brand tracking doesn't capture any of this. Standard research samples aren't designed to measure shifts in awareness or consideration among specific diaspora communities. You're flying blind on a segment that could be driving your next wave of growth.
Lunar New Year concentrates multicultural audiences in ways that make measurement practical and actionable. Rather than trying to track diffuse behaviour across a full year, you can focus your research investment on a defined window where intent, attention, and spending all peak simultaneously.
Think of it as a real-time brand experiment. You can test creative approaches, measure response, and connect results to actual commercial outcomes in a matter of weeks rather than months.
Two to three weeks before Lunar New Year, establish baseline measures for your key metrics among target communities. This means measuring unaided and aided awareness, consideration, and brand associations among Mandarin, Cantonese, and Vietnamese speakers separately from your general market sample.
Don't assume these groups are interchangeable. Language preference, media consumption, and cultural values vary significantly between communities. A message that resonates with first-generation Mandarin speakers might miss entirely with second-generation Cantonese speakers who consume primarily English-language media but still celebrate Lunar New Year traditions.
Capture asset recall baselines as well. Can your target audience describe your Lunar New Year creative? Do they recognise it as distinct from competitors? This gives you something concrete to measure against after the campaign runs.
The two-week festival period is your live measurement window. Track exposure and response to out-of-home advertising in high-traffic precincts like Sydney's Chinatown, Melbourne's Box Hill, or Brisbane's Fortitude Valley. Monitor social engagement on in-language content across WeChat, Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book), and Weibo, alongside mainstream platforms.
Retail and app signals become particularly valuable during this window. Are you seeing uptake in specific suburbs with high diaspora concentration? How does footfall in festival precincts compare to control suburbs? What's happening with app downloads, account openings, or product registrations among identifiable CALD segments?
The goal isn't to track everything. It's to identify a handful of leading indicators you can measure consistently and connect to commercial outcomes.
Measure again at 72 hours and 14 days post-festival. At 72 hours, you're capturing immediate awareness and consideration shifts while campaign exposure is still fresh. At 14 days, you're measuring whether those shifts have stuck or faded.
Look for branded search volume changes, particularly in-language searches. Track store traffic patterns in target suburbs. Measure offer uptake and redemption rates across channels. These post-festival signals tell you whether your activation translated into actual demand, not just awareness.
Compare festival precinct performance against control suburbs with similar demographics but lower festival activity. This gives you a cleaner read on what the activation drove versus what would have happened anyway.
Festival marketing fails when it relies on generic cultural symbols without genuine distinctiveness. Red and gold packaging gets lost in a sea of red and gold. Generic prosperity messaging sounds exactly like every competitor.
The brands that cut through are the ones that demonstrate authentic understanding while maintaining clear brand identity.
Language variants matter more than translation: Mandarin, Cantonese, and Vietnamese are different languages with different cultural contexts. The Year of the Horse symbolism resonates differently across communities. Cantonese speakers might respond to different proofs of fortune and prosperity than Vietnamese speakers celebrating Tết. This isn't just about translation. It's about cultural resonance.
Category entry points shift during festivals: Gifting behaviour spikes during Lunar New Year, making hongbao (red envelope) mechanics and gift-ready packaging essential for retail. Family finance conversations happen during reunion gatherings, creating openings for banking and insurance. Travel bookings accelerate for international visits. Telco top-ups increase for international calls. Understanding which category entry points matter for your business during festival periods lets you align creative and offers accordingly.
Asset consistency without cliché: The challenge is using culturally appropriate symbols while avoiding tired stereotypes. Burberry's Lunar New Year scarf campaign famously missed the mark by displaying the 福 (fu/blessing) character right-side up when tradition calls for displaying it upside-down to signify blessings arriving. That level of detail matters to the communities you're trying to reach. Work with cultural consultants and community members, not just translation services.
The point of festival measurement isn't to accumulate interesting data. It's to connect cultural engagement to the metrics that matter to your CFO.
Tie consideration lift to expected sales: When you measure a consideration increase among a specific diaspora segment, translate that into expected weekly sales impact. If consideration among Chinese Australian consumers in Sydney increases by 5 points after your Lunar New Year campaign, and you know the relationship between consideration and purchase in that segment, you can model the revenue implication. This makes multicultural marketing investment a business case, not a cultural box-ticking exercise.
Estimate price elasticity shifts: Festival periods often shift willingness to pay, particularly for gift-oriented purchases. Premium positioning that might face resistance in general market contexts can work during Lunar New Year when quality signals matter for gift-giving. If your value cues are landing effectively, you should see reduced price sensitivity in your target segments. Track this and factor it into your promotional strategy.
Build retention through community mechanics: New customer acquisition during festival periods is valuable, but retention is where the real payoff happens. Migrant-first onboarding experiences that acknowledge cultural context, referral mechanics that leverage community word-of-mouth, and ongoing in-language communications all contribute to lifetime value, not just first purchase.
Lunar New Year is the starting point, not the endpoint. The goal is to build multicultural brand tracking into your ongoing research programme.
Festival moments provide concentrated measurement opportunities, but the insights they generate should inform year-round strategy. Which language variants showed strongest response? Which suburbs demonstrated highest commercial conversion? Which creative approaches drove distinctiveness versus generic category association?
Use Lunar New Year as your pilot. Develop your measurement framework, test your data collection methods, and build your internal capability for multicultural research. Then apply that capability to other cultural moments throughout the year, whether that's Diwali, Eid, Mid-Autumn Festival, or Tết.
The brands that will win the next decade of Australian consumer growth are the ones building genuine multicultural capability now. That means going beyond campaign-level measurement to understanding how different diaspora communities perceive your brand relative to competitors, what category entry points matter most in each community, and how consideration translates to purchase differently across segments.
Lunar New Year 2026 falls on 17 February. The Horse symbolises energy, freedom, and forward momentum. It's an apt metaphor for what multicultural marketing represents for Australian brands willing to invest in understanding these communities properly.
The $240 billion CALD consumer market isn't going anywhere. If anything, demographic trends suggest it will only grow in importance. The question is whether you'll build the research capability to capture your share of that growth, or continue flying blind while competitors figure it out first.
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Ready to build multicultural brand tracking into your research programme? We help Australian brands measure what matters across diaspora communities, from festival activation performance to year-round brand health. Book a conversation now!