Born all over the world: why multicultural marketing is how you win in Canada

There’s a saying that Canadians are born all over the world. Some just take a little longer to find their way home.

I think about that line a lot, because it describes almost everyone I know. The friend who studied here and stayed. The neighbour who arrived with two suitcases and now runs a business on the corner. The family that spent a first winter figuring out how everything worked, from bus routes to bank accounts, while navigating their first blizzard.

This is our country today, and it’s growing that way fast. In 2024, international migration accounted for 97.3% of Canada’s total population growth, according to Statistics Canada. Newcomers aren't a footnote to Canada’s future. In many ways, they are it. For brands, this reshapes not just who Canada is, but where growth will come from — the new reality of multicultural marketing in Canada.

So here’s a small, uncomfortable question for anyone in marketing. When we picture our customer, who do we still picture by default?

Maybe the problem is our typical mindset

By treating it as an afterthought, we’ve reduced “multicultural” as a box to check, a line in a plan, a campaign that runs at a certain time of year. Once it’s a box, it becomes optional. Something you get to after the “real” work is done. And when we simplify people this way, we simplify what actually matters to them.

But the people inside that box don’t see themselves that way. They’re not a demographic waiting to be activated. Some are newly arrived, others have been here for years — even generations — but all are navigating systems, milestones and identities that don’t fit neatly into a segment. 

They’re not one group, either. A newcomer from Manila, Lagos, or São Paulo may share paperwork — and almost nothing else. Different languages, different values, different relationships with money, family, risk, and trust. Folding all of that into one word, “multicultural,” is where good intentions go to die. It flattens the exact differences that make each community worth understanding.

The moments look the same on paper. They aren’t.

Every brand loves a milestone. A first apartment. A first car. A growing family. A first real savings account. We build campaigns around these moments because they’re universal.

Except they’re not.

For some, buying a first home is a solo decision made over a weekend. For others, it’s a family conversation that spans continents and generations, where a parent’s opinion carries more weight than any brochure. For some, borrowing is normal. For others, debt carries a weight no interest rate can explain.

Same milestone. Completely different reality. And a brand that only sees the surface will keep showing up with the wrong message, at the wrong moment, wondering why it isn’t landing.

Being seen in your own language

Sometimes, relevance is simpler than we think: people feel seen when you speak to them in their own language. Especially when everything around them still feels new.

That was the starting point for our work with Google Pixel. As Canada welcomed nearly half a million newcomers in a single year, the instinct could have been to lead with specs. Instead, we focused on a real need: navigating a new country in a language you haven’t mastered yet. Pixel’s Live Translate became a bridge, helping explain Canadian terms, quirks, and experiences in over 200 languages. Because in Canada, it’s not just about speaking French or English. It’s about learning to speak “Canadian.”

That idea moved the numbers. Tens of millions of extra impressions and real lifts in consideration and brand perception among Asian Canadians. But the reason it worked is simpler than any metric. It showed up exactly when people most needed to feel understood. 

That’s what relevance looks like in a growth market: not broader reach, but precise alignment with real moments of need.

When every season is an occasion

Some of the most meaningful moments are the ones that come back every year. Back to school, the holidays, the first signs of spring or summer. For many multicultural Canadians, these are shared occasions lived in very different ways.

That’s what Visionnaire, our sister agency, set out to do with Walmart Canada. Holidays where the turkey goes tandoori. A Lunar New Year built around the rituals of preparation. A back-to-school season that looks different in every home. Across radio and TV, each execution met people in their world — sometimes in-language, sometimes in a blend.

The point wasn’t low prices. It was belonging. A family shouldn't have to choose between where they came from and where they are now. Get that right, and a brand earns something no discount can buy: trust. And trust travels — across families, across communities, across generations. Win it once, and it compounds in ways no media budget can match.

The same instinct that helps a family celebrate in their own language is what earns their trust when the decisions get bigger. The discipline doesn’t change; only the stakes do. The brands that will win aren’t separating culture from commerce. They’re building one connected understanding of people across every moment that matters.

Winning in a multicultural Canada

None of this asks a brand to pretend to be something it’s not. People can spot inauthenticity instantly. It asks the opposite: to be genuinely itself, and to make real room for the people it wants to serve, in all their differences rather than in spite of them.

This is especially true in categories like financial services, where the moments that matter carry real weight. The brands that will grow with this country are the ones that start with people, not segments — and build around the moments that shape decisions.

They don’t treat multiculturalism as a line in the plan. They build it into every decision, from product to communications.

In Canada today, growth doesn’t come from reaching more people. It comes from showing up better, at the moments that matter.

Our country has already changed. The question is whether our marketing has kept up — and what it takes for a brand to truly feel like home in a country where Canadians are born all over the world.