Building and Construction Industry of Victoria: COVIDSafe Worksite Multicultural Campaign

CulturalPulse was engaged when COVID-19 restrictions were lessening and Victoria’s building and construction worksites were reopening.

The Master Builders Association of Victoria (MBAV) and partner organisations activated a 8-week campaign strategy and plan. The project included the development of multilingual communications assets in 16 different languages to ensure multicultural homes and construction workers were fully informed of COVID-safe practices upon their return to work.

The Approach

A phased messaging approach was deployed to align the campaign with the evolving sentiment within the construction community. The campaign aimed to communicate critical COVID-safe information to multicultural SME owners in the construction industry in addition to employees, contractors, their families, in the Victorian building and construction industry, facilitating the safe return of 85% of the workforce and ensuring the continued operation of worksites across Victoria.

To deliver effective reach to the target communities, we focused on consolidating, culturally contextualising, and amplifying important campaign messaging.

Target Languages and Communities

• 16 key languages were identified: Simplified Chinese (Mandarin), Traditional Chinese (Cantonese), Arabic, Punjabi, Hindi, Greek, Croatian, Vietnamese, Sinhalese, Nepali, Korean, Indonesian, Farsi, Dari, and Pashto.
• The community segmentation was based on the size of each community in Victoria, their involvement in the construction industry, and the availability of established digital and community channels.

Creative and Landing Pages

• CulturalPulse led the creation of in-culture and in-language COVID safe messages tailored to each community to make the content relatable and easily shareable, recognising that multicultural audiences respond better to messages perceived as coming from family, friends, or people from the same culture.
• CulturalPulse produced 48 creative assets, including posters for worksites and social media messaging, all translated and culturally contextualised. To ensure accessibility, we developed language-specific landing pages for each of the 16 communities, where all assets were housed. These were made available on the Vaccine Hub website.

Campaign and Content Amplification

• Distribution of in-language content was achieved via a range of media channels including targeted social advertising through Facebook and Instagram, WhatsApp, EDM, SMS, print, and word of mouth. The media strategy aimed to spread messages widely through both formal and informal channels, encouraging communities to share messages with their networks, thereby increasing awareness and trust.

The Outcome

Campaigns were live for 8 weeks targeting multicultural Victorians and delivered:

• Over 1.5 million total impressions in target communities.
• Over 600,000 total reach (minimum unique views) in target communities.
• Over 30,000 clicks to CulturalPulse in-language landing pages.
• 240 multilingual, multi-format (posters/tiles) and website links.
• 17 community organisations that distributed via their own trusted channel.
• 54% engagement/clicks from non-English-speaking Victorians, demonstrating the importance of communicating in language in this sector.