Taste of Harmony enjoys sweet success
(left to right) John Lorenzo, Special Reports Manager, the Australian newspaper, Hass Dellal, Executive Director, Australian Multicultural Foundation, Sally Tyrell, Account director, Haystack :Positive Outcomes and Tony Fry, Executive director, the Scanlan Foundation
The inaugural Taste of Harmony programme was named tonight winner of the Advertising Award of the National Multicultural Marketing Awards at a gala dinner in Sydney hosted by the NSW Minister for Citizenship and Fair Trading, Virginia Judge.
The project, funded by the Scanlon Foundation, in partnership with the Australian Multicultural Foundation, was an awareness-raising campaign designed to celebrate cultural diversity in all Australian workplaces.
Congratulating the Melbourne agency, Haystac Positive Outcomes, for their winning advertising project, Stepan Kerkyasharian, the Chair of the Community Relations Commission of NSW which has been running the awards for 20 years, said:
"This wonderful project was based on the idea that food is often central to celebration.
"So, therefore, the best way to celebrate diversity in the workplace is for workers to have lunch together, sharing what they had brought from home.
"Over one thousand one hundred workplaces registered and took part in the lunches.
"You have to call that a great success. And it was certainly a fascinating exercise because Haystac Positive Outcomes was asked to create an advertising campaign about the benefits of cultural diversity itself.
In other words, they had to devise a multicultural marketing plan to sell multiculturalism itself!" he said.
The Scanlon Foundation is an organisation committed to "ensuring the ongoing creation of a socially cohesive, multicultural society in Australia"
They were inspired by consultation and research which suggested that there was a lack of awareness and appreciation of the strengths of cultural diversity in the workplace.
Armed with the statistic that 25% of Australia's workers were born overseas, the Foundation set about reflecting that diversity in the programme of work-place lunches.
To be sure of getting the right mix of responses, the advertising campaign targetted both English and non-English media, print and electronic, metropolitan and regional.
According to Haystac, 77% of the workplace participants felt they had gained a greater understanding of the cultural background of their work colleagues, whilst 99% of participating workplaces and 100% of restaurants stated they will or might register to participate in 2010.
In their entry, Haystac quoted the comments from one participating workplace:
"Our small lunchtime events were highly enjoyable. Not only did they give us an appreciation for cultural diversity and the amazing array of cuisines were lucky to have on offer, but it also helped to improve organisational cohesiveness and relieve stress. Were going to make it a monthly event now!"
"This creative project was well deserving of an award, because it reminded us of something important - our rich cultural diversity - which we sometimes forget to remember." Mr Kerkyasharian concluded.