Canada’s Indigenous people represent roughly 5% of the population, but are largely missing in the majority of media plans.

While they are surely reached by mass targeting or targeting based on other demographic factors, there aren’t many efforts to purposefully reach Indigenous communities, as there are for South Asian and Chinese-Canadian communities, for example (according to 2021 census data, South Asian people represent 7.1% of the population, while Chinese-Canadians represent 4.7%).

Lindsey Talbot, chief investment officer at GroupM, says the agency is having important planning discussions with many of its clients to address this, as it recognizes that the Indigenous population is underrepresented in terms of specific marketing efforts.

“For some, it will mean starting with the right marketing plan and understanding which touch points will be the most effective in reaching the Indigenous population and then testing and learning different creative to determine which combination will produce the most successful results,” she says.

Talbot says that understanding the different languages and other important cultural nuances are key in the overall planning process and will impact production costs. There are sales and marketing organizations that specialize in guiding brands through all aspects of the planning process, including cultural sensitivity in creative messaging, a level of collaboration that GroupM encourages to ensure campaigns deliver on a client’s objectives.

Another approach is to specifically request and sponsor Indigenous content and content creators.

“GroupM already has private marketplaces set up that specifically include Indigenous Canadians and sites from our diversity and inclusion PMP on our standard inclusion list,” Talbot says. “We invest in Indigenous content creators with the purpose to support relevant content for our clients and to create more demand on the inventory to open the door for under-represented communities to create more content.”

Language, location and technical limitations are just some of the reasons for the lack of Indigenous-specific targeting. There is an overall need for more consideration and for solving the various issues around targeting Indigenous people in Canada.

Alex Hagoriles, VP of audience and insights at Dentsu, says marketers are driven by the need for meaningful results and fearful of controversy when engaging certain marginalized groups.

“Our data and media are limited in properly representing Indigenous people and we need better capabilities to connect with them,” Hagoriles says.

Hagoriles says Dentsu has two solutions in the works, but the real solution needs to be multiple industries coming together to fix problems, such as urban-centric research that omits a view of the Canadian territories and rural areas. Another issue, he says, is stereotyping that excludes marginalized groups from luxury and prestige marketing, something that doesn’t happen with South Asian and Chinese-Canadian audiences.

In addition, Hagoriles says North American brands lack the understanding of what makes Canada unique, particularly with the many nuances across Indigenous communities. Going off of U.S.-centric briefs also doesn’t help matters.

“If there’s no data on them, you don’t really have an understanding how you can be effective with them,” he says. “To target Indigenous people, you look at your media options, and your closest thing for a mass reach would be something like a VPN, which is good but likely not good enough. The infrastructure is not in place and in terms of the digital divide, the new 5G network being built doesn’t even touch the northern territories where the majority of Indigenous people live.”

Hagoriles says Dentsu is in the preliminary stages of a tool its calling Mercury. The agency is developing audience data beyond standard market research to connect to Canadian data as a way to model its proprietary data to include non-measured communities.

Sarah Thompson, president of Dentsu Media Canada, adds that the importance of local news in Canada is also a factor, with the agency planning to release research on the subject in the near future.

“We understand the importance of rebuilding local media,” Thompson says. “If we are speaking about connecting with Indigenous communities, we need to consider that this is more than targeting, this is about supporting as well. With publications like IndigiNews, we are starting to see a rebuild of media for these communities, but advertisers need to follow with their dollars. If purpose is at your core and reconciliation is a part of your action plan as a brand, so should be supporting indigenous publications with your media investment.”