Multilingual Strategy Should Be Your Pièce de Résistance

Too often, multilingual work is treated as a bolt-on translation exercise: useful, but optional. It’s the last box on the checklist, rarely the first conversation in the room. And this has to change. In today’s Australia, and in an increasingly interconnected world, monolingual campaigns aren’t just out of touch and exclusionary -- they’re careless and commercially illiterate.

Migration, digital diaspora networks, and changing demographics have redefined what “mainstream” means. One in five people living in Australia speak a language other than English at home. Audiences are fragmented, culturally attuned, and discerning about what feels authentic. So the argument is simple -- if you want your message to land, embed in-language respect from the get-go. Language used well contains multitudes, holding culture, humour, identity and belonging. When brands treat translation -- and by extension, language itself -- superficially, they invariably alienate as many people as they reach, while missing the whole commercial upside of speaking to audiences in their own voice.

The problem is rarely intent; it’s timing. When multilingual thinking only enters the process after a campaign is built, creative choices are already locked. Translation becomes a last-scramble retrofit. A poster with swapped-out text, an ad with dubbed-over dialogue, a social tile with clunky subtitles. We’ve all seen them, and -- whisper it -- created them. But the result always feels mid at best: a campaign that talks at communities, not with them. And when translation is literal, not cultural, things can get even worse.

Airbnb’s launch of its Chinese moniker back in 2017 proved the point -- the name was widely criticised as clunky, corny, ambiguous, even vulgar. When translation misses the cultural mark, the result can be worse than saying nothing at all, and misses an opportunity to build real trust.

Others have fared much better. Coca-Cola’s ‘Share a Coke’ campaign replaced its logo with local first names, adapting to naming conventions and idioms across 80 markets. It didn’t just translate, choosing to tap into that most important part of language, the name. It connected emotionally, tapping into the thrill of personal recognition. And helping people buy in language works too -- IKEA’s multilingual paid-search campaign saw a 25% increase in online sales and a 40% lift in brand awareness when it adapted both language and cultural context.

Here in Australia, Think HQ’s work on the Emen8 sexual health campaign with ACON and Thorne Harbour Health showed what happens when community and creativity truly intersect. We had to make cheeky, clever English copy, “Do it after you do it”, land just as naturally across all of today’s Australia. We didn’t even consider translating, instead working with pairs of transcreators -- queer community members fluent in Mandarin, Vietnamese, Spanish and Thai -- to rebuild it from the ground up. The humour, rhythm and tone were re-imagined so that each version felt original and authentic. Even the in-language voice-over talent came from within the community, ensuring every element rang true. The result wasn’t a translation; it was a conversation.

These campaigns succeed because they speak from within culture, not outside it. Multilingual strategy isn’t decorative; it’s structural. It doesn’t dilute creativity, but strengthens it. It doesn’t slow production, but sharpens effectiveness. When linguistic and cultural specialists are invited in early, brands aren’t pandering; they’re future-proofing.

Campaigns conceived in one language and retrofitted into others rarely travel well. They lose rhythm, humour, resonance. But when multilingual thinking starts on day one -- when strategists, linguists and creatives collaborate from the outset -- campaigns really pop.

The smartest CMOs and creative leaders already know this. They don’t see in-language work as a courtesy — they see it as a growth opportunity. A campaign built for today’s Australia must sound right in every language, not just read correctly. And when multilingual strategy becomes part of a brand’s DNA, something powerful happens: ideas that once struggled to travel start to fly.

When crafting your next campaign, make multilingual strategy your pièce de résistance - the one ingredient that ensures your message truly lands, in every language.