(By Jenifer Jarak, Founder and Director of Acciona Inclusión)
If the objective is to ensure that our brand reaches as many consumers as possible, it is necessary that we ask ourselves some basic questions whose answers will help us retrace the important and differential path of understanding and knowing the diverse customer.
How big is my potential market of diverse clients?
This analysis should be done considering diversity in its broadest perspective: any client who may have any type of special need or difficulty in using any of our products or services qualifies as “diverse”. Here is a second question: for each of those diverse clients identified, try to establish what they are like, what characteristics they have, what we can do to better satisfy them.
What opportunities for growth do I have as a brand, company or entrepreneur if I consider the customer diverse?
In addition to issues such as profitability, excellent alternatives are presented to position our company as a true agent of change. By attending to the needs of this market, companies generate a sustainable impact on the person with a disability, their family and even their community of belonging and support.
How do I reach diverse customers with my message?
The brand image must at all times contemplate the fact of being “inclusive”. The communication model chosen is not minor: companies often appear that fly flags, in general related to an inclusive group, just because it is about the “fashionable issue”. Therefore, the message must be clear, simple, direct and, especially, honest.
How can I make my product or service inclusive?
From the point of view of product or service creation, today the paradigm known as “universal design” is taking hold: the idea is not to adapt or redesign products or environments so that they can be used with people with disabilities. This paradigm proposes, instead, that from the very development it is planned that the result is accessible to the largest possible number of people.
Although it is not intended to make a universal design treatise, we consider this an appropriate space to remember its seven basic principles:
- Equitable use: it must be able to be used by people with different abilities or capacities.
- Flexibility: the design must accommodate a wide range of people with different tastes and abilities.
- Simple use: the mode of use should be easy to understand and learn.
- Perceptible information: the design communicates the information needed effectively for its use.
- Tolerance for error: the design minimizes potential incidents by chance and unintended adverse consequences.
- Minimal physical exertion: it must be able to be used effectively in a comfortable way with a minimum of fatigue.
- Proper Size – Must be sized appropriately for approach, use, and scope.
How do I communicate with the diverse client according to their singularities?
Communication must be empathetic and multisensory, following Principle 4 of universal design. Specifically, in the writing of content, it is possible to appeal to what is known as “easy reading”: a summary in simple and clear language so that it can be understood by people with cognitive or intellectual disabilities. It is a growing trend that appeals not to a child’s language, but to ensure that the information is clear and well structured.
Some principles of easy reading are:
- Use short sentences.
- Appeal to images or pictograms that make it easier to understand some concepts.
- Avoid negative expressions.
- Minimize metaphors or comparisons, because they can be complex.
- Avoid the excessive use of numbers. In cases where it is essential, use the numbers themselves instead of writing them in letters.
- Get each phrase to have a unique and clear message to convey.
- Structure the sentences in such a way that the information thread can be easily followed.
How should packaging design be taking into account the conditions of my diverse clients?
Beyond what has been said at the point where we highlight the importance of universal design, it is worth pausing for a moment specifically on packaging. It is very common to find containers that are very similar to each other. Not only in the classic example of shampoo, where dozens of alternatives (“controlled curlers”, “greasy hair”, “vanilla essence”) coexist in almost identical presentations, but also among products that have nothing to do with each other and that they may be difficult to distinguish for certain people. The same Tetra Brick is used for milk and wine. The juice is offered in a format not unlike drinkable yogurt.
Companies need to do a reading on which of the components that are part of their packaging collaborate with the ease of choice of their diverse customers. Appeal to different fonts, colors or packaging formats that allow, at least, a quick identification of the different product lines. A person who has vision problems, for example, will appreciate visible fonts with certain formats or with different colors to indicate different characteristics of a product and make it more recognizable. You can also incorporate tactile elements or stickers. The options are very numerous. The most important thing is to be willing to make a serious commitment to inclusion.
I have an SME or a micro-enterprise… Can I be inclusive?
The answer leaves no room for doubt: yes. It is common for social responsibility to be associated with large companies, because it is assumed that carrying out an initiative in this regard requires many resources. But the pandemic taught us, among other things, the importance of the proximity business and how everyone, from their place, can do something to take care of their community. Betting on inclusion, for SMEs and micro-enterprises, means achieving a huge positive impact on society and, from a business point of view, the possibility of our products and services can be chosen by a wider number of people.
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