Tourism campaign highlighting diversity

This All-inclusive Bermuda article was inspired, in part, by an advertising campaign to highlight the City of Boston’s diversity and to showcase the City’s welcoming, vibrant nature. It was created by Proverb, a Bostonbased brand strategy, creative and advertising agency, whose founder and managing director is Bermudian Daren Bascome. Proverb and Darren Bascome also work with the Bermuda Tourism Authority.

Boston is known for its history, medical and educational institutions, sports teams, Sam Adams

“When we looked at perceptions around Boston, the city,” explains Bascome. “After the Covid-19 pandemic, the city administration was looking to drive an equitable and fair recovery from the travel freeze that created a downturn in tourism and serious economic turmoil for Boston businesses.”

Proverb become a member of the project team formed to change that perception, which is, in reality, outdated. The team is collective of agencies that includes small, local, BIPOC, LGBTQ+ businesses and artists.

“The objective is to tell the story of what Boston has grown into, and to also diversify the visitor base,” states Bascome.

The campaign showcases diverse people, places and cultural activities that depict the Boston of today. For example, one campaign is themed around the ‘Boston accent’ – often distilled down to short O’s, broad A’s and dropped R’s. When in reality, more than 140 languages are spoken in the city.

“Our research showed that potential visitors did not know that there are 23 neighbourhoods to reveals Bascome. “So there’s this opportunity to showcase the breadth of what the city has to offer – not only our well-known institutions, but our small businesses, vibrant diverse communities and other whenever I feel like it, I can walk there and jump in the water.”

One of Bermuda’s finest, Horseshoe Bay, hosts regular volleyball leagues which have become a hotspot for Bermudian and non-Bermudian mingling. Nagasawa and Medran bring Japanese and Argentine flavour to the competition.

“I’d only played in high school before, but here I joined all the leagues: winter, spring and summer,” Medran says.

“It’s helped me make friends outside my work. You start to recognise some faces and you’re interacting with different teams. If there is some volleyball event, we can have a drink together and celebrate together.”

Through volleyball and other social activities, Nagasawa has made Bermudabased friends from South Africa, Britain, Australia, Portugal, China, Japan and South Korea.

“Bermuda has so many people from all over the world,” he says.

“New York is a place with a bunch of people from all over the world, yes, but I feel like in Bermuda everyone is more connected.

“Everyone knows each other. Everyone hangs out together. I feel a diverse community exists, with everyone blending in. Versus New York where it’s more separated – if you’re from Japan, stick with Japanese people; if you’re from things that have helped today’s Boston become a new version of the city. All Inclusive Boston celebrates the many multicultural hidden tourism treasures.”

Bascome declares that “All tourism campaigns are about competitiveness. From an economic development standpoint, tourism often helps to create infrastructure that supports other industries. One of the things we’ve found is that there have

Inclusive Boston campaign. For example, major employers in the area, such as Wayfair, which employs 5,000 staff at its Boston headquarters, uses the campaign as part of its ‘offer letter’ when it is looking to attract talent from outside Boston. It's a way of being able to present living in the city of Boston as being attractive and compelling through diversity. We’ve also built partnerships with the Red Sox baseball and Celtics basketball teams, and the campaign has helped address challenges that these sports teams have with legacy issues and helped them sell more tickets to their games.”

Korea, stick with Korean people.

“There’s this community here and I really enjoy being in that environment.”

In the beginning, of course, everyone in Bermuda was a foreigner, because there was no indigenous population when the British started a settlement in the early 17th century.

Scottish, Irish, Native Americans and black people were brought in as indentured servants during the earliest days; for the following 200 years, black people from Africa and the Caribbean came as slaves. After Emancipation in 1834, people from Madeira, the Azores and Portugal were introduced as cheap labour and the Portuguese community continued to grow over the next two centuries.

Bermuda’s overall population rose from 17,000 in 1900 to 28,000 in 1931 as mainly British people were invited to manage the burgeoning tourism industry.

Census figures show the number of foreigners almost doubled in 20 years from 1950 to 1970, to a total of 14,496, including more than 5,000 from Britain and the rest largely from the US, Portugal, the Caribbean and Canada.

That number grew steadily to 17,675 in 2000; 18,532 in 2010; and 19,332 in the latest Census in 2016.

Bermuda’s need for international business talent and the increasingly fluid movement of workers across the globe have inevitably led to more diversity among the foreign population. A total of 176 different countries were listed as people’s country of birth in the latest Census in 2016, including 4,088 from the UK; 3,598 from the US; 2,140 from Canada; and more than 1,000 each from Jamaica, the Philippines and the Azores. Some 26 countries have provided one person each, including Benin, Qatar, Swaziland and South Georgia and Sandwich Islands.

Bermuda’s blend of nationalities is even reflected in its much-loved codfish breakfast, a hybrid combination of salted codfish, originally from Canada, and locally grown or imported potatoes, bananas, avocadoes, tomatoes, onions and butter.

Manungo lists codfish and potatoes as his favourite Bermudian meal but also suggests the island’s culinary taste is continuing to evolve organically.

“With my friends from Zimbabwe, we go to the beach to cook and have some African cuisine and we normally invite other Africans,” he says.

“From my country, we have sadza which is like mashed potatoes but made of cornmeal. It’s like a thick porridge which we have with beef stew, chicken stew or barbecue.

“Some guys from other African countries will cook jollof rice then different kind of meats and different seasoning as well.”

You can’t get that in Bermuda’s restaurants – yet – but you can at

Horseshoe Bay when Manungo and friends are around.

The Argentine community, unsurprisingly, bring their love of steaks.

“We do some barbecue stuff,” says Medran, who is one of about 20 or 30 Argentinians on the island.

“Normally we have a large Sunday lunch because it’s tradition to spend most of the day with family. We like to cook steaks. They’re not the same as Argentina’s, but they’re similar.”

Zhu says the Chinese community prefer to cook their own food rather than eat at Bermuda’s Chinese restaurants.

“We get together for Chinese New

Year, cook together and try to get the Chinese traditional foods,” she says.

According to the Census, Bermuda had 54 people from China in 2016.

“My company is half expat, half local so we do some Bermuda traditions,” Zhu says.

“I find that Good Friday is really nice. The idea to have this holiday is very nice, to remind people spring is coming. My company provides fishcakes, which I like and can’t cook myself.”

Cnx, one of more than 40 people from Thailand currently living on the island, is helping add a taste of South Asia to Bermuda.

He’s the head chef at Baan Thai Restaurant in Hamilton and exercises at the thriving Muay Thai boxing club in his spare time.

His English is limited but uses Google Translate and Facebook Messenger to help him communicate. The Thai community has also helped him feel home from home, and he insists he enjoys the local food.

“I love that it’s different from Asian food and it tastes good,” he says.

For a first-hand glimpse of the camaraderie between Bermudians and non-Bermudians, you only need to visit Hamilton’s bars and pubs.

Nagasawa, one of about 50 Japanese people on the island, might not be a huge football fan but he got carried with World Cup fever last December.

“My friends went to Docksider’s to support Japan,” he says.

“It made me feel very good, being in a bar. We wore blue colours, we had some flags, it was fun.”

The drinking culture is not to everyone’s taste, however.

“It’s time to get out and get relaxed at five o’clock on a Friday, but it’s so sad because the only thing open is the bar and the restaurant,” Zhu explains.

“They kind of force you to drink.”

But for Manungo, the Bermudian outgoing approach to socialising trumps the introverted nature of Zimbabwe every time.

“In some places, if you go to the bar on your own, you’ll leave on your own,” he says.

“Whereas in Bermuda, if you walk into a bar on your own, you know you’re going to start talking to people and make new friends.”