Ethnique Media :: Le Blog

Yes, at the end of last year, we executed our first online ethnic marketing mandate. The campaign went well, and the customer was very satisfied.

There definitely was a learning curve, and establishing the work relationships with the publisher websites wasn’t always easy.

In 2012 we will further develop our online advertisement offering. There are also plans of re-doing our own corporate website. Re-working a website is always a big project, I know from personal experience, so I don’t want to talk too much about it, until it’s actually ready to go live.

I was the one who built this website back in 2006, so I will be a bit sad to see it go. But now that we also offer online marketing services, it is time to change our online image.

Oddly, there has been a lot of interesting press on immigration this week-end.

First, The Economist had an amazing front page article on how immigrants are disproportionally larger drivers of the economy, and how their links through the diaspora can open-up business for their host countries:

A recent study carried out by Duke University showed that, while immigrants make up an eighth of America’s population, they founded a quarter of the country’s technology and engineering firms. And, by linking the West with emerging markets, diasporas help rich countries to plug into fast-growing economies.

It’s always pleasant to see The Economy throw it’s huge weight behind a story and give it’s opinion. And when The Economist says that imigrants are a plus for the economy of a country, we better listen, because they think long and hard before publishing stories.

Then there is our very own Globe and Mail, with an article on marketing to these same immigrants, but this case specifically the Latin America diaspora. Just the intro of the article is significant proof that main-stream marketers have understood the power of ethnic marketing:

When there’s a gold rush on, smart people look for silver.

In the last few years, Canadian marketers have been retooling their organizations to target newcomers to the country. Ethnic media are bursting with ads targeting Chinese, Filipino and South Asian immigrants. (Or at least as bursting as media outlets are these days.) But there’s another group of newcomers, all but unknown and ignored, …

The article is an interesting read, going on to explain how the Latin American community is under-represented in marketing efforts, yet targeting it might reap larger benefits than expected.

Finally, our very own Director, Borislav Nicolov penned an incendiary article on the futility of efforts to force uni-language signs in Quebec, when these efforts don’t take into account the reality of the world’s population as a whole.

All this to say that with modern telecom technologies and modern travel technologies, the world has definitely gotten smaller. No one can stay isolated from their neighbors. Border cannot remain closed, as the demographic and economic future of many depends on what foreigners will bring to the table.

Let’s not forget that the US, the greatest power today, was built, and continues to be propped-up, by what some people could call “foreigners”.

Let’s embrace this reality. And include it in our future marketing efforts.

A great image by The Economist, the “foreigners” arriving with their laptops, cell-phones and briefcases (full of what?).

It seems that Saatchi & Saatchi L.A., an Los Angeles based advertisement agency has tested the limits of interactive advertisement and user engagement, through an ill fated ad campaign for the Toyota Matrix, which is now resulting in at least one 10 million dollar lawsuit:

L.A. resident Amber Duick received an unsettling e-mail from someone she didn’t know who, oddly, seemed to know her very well.
…
As the week went on and Sebastian seemed to get closer to L.A., there were more e-mails and even some videos chronicling his trip, and numerous references to tussles with the law.
…
It was only days later that Ms. Duick received a final e-mail containing a link to a video which explained the entire thing had been a virtual punking: It was, in fact, an ad campaign for the Toyota Matrix.

Reade the full story on the Globe and Mail here.

I am no artistic director, but it is pretty clear to me (as it should be to any reasonable person) that pulling prolongation pranks, over the course of numerous days/weeks, and putting people in uncomfortable situations for so long, cannot in any way be a good method for selling a product.

Not only are consumers getting wary of traditional advertisement, because of the barrage of ads that attacks them in print, on TV and on the web, but now consumers will also be turned-off from the so called “interactive advertisement”. This is not the first case of interactive advertisement backfiring; remember the fake-tourists that were in fact actors posing as tourists and asking passers by to take photos of them, which was all a stunt to promote a certain digital camera (I forget the name of the culprit camera maker at the moment).

But what really cough my attention in the article was the following quote:

“Years ago, you could put a message out there and control who was going to see it by carefully targeting,” notes Jack Neary, the chief creative officer of TBWA\Canada. “If you wanted to reach a fisherman, you put an ad in a fishing magazine. But now with the Internet, which is fundamentally still a mass medium because of its pervasive nature, anything – even if it might be targeted to a very young gaming-oriented young guy – can get out there into the world, and anyone can stray into the path of that stuff, can get subjected to it.”

And here I come back to printed ethnic press: it allows you to do that careful targeting that is mentioned in the quote above. Sure it might not be as sexy as actors impersonating someone or some event, but it gets the job done! It reaches exactly the people that you wanted to reach, and gets the message to them in straightforward and clear way.

The Globe and Mail featured a story about a Toronto family that has cut their basic cable subscription from Rogers and moved to free OTA (Over-The-Air) digital TV signal.

This is just one more example of a growing trend: a move away from what was considered “traditional” media 10 years ago.

Complementing the free OTA high-definition digital TV stations, plus the cheap Netflix (less than 10$ a month), plus the free streaming on the Internet (did you know you can watch all the CBC’s hockey games live streaming on their site), and the effect is, the customer saves close to a thousand dollars a year, while maintaining their TV watching habit pretty much the same, if not better (less time in front of the tube can only do you good).

This “non-traditional” TV media consumption is becoming more and more “traditional”.

How are marketers to react to this? The fact is that people are not consuming less media, they are consuming a richer cocktail of media. We went from 40 hours a week of cable TV (which made reaching the consumer easy for advertisers), to 10 hours of free OTA digital TV, 20 hours of web surfing, and more hours reading traditional or digital displays, free newspapers in the Metro and more and more different media sources.

I am no media guru, but the general answer seems obvious: like in investment, diversifying your media reach seems to be the key strategy today. Getting your message across many different platforms seems like a reasonable idea in the face of this changing media consumption patterns.

And coming back to the ethnic press, advertising in such media is just one more (powerful) way of diversifying your media offering.

In the age of user-generated-content/long tail/web 2.0/citizen-journalism and all the other catch-words used when describing the Internet, a large portion of print media still relies on the content generated by press agencies, like AP, and keep repeating and re-printing the same stories, in order to fill newspaper pages on the cheap.

This is a problem that does not plague the ethnic printed press. There is no AP or Post Media or Reuters written content in ethnic press. Because of the difference in languages, ethnic newspapers must have all their own articles written specifically for them, and by their own staff.

This availability of fresh content is an extremely powerful and positive point, propping-up the ethnic press and keeping its readers captive.

So it comes to no surprise to me to see that the ethnic press is getting some recognition in the current federal election in Canada. As the following article by The Globe and Mail points out, politicians are now actively meeting with representatives of the ethnic press.

Yet another sign of the impact that printed media by the different ethnic communities can have.

Stats Canada has the habit of teaching us surprising facts. For example, that Canada’s population is aging fast, while by 2031 this same population would grow by 8 million people, going from 32 to 40 millions. Now that seems to be a contradictory miracle.

Well, it is actually no miracle. Other numbers indicate that during last century Canada welcomed 13 million immigrants. In other words, in the next 20 years, Canada will welcome as much as 50% of the immigrants it did for the entire last century. Following this trend, Canada should welcome up to 40 million new citizens until 2100.

The trend is here to stay; the future will be noisy and multilingual. How to manage this future is a pressing question for many advertisers.

Part of the answer is to learn how to communicate with all these new citizens.

And this is where we come in. Contact us, at Ethnique Media Inc we communicate with the world.

PS: Translated from this blog post.

Statistique Canada nous apprend des choses surprenantes. D’une part la population canadienne vieillit, d’autre part, d’ici 2031 elle augmentera de 8 millions, passant de 32 à 40 millions. Voila qui est miraculeux.

Aucun miracle, cette croissance est due à l’immigration. D’autres chiffres indiquent que durant le siècle précédent, le Canada a accueilli seulement 13 millions d’immigrants. En d’autres termes, en 20 ans le Canada accueillera plus de 50% de nouveaux arrivants que durant tout le siècle précédent. Dans cette optique, jusqu’au 2100 le Canada accueillera 40 millions de nouveaux arrivants.

Rien ne permet de croire que la tendance se renversera; le futur est donc bigarré, bruyant et multilingue. Comment le gérer est LA question improbable.

Un début de réponse consiste à savoir comment communiquer avec ce monde qui arrive, échauffé, barbu, souriant.

Contactez-nous; Ethnique Media inc. communique avec le monde.

It is in the norms that summertime is associated with vacations. However this summer, we have worked without respite in the realization of the three month campaign Public Mobile campaign, the telephone company that has been an avid subject of discussion for value orientated consumers.
The media selection process was done cooperatively with PHD Canada and our agency; least to say that the job was arduous.

Our fall semester has enabled many of our Montreal newspapers to enjoy advertising from CSIS (Canadian Society of Immigration Services) for which we have conjointly worked with BCP.

Every morning, in front of the metro station on my way to work, I get 24 Heures and Metro, two free dailies. Recently I also started getting Le Journal de Montreal or The Gazette for free in front of the metro.

With 4 newspapers in my bag I get to my office, where I am greeted by the BBC News and the Google News websites, with their dozens of developing stories every hour.

Then my RSS feed presents me with everything brand new and that I should absolutely read. Then I discover that my friend’s blogs and Facebook profiles are updated with some more links, some more stories, more pictures, more and more and more…

Finally, every link I make the mistake to follow on the web, has text ads, contextual ads, banner ads and all sorts of flashing boxes and numerous other links with catchy headlines of more stories I have to follow. Clicking a single story leads to 2, 3 or more other stories on completely different topics.

I call this “media pollution”. I probably didn’t come up with the term, but I sure like to believe I did. For me, “media pollution” is that overwhelming of the senses that happens when consuming today’s media: it’s all those extra links, links to top stories, links to related stories; it’s all those short blurbs in the free daily and on all the blogs and all the news sites, always repeating, echoing each other, retweeting each other all day long.

And this is where the traditional (quality) newspaper steps in, as the antithesis of media pollution. This is the role newspapers could and should have if they wish to survive. When I grab the pages of the Globe and Mail there is nothing flashing, no hyperlinks left and right; there is nowhere to go, but to turn the pages, and go though this one single newspaper.

With unique stories, which don’t repeat themselves, with topics treated in depth and in length, with varied opinions, the newspaper could position itself as an island of calm and depth in the sea of “media pollution”.

Everything is free, short, massively linked and repeated over and over again on the web.

A good modern newspaper should be the opposite: thorough, deep, unique and relaxing. And not-free, because I am glad to pay for this insightful and relaxing product. Have you ever tried enjoying the Internet with a coffee on a Sunday morning? I know I can’t.

If newspapers, be it national, ethnic or regional, manage to position themselves as the anti media pollution, they will thrive for many more years.

Yes, the Internet does have its idiosyncrasies. As for example the current blog post which is about nothing else but another blog post. I guess in the “real” world it would be identical to writing an article in newspaper B telling you to read another article in newspaper A.

Odd, but that’s exactly what I am telling you to do: go read my guest blog spot on FabriceCalando.ca about how the CBC Radio 1 in Montreal uses Facebook in a smart way. Why am I doing this? Because of the hyperlink: it takes no energy or time to click on some text on a web page and follow the hyperlink to the original article. This obviously cannot be done on physical paper.

Yet, some experienced minds here at Ethnique Media would argue that this physical limitation of paper has its value and importance. All this to say that this world is made of shades and diverging opinions and ideas. Without this diversity, the world would be a dull and ineffective place; and Ethnique Media wouldn’t be here.