In the Netherlands, The Box, part of MTV Networks, is developing into a new urban television platform. MTV Base has become a popular urban channel in the United Kingdom. And in the United States, MTV World, which operates television networks designed to super-serve ethnic populations in the United States, is rapidly expanding its operations with four new targeted channels.
In the fourth quarter of 2006, MTV Español will turn into the bilingual MTV TR3S. The channel will target 12- to 34-year-olds with pop-, urban- and rock-music programming. It also plans to add lifestyle series and news documentaries about U.S. Latinos. When Spanish is spoken on the network, English subtitles will be provided. “The Hispanic youth audience is not only leading the most important demographic changes in this country, they’re also heavily influencing the pop-culture landscape,” says Ms. Ballas-Traynor, the network’s general manager, in Advertising Age.
Another addition to MTV’s expanding ethnic network in the US, will be MTV K, to be introduced later this year. The first ever music and pop culture channel dedicated to young Korean-Americans will tap into South Korean hip-hop and the little-known but vibrant Korean-American pop scene.
Last year MTV World launched MTV Chi and MTV Desi. 
MTV Chi, aimed at Chinese-Americans, mixes up Mandarin rock, Canto pop and Chinese-American rap. MTV Desi, aimed at South Asian-Americans, mixes Bollywood videos, electronic tabla music and English-Gujarati hip-hop, with brief documentary clips profiling desis, comic skits about South Asian-American generational conflicts, interviews with bicultural artists, and live broadcasts of desi house parties.
Marketers in the US looking to reach the influential Asian youth demographic are using the boba café chains popping up in California and 18 other states.
Boba cafés are named after a special tea that has a moderate amount of tapioca ‘pearls’ - also known as ‘boba’ in Mandarin - at the bottom of the cup. The boba tea craze took off during the 90’s in Asia and has remained popular ever since.
In recent years, several boba teashop chains have spread rapidly across 19 U.S. states, particularly in California. The bubble tea craze has created a fun atmosphere for young Asians to hang around and mingle with friends, and has opened a door for marketers.
Washington Mutual for instance, is marketing its new free checking product at two boba café chains concentrated in highly populated Chinese communities in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
‘Washington Mutual is always looking for new ways to reach the Chinese-American population’ says Betty Kao, who works on the account at IW Group in Los Angeles. ‘We chose the cup sleeves in boba cafés because they are mobile. A person can buy a boba coffee and get a sleeve with it, and it will go wherever these people go.
Washington Mutual’s campaign is just an example of how more firms see teens and young adults, particularly in multicultural subgroups, as greater influences in decision-making. Getting the attention of the younger consumers is seen as the entreé to the older generation of Asians as well.
Source: Marketing News
As head coach of Feyenoord, Ruud Gullit has helped Dirk Kuyt and Salomon Kalou to develop into some of the best football players in the Dutch league. Dissappointing team results however, resulted in Ruud Gullit resigning at the end of last season. His successor has not done much better. Feyenoord’s real problem is probably not the coach, but the chairman.
![covergulit[1].jpg](http://www.transcity.com/wp-content/uploads/covergulit[1].jpg)
But now Ruud is back with the magazine GULLIT. The magazine is a trial, made by Mood for Magazines, responsible for one of the Netherlands most successful print media launches in recent years: LINDA.
Will a successful trial result in launching GULLIT as a new monthly in the Netherlands? We can only hope so. Would the magazine then become part of the ever growing ethnic media landscape? Not really. On page 157 there’s an article on Gangsta Rap and on page 138 we find a story on football in Suriname. But the rest of its content is targeted at a wider, more mainstream audience.
With Ruud Gullit himself presented as the editor-in-chief, the magazine could appeal to a mass audience with football as a major part of the publication. An Afro-Dutch man as carrier of a magazine that might have a mass appeal in the Netherlands, would be a major breakthrough in a country that often does not reflect its growing cultural diversity in the mainstream print media.
Some 350,000 people are employed by the Indian call and contact center industry. Indian telephonists are helping consumers in countries like the United States and United Kingdom with questions on a wide range of products and services, from mortgages to vacuum cleaners.
Today, Indian call centers have even become the inspiration for soap operas and Bollywood musicals, for novels and art-house documentaries. The call center, according to Britain’s sunday newspaper The Observer, has been immortalised as a symbol of contemporary India and a convenient illustration of globalisation.
Chetan Bhagat’s novel One Night @ The Call Centre has topped the Indian best seller list for six months. Ashim Ahluwalia’s John and Jane, a film on the life of six call-centre workers, has won a major prize at the European Media Arts Festival. India Calling is a popular soap series in India, while the fillm American Daylight portrays a long-distance romance between an Indian telephonist and an American millionaire. Never before has cultural diversity on the work floor on a global scale been that popular a theme for the arts and movie world.
The Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Netherlands, has been awarded 500,000 Euro by the Mondriaan Foundation for a programme on encouraging cultural diversity in modern art. The money will be used to implement their programme Be(com)ing Dutch. The objective of Be(com)ing Dutch is to develop exhibition programmes in close cooperation with artists from African, Asian and South American backgrounds in order to appeal to the various ethnic cultural communities in the Netherlands as an integral part of the museum’s target audiences.
The objective of the Mondriaan Foundation is to encourage the museums in the Netherlands to take cultural diversity more serious. On average, only about 1% of the local visitors of museums of modern art in the Netherlands can be described as having an African, Asian or South American background, while in cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam these communities consist of some 40% of the total population.
In the Netherlands, the popular FunX radio has launched a newsletter. Last week the newsletter was enclosed at Spits, the high circulation free newspaper distributed throughout the country. Meanwhile The Box, part of MTV Networks, is developing into a new urban television platform. Recently it has introduced The Box Comedy, every thursday night, including Chapelle’s Show, the Tracy Morgan and Jamie Foxx Show. Later this year, The Box is likely to introduce a new show with comedy talent from the Netherlands. Together, FunX and The Box have introduced the X Stage, a stage for young urban talent. The X Stage will be part of major Dutch festivals like Dunya, Parkpop and the Summer Carnival.
Diversity marketing agency TransCity develops integrated marketing and communications strategies by looking at the common grounds between the various ethnic cultural communities while not neglecting the differences.
This ‘inclusive’ approach is based on insight knowledge of what drives many communities. In the vision of TransCity, Asian, African or Latin American Europeans wish to see themselves as an integral part of mainstream Europe.
TransCity believes there are many common denominators amongst citizens in culturally diverse Europe. We all want to build up a family; have the best possible future for our children; live in a safe neighbourhood; want to stay healthy; and have a good job with future perspectives. In our daily lives, many of us interact with eachother. We sometimes go to the same school; live in the same neighbourhood; and partly go to the same shops.
Then what about our consumer behaviour? We often buy the same brands; partly use the same media; whether our parents were born in Africa or Asia, the Middle East or the Americas, Australia or Europe, we are all heavy users of Google, Nokia and Italian food; many guys want to watch football and many girls don’t want to miss and Sex and the City. TransCity is aware of the common denominators amongst the various ethnic cultural communities, but will not neglect the differences.
Then where are those ‘common grounds’ and ‘differences’ most visible? In Europe’s rapidly changing culturally diverse cities! In Rome and Birmingham, Berlin and Paris, Madrid and Vienna, Lisbon and Antwerp, Copenhagen and Rotterdam, Brussels and Stockholm, London and Dublin, Geneva and Amsterdam, Oslo and Athens. The city never sleeps. The City is always in Transition.
We are pleased to share with you our vision on marketing and communications strategies in the culturally diverse societies in Europe and are excited to show you how TransCity can help your business operate in a dynamic European landscape.
Now read more on TransCity!
![oranje[2]1.jpg](http://www.transcity.com/wp-content/uploads/oranje[2]1.jpg)
The national teams of Turkey and Morocco did not qualify for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Finals. The ‘This is Great’ agency has initiated a ‘guerrilla’ campaign to encourage the Turkish and Morococan Dutch to actively support the Dutch national football team in Germany. Turkish and Moroccan media and organisations in the Netherlands have been asked to adopt the campaign.
Frequently, new ethnic media are launched in Europe. The Netherlands has seen the relaunch of Obsession Magazine for the Surinamese community, the Dutch language Taxim Magazine will be introduced for Turkish Dutch youngsters, while Ekin Magazine has just started a 24/7 online Turkish radio channel. In the United Kingdom, Sheeko Magazine will be introduced, the first glossy lifestyle magazine aimed at East Africans in the UK.