Monthly Archive for August, 2008
(Source: the Guardian)
Cricket, a game most Italians find baffling, is becoming one of the country’s fastest-growing sports thanks to a wave of immigration from India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Around 20,000 people from the Indian subcontinent are regularly putting down stumps and padding up in Italy’s parks, creating a groundswell of cricket which now sustains 33 teams in a three-division national league.
In a summer punctuated by inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric from prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s ministers, a generation of foreign-born cricketers are now playing under the Italian flag to propel the national team to greater success.
With a few hundred thousand people from the Indian subcontinent now in Italy, there are real quality players moving up from the parks into the league and national side, said Simone Gambino, an Italian who caught the cricket bug while visiting England in the 1970s and who now heads the Italian Cricket Federation.
Click here to read the full article on the guardian.co.uk website
Above are two examples of TV ads targeting Hispanic voters in the United States. Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain actively target potential voters with ethnic minority backgrounds, whether they are Asian Americans, Arab Americans, Hispanic Americans, African Americans or whatever background voters may have.
Today, in many European countries, these kind of of campaign ads are quite uncommon. In the Netherlands, for example, the ‘new rule’ for many politicians and governmental communication is: be careful with targeting people with ethnic minority backgrounds in their own mother tongue.
Six years ago, the views on this were still very different, as we can see below… for the times they are a-changin’.
The ethnic and cross cultural media landscape in Europe continues to grow. It varies from local ethnic media to pan-European media for specific ethnic communities throughout Europe.
In the Netherlands, TransCity can provide advertisers and media agencies with a media plan based on net reach reach within your target audience as well as years of experiences on effectiveness.
Through it’s European network, TransCity can draw up effective media plans in other European countries as well, including the UK, Germany, France and Italy.
If you wish to learn how to use ethnic and cross cultural media in an effective way as an integral part of your media mix, please get in touch with TransCity on +31 10 414 04 64 or info@transcity.com
L’Oreal categorically denies that it altered Beyoncé’s skin tone in the campaign for Féria hair colour.
But Cécile Narinx, editor in chief of the Dutch edition of ELLE, says: ‘The rule is: black does not sell.’
In the Dutch daily Trouw, Mrs. Narinx claims ELLE did a test last year with Beyoncé on the cover and another black model on the cover of ELLE Girl: ‘If they would have sold well, I would have sent out a press release stating that the old rule does not count anymore. But unfortunately both issues under performed.’
Carlein Kieboom, editor in chief of Yes Magazine in the Netherlands agrees: ‘Blondes sell better.’
As British newspaper The Independent already reported a couple of months ago, as a black model you hardly stand a chance with model agencies in the UK. Most models are white, Naomi Campell was one of the few exceptions.
In Europe, where ethnic-cultural diversity is growing by the day, the content of the majority of media is still developed from a white perspective. Could a possible election of Barack Obama as US President have a catalysing effect on Europe and bring about ‘change’ over here as well?
New figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau, project whites will comprise less than half of the population before the middle of this century.
The U.S. Census Bureau calculates that by 2042, Americans who identify themselves as Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander will together outnumber non-Hispanic whites.
So-called minorities, the Census Bureau projects, will already constitute a majority of American children under 18 by 2023 and of working-age Americans by 2039.
The main causes for this rapid racial and ethnic changes are higher birth rates among immigrants, increasing immigration and an ageing white population.
By 2050, the number of Hispanic people will nearly triple, to 133 million from 47 million, to account for 30 percent of Americans, compared with 15 percent today. People who say they are Asian, with their ranks soaring to 41 million from 16 million, will make up more than 9 percent of the population, up from 5 percent.
More than three times as many people are expected to identify themselves as multiracial - 16 million, accounting for nearly 4 percent of the population. The population of people who define themselves as black is projected to rise to 66 million from 41 million, but increase its overall share by barely 2 percentage points, to 15 percent.
“What’s happening now in terms of increasing diversity probably is unprecedented,” says retired census demographer Campbell Gibson in the International Herald Tribune. Already today, several states, including California and Texas, have already reached the point where members of minorities are in the majority.
Branded online radio can have added value for advertisers intending to target consumers with ethnic minority backgrounds. When targeting niche markets against relatively low costs, developing online platforms, including branded radio platforms, can have a serious impact, provided the platform perfectly matches the lifestyles and interests of your target audience.
Branded online radio is especially interesting in countries with ethnically and culturally diverse populations. In the Netherlands, for example, R&B, Hiphop and Reggaeton are extremely popular among urban youngsters. However, mainstream radio stations in the Netherlands like 538, 3FM and Q Music, are neglecting this growing target audience of urban and multicultural youngsters, already making up some 25 percent of the country’s youth. These youngsters do not listen to the above mainstream radio stations, so they can be served by targeted branded radio stations.
If you are interested to look at the opportunities of developing such branded online platforms, please get in touch with TransCity on +31 10 414 04 64 or info@transcity.com
In about three weeks time, many Muslims in Europe will start to celebrate Ramadan. Most European advertisers do not develop specific Ramadan campaigns. Hopefully they will change their mind after watching this 2 year old Nando Chicken ad from South Africa.
And here’s another hilarious ad on how ethnic cultural diversity is integrated in today’s South African advertising. Isn’t this what ethnic marketing is all about?
In the summer isue of the German business magazine Business Spotlight is an interview with TransCity’s René Romer. Excerpts from this interview can be read below.
Are demographic changes reflected in marketing in Europe?
Demographic changes are often not yet reflected in marketing in Europe. Too many marketers are not yet fully aware of how the huge demographic changes that have taken place in the past few decades impact the market. Most still consider the average consumer to be white, so they develop and implement their marketing and communications concepts accordingly. Nevertheless, ethnic marketing is gaining ground in Europe today. Or at least, targeting people with ethnic-minority backgrounds is gaining ground - whether these consumers are targeted from an ethnic marketing, a diversity marketing or an urban marketing strategy. One major brand that targets youngsters with ethnic-minority backgrounds in Europe is Nike. For Nike, insights of ethnic-minority youngsters in Europe’s major cities are essential when developing pan-European marketing and communications programs. Another example is the Dutch health insurer Agis, which has opened service centers in Turkey and
Morocco for its Turkish-Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch clients.
What reasons do you see for resistance to ethnic marketing?
While it is the profession of marketers to open their eyes and to look ‘outside’ at what’s happening in the market, we still find that too many decision makers often make decisions based on their own experiences, their own lifestyles and those of their children. We also find that, in market research throughout Europe, ethnic-minority consumers are rarely selected as respondents, although it is a very easy start for every marketer to simply include consummers with ethnic-minority backgrounds as an integral part of their focus groups or respondents in quantitative research. Insights coming out of this can easily be used to make sure that the increasingly ethnically and culturally diverse European population is better reflected in marketing and communications concepts, including concepts for the mainstream market. It is certainly not our experience that marketers are unwilling, it is just that ethnic-cultural diversity is not top of mind for most marketers.
How do you approach diversity marketing?
At TransCity, we often start focusing on the common grounds of the diverse population. What do ethnic Germans, Dutch, British or French have in common with the local migrant populations from Turkey, India, Algeria or Suriname when it comes to your products and services? Are we able to develop marketing and communications concepts based on those common grounds rather than on the differences between communities? If we can do that, including people with ethnic-minority backgrounds can sometimes even be done on a cost neutral manner, although in communications we still have to compile a media mix that is more diverse than the media mix most advertisers compile today.
On the other hand, developing new marketing concepts based on the insights of specific communities with ethnic-minority backgrounds, can also be very effective. In the United States, the Home Depot launched a Hispanic paint line of 70 different colors, capturing the richness of colors influenced from Latin America and the Caribbean. In Europe however, most major brands do not yet develop new marketing concepts to better reflect the ethnically and culturally diverse market: the initiative is often taken by new business start ups in fields like telecom, banking and other areas.
(Source: The Guardian, August 9, 2008)
The light-skinned woman with the flowing blonde hair would like you to buy some hair dye.
But a closer look at the advertisement for the cosmetics giant L’Oréal reveals that all is not well with the face of its campaign. It appears that L’Oréal has caused not just her hair but her skin to change colour.
In an advertisement published in the September issues of several glossy fashion magazines, the singer Beyoncé exhibits a skin colour several tones lighter than her natural hue. After the metamorphosis was highlighted on a celebrity website, the company issued a statement denying any wrongdoing.
“Beyoncé Knowles has been a spokesperson for the L’Oréal Paris brand since 2001,” the company said. “It is categorically untrue that L’Oréal Paris altered Ms Knowles’ features or skin tone in the campaign for Féria hair colour.”
A representative for the singer said that although she might look different, there was little doubt that the woman in the glossy advertisement was his client.
“There is no doubt that anyone seeing that ad will know that it is Beyoncé,” said Hollywood publicist Alan Nierob.
But Eric Deggans, the chairman of the media monitoring committee of the National Association of Black Journalists, told the New York Post that in the picture Beyoncé’s “skin is lighter than the way I’m used to seeing her”.
“Advertisers and magazines need to be careful about this, even if it’s just a production process,” he said.
Whether the changes in Beyoncé’s appearance constitute a breach of contract remains to be seen. The deal first signed between the singer and the cosmetics company in 2001 was initially worth $4.7m (£2.4m) over five years.
For that money, the singer was required to work 10 days each year. The contract also stipulated that she maintain “approximately the same physical appearance and health”, and apprise L’Oréal of “any radical changes to her hair”. The contract also gives L’Oréal the right to inspect Beyoncé’s hair - as long as it gives two weeks’ notice.
The company was reprimanded by the British Advertising Standards Authority last year for claiming, in a campaign featuring the actor Penélope Cruz, that one of its products could lengthen eyelashes. Cruz wore false eyelashes for the advertisements.