Paul Nayyar is multicultural media consultant with Toronto-based Harrison, Young, Pesonen & Newell. For this report, Strategy asked him to offer his thoughts on media strategies for targeting ethnic Canadians.
Target marketing is no longer a catch phrase.
Today, it’s a reality – arguably the only effective response to a marketing environment characterized by escalating costs and an increasing intensity of competitive activity.
When it comes to defining target markets, however, it is rare for advertisers to go beyond the demographic characteristics of sex, age, income and education to include ethnicity. This despite the fact that cultural diversity has increasingly become a hallmark of Canada’s population – particularly in metropolitan cities.
According to the 1996 census, approximately 28% of Canada’s total population consists of individuals whose ethnic origins are other than British, French or Canadian. The census also showed that some 3.2 million Canadians – 11.2% of the total population – identify themselves as members of a visible minority. (Of these, more than two-thirds are Chinese, South Asian or Black.)
For national advertisers, ethnic Canadians represent an eminently viable consumer target segment. For example, according to research commissioned in 1997 by CFMT International, Toronto’s four major ethnic population groups – Chinese, Italian, Portuguese and South Asian – account for $13 billion in consumer spending in that city. The Canadian Advertising Foundation, meanwhile, has projected that visible minorities could control as much as $300 billion in purchasing power nationwide by the year 2001.
It should be noted that a majority of all major immigrant groups are located in the metropolitan areas of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. (More than 70% of all Chinese Canadians, for example, and more than 66% of South Asian Canadians are concentrated in Toronto and Vancouver.) As such, these communities are readily accessible to advertisers via reliable, well-developed and cost-effective targeted media channels.
At present, for example, there are several national television services in Canada aimed at specific cultural groups – Fairchild Television (Chinese), Telelatino Network (Italians and Latin Americans), Asian Television Network (South Asians) and Black Entertainment Television – as well as Vision TV, which targets a number of cultural and faith groups. Viewers receive these services via either cable or direct-to-home satellite TV.
In addition, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has recently granted licences for outlets that will carry programming originating from Greece, Poland, Japan and Germany.
Toronto-based CFMT, a successful pioneer in multicultural broadcasting, serves the entire Southwestern Ontario region. The station currently allocates 60% of its airtime to ethnic programming for some 18 different cultural groups.
In Montreal, CJNT Television delivers 12 hours a day of multicultural programming, in 27 different languages. Like Toronto, the city also has a number of radio services and weekly newspapers serving various cultural groups.
Vancouver boasts a particularly strong concentration of ethnic media, including a multicultural television station broadcasting 16 hours a day, two multicultural radio stations, two major dailies targeting the Chinese community and two glossy magazines (as well as several community newspapers) serving the South Asian community.
Given their concentration in a few major geographic areas, their considerable buying power and their accessibility via targeted media channels, the key ethnocultural groups can indeed be reached cost-effectively.
There are, however, some obstacles that still keep many national advertisers from aggressively pursuing these groups. Most of these problems stem from a lack of available research and data from ethnic media – that is, research and data consistent with mainstream media decision-making processes.
For an advertiser considering some form of multicultural targeting, the two major issues to resolve are: (1) the need for ‘culturally appropriate, in-language’ creative, and (2) the criteria for identification and selection of the ‘right’ media channels.
There are differing viewpoints on the need for in-language creative. The assumption that an advertiser’s communication will become ‘culturally appropriate’ merely by being presented ‘in-language’ is quite ill-founded. (Many concepts simply do not translate.) On the other hand, there are at least some population groups that have shifted toward use of one of the country’s official languages, and for whom full ‘transcreation’ of mainstream creative may not be required.
As for the identification and selection of ethnic media vehicles, the major difficulty arises from the fact that the available data is not consistent with mainstream media research, and thus does not allow for the kind of ‘armchair’ decision-making that is often the norm in media planning and buying.
Some major media and marketing research initiatives have been undertaken in recent years, most notably by CFMT, the Chinese broadcast and print media and the South Asian media. A reliable and up-to-date listing of multicultural media vehicles and related information is also available, in the form of ‘Ethnic Media and Markets,’ published twice a year by Canadian Advertising Rates & Data (CARD).
A lot, however, still needs to be done. Advertisers and agencies should take a more active role in providing direction and creating a positive environment to support such initiatives by ethnic media channels.
The expectation that all ethnic communities will ultimately gravitate towards the mainstream culture and media is a long way from being realized – and, in fact, may never be.
A number of national advertisers have already adapted to the ‘multicultural’ reality of the Canadian media and marketplace. Some have initiated programs to test the efficacy of advertising in the targeted media channels. And, quite encouragingly, nearly all of those advertisers to take such a step have thrived from their exposure.
Also in this report:
– Grassroots efforts key to ethnic success: Public relations often a useful tool in reaching out to communities p.27
– Opinions sharply divided on need for national ethnic television network: Proponents argue it would attract large numbers of viewers and generate interest among national advertisers, but critics say the ethnic market is too diverse for such a service to work p.27
– Bell ExpressVu promises a dose of ‘dishum dishum’ p.31
