http://community.brandrepublic.com/forums/42.aspxPost your questions and answers on advertising here.enCommunityServer 2007 SP2 (Debug Build: 20611.960)http://community.brandrepublic.com/forums/thread/46585.aspxThu, 11 Jun 2009 21:43:49 GMT0f8ed6bf-041d-4f2c-bb76-9560b958a575:46585Saad Saraf0http://community.brandrepublic.com/forums/thread/46585.aspxhttp://community.brandrepublic.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=42&PostID=46585It’s the same old story. Article after article telling advertisers and marketers about the minority ethnic communities and their spending power. Did it make a difference? A little, but way too slowly. During this economic downturn, you would think that everyone would be clambering about looking for new opportunities, with clients demanding for more effective, intelligent and cost efficient solutions that deliver results like never before. And yet, the industry continues to respond towards this growing niche by assuming that generic solutions are communicating to all. In the past twelve months, I have had briefs thrust at me, requesting for support for an ‘all-inclusive’ strategy. ‘How is this all-inclusive?’ I would ask, to which I would receive a confident ‘Look at this!’ with a finger pointing at a token ethnic guy standing at the far right corner of the page. ‘Of course, this will be in the respective language’. This is how diversity is still portrayed. An ethnic face here and there, coupled with some foreign language. Needless to say, they failed miserably during creative testing. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that ALL all-inclusive strategies don’t work. But just taking into account that targeting ethnic minorities go beyond a token character would mean the difference between failure and profitable success. Ethnic marketing and media is as important as mainstream marketing and media and in some ways can be more important. It’s got nothing to do with tokenism but has everything to do with customer segmentation and understanding your audience. It’s a point that’s not very well understood by many public relations and marketing professionals. Yet ethnic marketing is growing in importance for many mainstream brand owners. Census 2001 estimated that there were about 4.6 million ethnic people in the UK but further reports claimed that there was significant under-enumeration and the numbers were far higher. Eight years later, with mass exodus of Eastern Europeans into the country and the ethnic population growing at 20 times the rate of White population, UK’s consumer profile has changed drastically. The ethnic population numbers are bigger than the population of Scotland and Wales together. Research has shown that not only are ethnic minorities hardworking and inspirational, they are also economically powerful. In 2003, IPA research stated that the disposable income for ethnic minorities was valued at £32billion, but recent estimates have put the figure closer to £100billion. Ethnic minorities are brand conscious and loyal and are willing to fork out a lot of money for it. They are 3 times more likely to buy a BMW and 2 times more likely for a Mercedes. They are early adopters and keen purchasers of high-tech products. One in three Black and Asian respondents (33% & 32% respectively) identify Nike as one of the brands they buy most often, compared to only 20% of White respondents. Black women spend 6 times more on hair care products than white women. And don’t even get me started on Asian women and fashion. So why is it then, that advertising on ethnic media still dominated by ethnic companies, money transfers, cheap international calls and government messages? No doubt that ethnic minorities do consume mainstream media, but they are increasingly tuning in to ethnic media, which speak to them within familiar cultural context. The ethnic media have grown dramatically from 8 titles 20 years ago to more than 56 TV stations, 24 radio channels and more than 180 titles targeting both younger generations as well as the gate keepers and influencers. These media are a stable diet for most of these groups who pay more than £200 million to subscribe to the specialist channels on top of the £200 million paid in licence fees. While mainstream media channels are losing audiences, the ethnic channels are growing and developing new audiences and attracting more advertising pounds mainly from the ethnic businesses. Advertising in the ethnic media builds brand presence and loyalty and if done correctly can generate revenue and ROI. The multicultural communities are now more than ever more visible and influential as they rise up the ladder in businesses and corporations. There is a surge of young ethnic entrepreneurs who have different language skills, social networks, education levels and other attributes, which means that their business behaviours differ from that of their parent’s generation. Just in London alone, there are 66,000 ethnic minority owned businesses employing 560,000 people and generating combined sales turnover of £90 billion compared to the turnover of all London businesses of £800 billion. These figures do not even include approximately 93,000 self-employed ethnic minority people. With all this in mind, doesn’t this seem like a lucrative opportunity? Sadly, many marketers are still reluctant to take the next step. And for those who did, they either took the ‘touch-and-go’ approach - one successful campaign, and never to be seen or heard again – or the ‘world for a pound’ approach – all groups, all languages, all media on a bargain budget. Testing the waters is one thing, but to expect a legion of loyal followers after a brief stint targeting them is another. The UK is now truly a multicultural country, and will continue to flourish in the face of diversity. If we don’t recognise that people are different we are not going to get anywhere. Businesses is about engaging people and more so in the current financial downturn. We’ve got too many products and too few customers. When people have a choice and prices are falling, that’s when marketing mavericks look at segmentation and precision marketing. The industry needs to quicken its pace to catch up with the changing face of the new society, or risk getting left behind. Not only do we need to accept it, we need to understand and embrace it. Otherwise, it’ll be the same old story again. Article after article telling advertisers and marketers about the minority ethnic communities and their spending power. Saad Al-Saraf CEO Media Reach Advertising www.mediareach.co.uk