Todays is the start of the muslim celebration Eid al-adha so we here at Joinville just wanted to wish all people celebrating this holiday a Happy Eid al-adha!

From next week (30th November) the industry will be able to track the numbers of people from ethnically diverse communities cast by agencies and advertisers as artists in TV commercials.As a result of conversations between the IPA and Clearcast, agencies will have the option of stating whether the actors within their advertisements are from Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups when they put forward their submissions to Clearcast.  This will be through the addition of two tick boxes on the Clearcast submission form; ‘Ethnic (BAME) featured artist?’ and ‘Ethnic (BAME) walk-on artist?’ that agencies will be able to fill in as appropriate.

This development forms part of the IPA’s wider diversity initiative and once the information has been submitted, it will be collated by the IPA to form an annual benchmark survey.

Says Hamish Pringle, IPA Director General: “We’re most grateful to Chris Mundy for his positive reaction to our proposal. Through this simple addition to the Clearcast form we will be able to track our progress on one of the three key commitments we made in 2003, namely to increase the portrayal of people from ethnic diversities in ads to be representative of their importance as consumers, and citizens.”

Says Chris Mundy, MD, Clearcast: ”Whilst Clearcast’s specific role is to advise on and clear commercials against the TV Advertising Standards Code, we see ourselves as having a wider responsibility to our industry and the viewing public, so we’re delighted to make this contribution to the cause. We see this data having an impact not only in terms of improved portrayal, but also in encouraging increased diversity of employment and more effective marketing to the BAME sector.”

Says Saad Saraf, member of the IPA’s Ethnic Diversity Forum and CEO of MediaReach: “The BAME markets are already very large and continue to increase in importance, so we welcome Clearcast’s contribution. I believe strongly that a commercial will appeal more to a BAME target audience if it reflects it, and casting the right people is an essential component in effective communication. This isn’t as easy as it might seem, given the complexity and fast-changing nature of the cultural mix in the UK – after all over 300 languages are spoken in London alone.”

This information is being collected by the IPA for research purposes only.

Background information:

• In 2003 the IPA launched an online guide to ethnic diversity in the UK as part of a self-declared ethnic diversity week for the ad industry. See: http://www.ipa.co.uk/Content/Diversity

•  The guide was the culmination of a two-year project by the IPA Ethnic Diversity Group, then co-chaired by Ray Barrett (Creative Director of Barrett Cernis) and Jonathan Mildenhall (Managing Director of TBWA) and looked at the portrayal and employment of ethnic minorities in advertising.

The project communicated three significant findings:

• That advertisers need to wake up to the opportunities of the ‘brown pound’ (an economic view).

• BT got it right in portraying ethnic minorities in ads (a portrayal view).

• The ad industry must sell itself harder to attract more ethnic minority employees (an employment view).

The report also highlighted:

• 7.9% of the UK population is of ethnic minority origin, in London this rises to 31%.

• The combined disposable wealth of this group is estimated at some £32billion.

• Only 4% of IPA agency employees are of ethnic origin.

• Of this 4%, 70% are in support disciplines such as IT and finance.

Figures from the 2008 census showed that of the 140 agencies submitting a full census return, 95 provided information in respect of the ethnic diversity of their employees. Figures from these agencies indicate that those from a non-white background account for 8.4% of the employed base. This is an increase on 2007 figures, where 5.9% of people employed in 67 agencies were from a non-white background. The 2009 census will be available from January 2010.

The BME agency representation figures are improving, however work still needs to be done. The IPA is working on a collaborative project to update the 2003 guide which will be re-launched on completion.

The main IPA contact, responsible for the administration of the Ethnic Diversity Forum affairs is Adah Parris, IPA Account Manager – adah@ipa.co.uk.

Source: Adland

Sometimes multicultural marketing can be tricky for a company due to the cultural and religious aspects (but hey, has religion ever been easy, people?) Best Buy stands by its decision to wish U.S. Muslims a Happy Eid Al-Adha, a rep for the company said, and though some Best Buy customers took offense, a Muslim advocacy group praised the move.

The retailer got some flak this week for including, along with its circular advertising Thanksgiving Day sales, a note saying “Happy Eid Al-Adha,” which refers to a holiday of sacrifice for followers of Islam on Nov. 27 this year. After TechCrunch ran an item about the circular, some claimed offense and said they’d take their business elsewhere. “I spent about $3,000 with . . . your store. I will be shopping somewhere else,” one consumer wrote on Best Buy’s Web forum. “BB has the Muslims covered with the ‘Happy Eid,’ but what about the rest of us Americans?” wrote another. “Do we get a ‘Happy Thanksgiving’?”

(The American Family Association, a Christian advocacy group, has singled out  Best Buy for using “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” A Best Buy rep, however, didn’t agree with the claim, saying: “You will see more of Christmas in our holiday messaging. Christmas will be included in our insert and online. We have ‘Merry Christmas’ on our gift cards, too. In addition. we have developed the Christmas Morning simulator as an online interactive game.”)

Not everyone was dismissive. “Stop with the hatin’ and happy Eid,” wrote one TechCrunch commentor. “For every anti-BB post, I’m going to spend $1 there,” wrote another.

Best Buy rep Lisa Svac Hawks explained the thought behind the greeting: “Best Buy’s customers and employees around the world represent a variety of faiths and denominations. We respect that diversity and choose to greet our customers and employees in ways that reflect their traditions,” she said.

Ahmed Rehab, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he could not recall when any American retailer mentioned the holiday in its ads. “It makes perfect business sense to acknowledge and celebrate a holiday that one out of four people celebrate,” Rehab said.

Best Buy’s not the only retailer to be criticized for its holiday advertising this year. The AFA is calling for a boycott of Gap because the company has downplayed the word “Christmas” with a campaign that states: “Go Christmas, Go Hanukkah, Go Kwanzaa, Go Solstice,” and beckons consumers to “86 the rules.”

Source: BrandWeek and Crunchgear

If at one time the emigration of Spaniards to Latin American countries was commonplace, the reverse process during the last decade has made Spain into “one of the world’s chief recipients of foreigners,” according to sociologist Miguel Requena.

Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Argentina are the countries that have contributed most to boosting the number of immigrants in Spain’s population, from 3 percent to 13 percent between 1998-2008, Requena, professor of sociology at Spain’s National University for Online Education, said in an interview with Efe.

These “enormous volumes,” to which must be added those coming from Romania, Morocco and Britain, were slowed by the current recession, which halted the creation of the kind of low-skilled jobs typically filled by migrants, he said.

“It’s always difficult to make predictions, but what we can surmise is that the immigrant situation in Spain during these last 10 years will be very hard to repeat,” according to the co-editor of the book “Las Multiples Caras de la Inmigración en España” (The Many Faces of Immigration in Spain) published by Alianza Editorial in 2009.

The improving economic situation in several of these countries, as well as Spain’s visa requirement for their citizens, have been contributing factors to the declining number of arrivals of these South Americans, which to a certain extent will continue through the process of family reunification, he said.

Romanians, Moroccans, Ecuadorians, Britons, Colombians, Argentines, Peruvians and Bolivians are, in that order, the most numerous communities by country in Spain, which together make up half of the immigrants and are analyzed by 11 specialists in different chapters of the book.

For Requena, Ecuador had a massive emigration to Spain after the 1999 economic crisis, which began to stabilize beginning in 2005.

“Ecuador has had a very strong process of expelling its own citizens both towards the United States and to Spain, but the economic situation there has changed substantially in the sense that there is no longer so much pressure to emigrate,” he said.

Natives of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru have generally shared a profile of immigrant workers who have gone to Spain seeking a better quality of life.

The Argentines, whose country has exchanged migrants with Spain for 150 years, are different from other Latin American groups in that they have a higher educational level and greater variety.

As for gender, Ecuadorian and Colombian immigrants have proportionally more women, those from Argentina, Peru and Bolivia are more evenly balanced by sex, while Moroccans, Romanians and Britons are mainly males.

In general, Requena said, “migrants generally move through networks and so they go primarily to places where there are already others of their own nationality.”

Source: Latin American Herald Tribune via Hispanic Tips

SUMMARY: The U.S. added nearly 1.2 million persons of Hispanic origin to the population between 2007 and 2008, raising the Hispanic population from 15.1% to 15.4%. And new Hispanic immigrants are expected to continue to come in large numbers for the foreseeable future. Since a large share of the Hispanic population in the U.S. will continue to be new immigrants and their second generation children, the acculturation process may not happen has quickly or as thoroughly as with past immigrant groups. Marketers need to be acutely aware of both language and acculturation matters when crafting marketing strategies.

Marketers looking to tap into high-growth population segments should turn their attention to the U.S. Hispanic segment, which grew at a rate 3.4 times higher than the total population between 2007 and 2008 and nearly ten times higher than the non-Hispanic white population. Over half of all U.S. population growth during this time came from Hispanics, raising Hispanics to 15.4% of total U.S. population—a year-over-year growth rate of more than 2.6%.

Read more at NielsenWire Blog

While most people with an interest in Hispanic markets know that more than 60 percent of the United States Latino population is comprised of people of Mexican origin, few are aware of the breakdown by country of origin of the remainder. The remaining third come from Puerto Rico, Cuba, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Colombia, Honduras, Ecuador, and Peru.

Gathering information on ethnicity and country of origin can be challenging and accurate results require additional time and effort for demographic researchers. For example, the concept of ethnicity and country of origin is in itself complex. Individuals self-describe their ethnicity and country of origin relationship when responding to U.S. Census surveys. However, country of origin may differ from country of birth and both may differ from ethnicity. In other words, two individuals from the same family and born in the same country may respond differently to the same question. One may indicate he or she is Latino and the other may not.

Some people born in Los Angeles identify their country of origin as Mexico; some New York natives may also self describe their country of origin as the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico although the island is part of the United States.

At the same time, the percentage of United States citizens among Latinos varies by country of origin. For example, almost all Puerto Ricans (99.4 percent) are citizens. The groups with the next highest percent of citizens are Cuba, Mexico, Dominican Republic, and Colombia all with more than 60 percent United States citizenship rates, according to updates released by the Pew Hispanic Center on Latino population groups and their characteristics last month.

Source: Hispanic MPR

Hispanic Americans continue to grow in number at a rate four times that of the general population, with the 2010 Census expected to show their total rising to nearly 50 million, from 38 million in 2000. And second-generation Hispanics are fast becoming the driver of the group’s growth, with 88 percent of Hispanic children born in America, versus 61 percent of adults.

As a result, agencies that market to this segment are finding themselves in a strong position, armed with the skills and techniques to take on general assignments from big-name clients. Meanwhile, in a tight business environment, general agencies are starting to compete for work previously reserved for specialist shops.

Is an already competitive agency landscape set to become even more so?

“In the 2010 Census, we’ll see confirmation of a shift from Hispanic consumers who are first generation, where Spanish is the dominant language, to second-generation, bilingual, bicultural consumers. It totally transforms how we market,” says Cynthia McFarlane, chair of Publicis Groupe’s Conill, a Latino agency. “These are consumers who are as influenced by American culture as the country of origin of their families. There is a new American culture forming, and these consumers are having a tremendous impact on mainstream America.”

McDonald’s, which sees higher brand loyalty among its Hispanic consumers, has added offerings like breakfast burritos to its national menu. In further evidence of the growing bilingual voice of Hispanic consumers, McDonald’s runs ads with Spanish taglines in general-market media, and earlier this year used “Spanglish” in general-market advertising for the Quarter Pounder.

“We know the general market has become increasingly multicultural, with Hispanic music, Hispanic tastes, the Hispanic palate influencing a lot of general-market initiatives,” says Cristina Vilella, director of marketing at McDonald’s USA. “We lead with Hispanic insights but make sure they appeal to the general market.”

That blurring of distinctions within the Hispanic marketplace hints at the changes ahead for agencies and media firms. Hispanics now have about $863 billion in discretionary annual income, more than any other minority group in the country. (As of the third quarter, Americans overall had disposable income of $10.8 trillion.) Agencies argue that spending power is still underestimated and that upcoming Census findings — expected to be released beginning in early 2011 — will deliver a wake-up call to marketers.

“It will be a huge eye-opener when we see the growing affluence of the Hispanic marketplace, not just in buying power but also in household wealth,” says Conill’s McFarlane.

“We have 15 percent of the market but only 5 percent of the marketing dollars,” says Ingrid Otero-Smart, CEO of Interpublic Group’s Casanova Pendrill. “You’re going to see more general-market agencies pursue Hispanic accounts. They didn’t care when our budgets were $10 million or less, but now that we are dealing with more robust budgets and theirs are being cut, it’s a different story.”

Already, Hispanic agencies are extending their reach beyond Spanish-language media. Casanova Pendrill’s recent California Lottery TV spots were used in the general market, while San Antonio-based independent Creative Civilization is lead agency for the San Antonio Express News and the San Antonio Spurs. Last year, Omnicom Group’s Alma DDB, which also handles urban and general assignments for McDonald’s, launched Clorox’s environmentally friendly Green Works line into the general market. In 2006, Toyota liked a Conill TV concept for the Camry so well, it turned it into a Super Bowl spot.

“There are certain categories, geographies, brands where the Hispanic market is now the general market and the Hispanic marketing strategy will be the overriding strategy,” says Alex Lopez Negrete, CCO at independent Lopez Negrete Communications in Houston. “The Census will confirm the cultural pervasiveness of Hispanics. When general-market assignments start going to Hispanic agencies, it will manifest itself regionally first and then move to categories.”

And Hispanic agencies have to catch up to their ever savvier consumers: Earlier this year, Forrester Research said Hispanic Gen Y consumers 18-28 are “outpacing” their non-Hispanic peers in the amount of mobile activity and use of features in which they engage. Those young Hispanics are also more interested in technology; Forrester found 72 percent of them said it is important, compared to 44 percent of non-Hispanics.

Mark Gibson, vp of advertising at State Farm, says the insurer’s Hispanic marketing is an area of innovation.

“We’re doing things in the Hispanic market that are driving things to other targets, platforms,” he says. “Our Hispanic efforts are becoming a best-practices center at the company.”

Given those new approaches to the marketplace and the threat of competition from general-market shops, many traditional Hispanic agencies will need to reinvent themselves to survive. Last year, after spending 29 years at Hispanic agencies, Simon El Hage joined IPG’s Draftfcb in Chicago as group management director of multicultural marketing. “The old ethnic multicultural approach is passé,” he warns. “We have to look at integration not just from a channel but from a segment point of view. The reality is that Hispanic agencies got used to working with less. We fell into our own trap, and the expectations marketers have for us, we set ourselves. We’ve underestimated the sophistication of our consumers.”

And that provides opportunities for upstarts like MDC Partners’ Adrenalina. The agency says it uses digital executions as a starting point and bases its strategies on a behavioral model. “We speak in culture, not language,” says Manuel Wernicky, Adrenalina’s president. “Old-school agencies just focus on Census numbers, which are used to divide the whole into granular pieces. We try to understand the complexity of that consumer and how they are changing, regardless of language, whether they’re male or female, Mexican or Colombian.”

Language does remain an important factor. Some 44 percent of Hispanic consumers say, at home, they speak Spanish only or more often than English; 25 percent say they are equally bilingual; and 31 percent use English only or more often than Spanish, according to research from Synovate and Nielsen. (That last number offers a glimpse of the future Hispanic marketplace: Among second-generation consumers, 93 percent say they are bilingual or English dominant.)

As general-market broadcasters continue to battle audience erosion, Univision, the country’s No. 1 Spanish-language media company, posted a 5 percent gain last season. The company owns the most-watched single American TV station among adults 18-49 regardless of language — KMEX-TV in Los Angeles. Univision also said last season it was consistently within the top five broadcast networks in the U.S., and on many nights it was within the top three.

“We’re seeing a tipping point in Spanish-language media,” says David Lawenda, Univision’s president. “In our recently completed upfront, we saw shares shifting [from the general market] as we brought in new brands. The implications of the 2010 Census are huge. Marketers don’t necessarily know the spending power of the U.S. Hispanic population. Their purchasing power makes them equivalent to the 15th-largest consumer marketplace in the world.”

General broadcast networks posted a 22 percent decline in the last upfront, while Univision posted a 3 percent gain to $1.24 billion. In categories like quick-service restaurants, Univision posted a 25 percent gain, while consumer packaged goods rose 20 percent, Lawenda says.

Unlike general-market shops, many Hispanic agencies still maintain full-service media departments. That business is also under assault. Media agencies at big industry holding companies have created operations dedicated to multicultural planning and buying. The industry is also seeing more media-only agency reviews, which is not typical in the Hispanic sector.

“The competitive landscape will shift as more people compete for the money,” says Danielle Gonzalez, managing director of Starcom MediaVest Group’s Tapestry multicultural unit. “The general market has very good [media] buyers, but they might be lacking in strategic insights. You’ll see traditional Spanish agencies positioning themselves as saying, ‘You might have the [volume benefit of] dollars, but if you don’t have the insights or are smart at buying, then what are you bringing to the process?’”

The stakes in those media plans have clearly changed over the past decade. While the 2010 survey is expected to show that two-thirds of Hispanics in the U.S. continue to live in four states — California, Texas, Florida and New York — there will be surprising new expansion of the population base.

“In the 2010 Census, we’ll see dramatic growth east of the Mississippi in the Southeast corridor. This is going to be a profound game changer,” says Don Browne, president of NBC Universal’s Telemundo Spanish-language broadcast operations.

Luis Miguel Messianu, president and CCO at Alma DDB, concurs: “This Census will change the perception of what a national Hispanic marketing plan will look like. Now, it’s the 15 top markets. The reality is that it has grown beyond that in recent years.”

Source: AdWeek