Sensing a market need for insight-driven, multicultural marketing expertise, two of Canada’s leading multicultural marketing experts have partnered to launch their own company.
Bobby Sahni
Bobby Sahni, former head of multicultural marketing at Rogers Communications, and Howard Lichtman, former executive vice-president of marketing and communications for Cineplex, formally introduced their new Toronto-based company, Ethnicity, on Canada Day.
The partners stress that the 15-person company is more than simply another multicultural agency, which they said often focus on a single ethnic group or put too much emphasis on execution without the backbone of insight and strategy.
While corporate Canada is aware of Statistics Canada data stating that 1 in 5 Canadians speak a language other than English or French at home, or that approximately 250,000 new immigrants arrive in Canada every year, it is often too eager to reach these ethnic communities without first having the necessary insights or knowledge, said Sahni.
“What happens today is we’re all reading the same statistics and have access to the same data,” he said. “We know the rate at which new immigrants are arriving in this country, but what a lot of corporate Canada doesn’t necessarily have a lot of expertise in is making sense of the data and actually putting it into the action.
“Most companies, if they are interested in engaging ethnic communities, their first stop is an advertising agency or ethnic advertising agency, and that means they’re going straight into execution.”
Ethnicity is built around four divisions to provide what its principals call an “end-to-end solution” for marketers: multicultural education and training, research and insights, strategy and business planning and creative and execution.
Howard Lichtman
“The fact that we’re going to figure out what the right thing to do is and how to do it first – instead of jumping to execution – is something that’s resonating in the corporate corridors of Canada,” said Lichtman.
Sahni said that multicultural marketing represents a growth opportunity, not a challenge, for Canadian marketers. “We’re here to develop the category and awareness of why corporate Canada needs to look at ethnic consumers as customers that have unique needs,” he said.
Some corporations are at different points on the multicultural marketing spectrum, said Sahni, which means that not every solution will be advertising-driven. “Everyone’s got a different need,” said Lichtman. “Someone might need a one-on-one seminar with management so they understand what the opportunities are, someone else might need research and insight and someone else might want strategy.”
Sahni said that while many companies have divided their customer segments into multicultural and mainstream markets, the two are increasingly overlapping
Ethnicity is currently seeking what Sahni called a “multicultural marketing superstar” with the ability to work across multiple ethnic groups, as its full-time creative director.
The company is working with clients in both Canada and the United States.
