Targeting Canada’s ‘invisible’ Hispanic community

SIMON HOUPT — MARKETING REPORTER

From Friday's Globe and Mail

When there’s a gold rush on, smart people look for silver.

In the last few years, Canadian marketers have been retooling their organizations to target newcomers to the country. Ethnic media are bursting with ads targeting Chinese, Filipino and South Asian immigrants. (Or at least as bursting as media outlets are these days.) But there’s another group of newcomers, all but unknown and ignored, that some people believe present a sweet opportunity to savvy companies willing to learn another language: Hispanic-Canadians.

“Latin America is the fourth-largest source of immigration to Canada,” said Fabiola Sicard, the Toronto-based director of Latin markets for Bank of Nova Scotia, who is charged with convincing new Hispanic-Canadians to open accounts at her bank. On Wednesday evening, Ms. Sicard told a meeting of the Toronto Hispanic Chamber of Commerce that the number of immigrants from Latin American countries jumped by 121 per cent from the five-year periods of 1996-2000 to 2001-2006.

That much, at least, is known. But in sharp contrast to the U.S., where the Hispanic community is a 50 million-strong economic and political force that marketers study intently, their Canadian counterparts are practically invisible.

Chalk it up, said Ms. Sicard, to three obstacles: Hispanic-Canadians are a smaller market than other immigrant communities, they are geographically fragmented (stretching from the Venezuelan oil workers in Lethbridge, Alta., to IT professionals in Oakville, Ont., to dentists in Montreal), and there is almost no significant research that delves into their unique needs. Making matters worse, the eradication of Statistics Canada’s long-form census last year means the one half-decent source of information that marketers depended on is now gone.

But what little research exists suggests the Hispanic market – which numbers between 600,000 and 1.2 million, depending on the definition – is not just its own unique beast, but a valuable one.

Ms. Sicard presented Statscan data suggesting that, in contrast to the U.S. Hispanic community – which is stigmatized by its large proportion of illegal immigrants who have few English skills and a paucity of formal education – almost 50 per cent of Hispanic Canadians have at least a bachelor’s degree; another 12 per cent have a non-university diploma.

Which is why Scotiabank is making them a priority. While most Canadian banks provide special services to newcomers, from flexible accounts to Welcome Guides that provide basic information about citizenship, geography, customs and traditions, Ms. Sicard’s employer has identified Hispanic Canadians as an important growth market, especially for its StartRight bank accounts, which are tailored to the needs of newcomers.

But rather than using mainstream media to reach them, the bank is marketing at the grassroots, through professional associations, street festivals, and blogs aimed at people living in Latin American countries who are mulling a move north.

“We are targeting the Philippine and Hispanic community as well as the Chinese and South Asian communities,” Ms. Sicard said. “And guess what? We have more StartRight customers who speak Tagalog and Spanish than Mandarin or Punjabi. So the opportunity’s huge, because nobody’s targeting them, and everybody’s after the Chinese and South Asians.”

Still, there are reasons for caution.

“Chinese and South Asian are still the predominant groups,” said Bobby Sahni, the head of multicultural marketing for Rogers Communications Inc., who also addressed the THCC meeting. “So from a marketer’s perspective, obviously you’re going for scale, you’re trying to cover your big wins. That’s just the reality of any marketing – whether it’s multicultural, mass mainstream, or whatever – you want to get the biggest bang for your buck.”

But by focusing on the big fat targets, nimble marketers may be missing out on other opportunities. Ms. Sicard noted that, while Hispanics make up approximately 10 per cent of Canadian immigrants on an annual basis, they are overrepresented in Quebec, where they make up 20 per cent of immigrants.

“Within Montreal, it’s easier to target the Latin community,” Ms. Sicard said. “There, we offer a mortgage seminar in Spanish, 150 people show up. We don’t get that many attendees for our seminars in French or English. So that’s a big hit, just to provide it in Spanish.”

Best of all, she says, the Hispanic community is culturally cohesive, so marketers can avoid the pitfalls they encounter when trying to target other groups that may be riven by divisions. “You have a lot of people from Africa and the Middle East, but there are so many conflicts between them that it’s difficult to target and not offend another group. The advantage with Latinos in Montreal is that, just by marketing in Spanish, you cover them all and you don’t get in trouble.”

The Wednesday discussion included much breast-beating about the low profile of the Hispanic community in Canada. “We’re invisible,” complained Eduardo Uruena, founder and president of the local newspaper Diario El Popular. “It hurts.”

It may be that, before marketers pay attention to Hispanic-Canadians, the community is going to have to get better at marketing itself.

“When many of the Australian wines were starting to become popular in Canada, instead of Wolf Blass or Yellowtail or these different companies trying to take on the entire market and trying to build the profile and the brand of their wine alone, they actually unified and worked together to build the profile of Australian wines collectively,” Mr. Sahni noted.

“In the same case, whether it’s Hispanic media or Hispanic businesses – instead of trying to go at it on your own, I think there’s a lot of opportunity to work together.”

Until they do, they’ll be either invisible or mischaracterized. A few years ago, the mainstream Tex-Mex food brand Old El Paso aired an ad featuring Francesco Quinn (the Italian-born son of actor Anthony Quinn) laying on a thick Spanish accent while surrounded by chickens in a living room. It didn’t go over well among Hispanic-Canadians. “We are not that,” said Ms. Fabiola curtly. “There’s not a single Latin person I’ve asked about that ad who’s not mad about it.”

Canada: Once Again a Destination for European Immigration

While Canada, since the 1970’s, has progressively seen more of its immigration come from Asian countries, there has been at least some hard evidence that immigration from Europe is increasing as well.

Canada remains one of the few open immigrant-friendly countries. What’s more, in many respects it has suffered much less than most during the worldwide financial crisis that started in 2008—with its banks declared the best in the world.

With the effects of this financial crisis still being felt, and even intensifying in Europe, Canada has once again, like generations ago, become an option for European immigration.

Recent news stories on CanadaVisa.com highlight booming resource and energy-driven economies in provinces from one end of Canada to the other, such as:

• Saskatchewan (see Destination Saskatchewan),
• Alberta (see Alberta tops in North America for economic freedom),
• British Columbia (see BC looking to boost skilled worker immigration), and
• Newfoundland and Labrador (see Newfoundland and Labrador, another province in need of skilled labour).

The articles listed above point out that along with these economic booms, there has been a resulting skilled labour shortage that extends into the future. They also demonstrate that viable immigrant destinations exist in many of Canada’s provinces, not just in traditional immigrant enclaves like Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.

Another article on CanadaVisa.com explains that at least some of this skilled labour gap being felt across the country is being filled with Europeans: see Irish influx to Canada, more to come.

Florin Tiron, a Romanian carpenter, will be among these European newcomers. While he has been working in Italy for the past ten years, because of recent economic hardship in Italy he can only get work part time. He has therefore decided to leave, not to return to his native Romania, but instead to come to Canada under the Quebec Skilled Worker program.

Florin will come with his wife and young child, exactly the kind of demographic Quebec is after.

While Quebec is a great destination for highly skilled and educated workers, as profiled in last month’s CIC News articleQuebec’s Attraction for Knowledge-based Workers, it is also a great destination for trades people, such as bricklayers, and in the case of Florin, carpenters. Several trades like these score high in Quebec’s point-based immigration system, which also does not require a job offer like many other Canadian immigration programs.

Quebec is also home to an increasingly large number of Francophone Europeans who fill a spectrum of jobs in their new homebase.

With Spanish unemployment hovering around 20%, and Greek immigration to Germany up 84% this year alone—Germany being virtually the only vibrant economy left in Europe—Europeans are left looking for other options.

Nudrrat Khawaja is another case in point. She was born and lived most of her life in Lahore Pakistan, working as a Senior Associate Producer at the television station Express 24/7. More recently, however, she has been completing a Master’s of Business Administration in Liverpool, in the UK.

“I would have liked to stay in the UK,” she says, “but there are no jobs here for foreign students, or a clear way to become a resident, Canada is my only option.”

Nudrrat is planning to pursue her studies in Canada, where she then can become eligible for immigration under programs such as the Canadian Experience Class, or through the newly available PhD eligibility criteria of the Federal Skilled Worker program.

“Every time something bad happens in the world,” says Attorney David Cohen, “people think of Canada as an optional destination for them. Unfortunately there has been a lot of turmoil in the world these past few years, including in Europe. We are seeing that Canada has again become popular as a destination for Europeans like it was generations ago for my own family.”

Both for native born Europeans, like Florin, and for those in transit who might have in other circumstances remained in Europe, like Nudrrat, Canada’s stability, and varied provincial booms, position it once again to become a hot ticket for those across the pond.

Source: http://www.canadavisa.com/canada-once-again-a-destination-for-european-immigration.html

Harper Announces “Major Transformation” of Canadian Immigration

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this past week, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper outlined a plan for broad and lasting economic change in Canada.

Key to this plan is ‘significant reform of our immigration system’. Standing in front of an international audience of state representatives and private businesspeople, Harper stated: “We will ensure that, while we respect our humanitarian obligations and family reunification objectives, we make our economic and labour force needs the central goal of our immigration efforts in the future”.

Specific details as to how Canadian immigration systems will accommodate a large-scale shift in priorities were not included in his speech. However, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney later quantified some planned initiatives to address Harper’s goal of using the immigration system to directly respond to economic needs. He underscored Canada’s continued commitment to keeping immigration levels high, and was quick to point out that despite the global recession, Canada has accepted more immigrants per capita than any other developed country.

One significant change that Kenney expanded upon referred to the points grid used to assessFederal Skilled Worker applications. It will be changed to “look at younger workers, people with pre-arranged jobs, and also go to a system that’s more proactive; more reaching out and recruiting people who have the skills we need rather than just being an entirely passive system”. Central to this change in the points system will be a renewed emphasis on skilled trades learned through experience rather than higher education. Kenney states that “the skilled worker program basically selects people with advanced university degrees. But a lot of the job shortages in Canada are people with more basic [skills] – skilled trades for example”.

Many Provincial Nominee Programs have already been expanded to accommodate individuals who will contribute to the Canadian economy in this way. It is now hoped that by pursuing a similar structure federally, Canada will be able to use a more flexible immigration program to fill gaps in the job market.

These changes have the possibility to facilitate immigration for workers that were previously unable to qualify for permanent residency. “Skill is not necessarily defined by a college degree,” says Attorney David Cohen. “If this issue is addressed wisely, Canada will have the opportunity to attract valuable immigrants in the international labor pool who have been previously overlooked”. However, he cautions those now seeking to immigrate to Canada, stating that “currently qualified immigrants should not wait until changes take place, as it is unclear how they will stand under the new protocols”.

Kenney finished by noting that additional changes will be made in entrepreneurial and investor programs. Greater attention will be paid to individuals who come to Canada to set up “high tech and research & development-based companies that will create the wealth of the future”.

It is expected that a detailed and comprehensive plan for immigration reform will be presented some time in the spring. Though it targets immigration in skilled worker categories, it is unclear how (if at all) this will affect other streams of immigration such as family class. However, it appears that through these announced (and yet to be announced) changes, Prime Minister Harper is setting the stage for immigration policies that will affect a generation to come.

Source: http://www.cicnews.com/2012/01/harper-announces-major-transformation-canadian-immigration-011352.html