At Multimedia Nova, we often describe that our products and services are targeted to “the new mainstream.” So, what is “the new mainstream”?

During the last 20 years in particular, Canadian immigration and demographics have changed dramatically; in effect, resulting in Canada truly being ‘a world in one country.’ As a result, most of today’s marketers appreciate the benefit of reaching out to these audiences; however, their current marketing efforts are usually tied up into neat little packages that deliver predictable quarterly results in market share movement for their clients’ biggest and best products. They buy national campaigns in tried and true vehicles to reach out to ‘those other people.’ But, are today’s marketers still missing out?

Specific branding efforts via mass media can make an impact, especially when you consider that Canada’s overlooked Spanish-speaking market alone is worth $5 billion in annual sales. Most marketers accepted the concept of target marketing decades ago but refuse to consider new, more important demographics - ethnocultural background - preferring instead to aim their campaigns at males and/or females slotted by age and household income. But ethnocultural background can be so much more revealing and so much more successful.

Studies suggest that by 2017, one in five Canadians will have been born outside the country. More remarkable, those same studies conducted by Statistics Canada suggest that more than one out of two residents in Toronto will have been born outside of Canada by the same year. Clearly Toronto, and the GTA, will be a special case and will be unlike any other city in Canada or the world for that matter.

Further studies conducted by independent research houses indicate that media buyers are increasingly out of touch with the realities of how Canada΄s ethnocultural communities get their information. Members of some distinct linguistic groups are reporting more than half their number never read any of the traditional daily newspapers in Toronto. Remember that this is no longer a group numbering in the hundreds or even the thousands. It is a group altogether reaching tens and even hundreds of thousands of people in Toronto alone! Millions across Canada. The evidence is mounting as the dailies annually decry lost readership, yet the number of culturally diverse newspapers, radio programs and television programs grows dramatically each year.

Consider the value of the Canada΄s Latin market, which includes people who speak Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. This market alone represents $12 billion in annual sales; a market consisting of many who have never seen an English daily and choose instead to rely on newspapers, radio and television programs in their home languages. Entrepreneurs from outside of Ontario have now started to target Toronto΄s lucrative diversity communities with newspapers and magazines catering to their home language needs.

We believe that the resultant social and economic factors of our diverse population have made Canada the envy of the world, where its citizenry

The peoples of the globe represent a diversity of cultures whose continuing viability is understood by many as being essential to human creativity and coexistence. Within our global society, conflict between the forces of uniformity and diversity demonstrates the importance of cultural integrity and its influence on political, social and economic developments. The resolution of these challenges is critical to all our futures.

At Multimedia Nova, we believe that the resolution lies in finding the means to build bridges between peoples - not greater regulation and/or isolation - thereby encouraging the dynamics that are the consequences of cultural interaction and their expression ... the ultimate convergence. Simply put, the "New Mainstream" is made up of cosmopolitans with a "citizens of the world" attitude.