General Manager of Spots & Space Pty Ltd, Daniel Laforest says: Muslim Village is the leading portal for Muslims in Australia – it has an excellent user interface, highly active forums, more than 10,000 members and a flow of constant and relevant, content.

Australia’s Muslim community is a diverse group of approximately 400,000 persons made up of people from Arabic, Afghan, Indonesian, Bosnian, Turkish, Pakistani, Malaysian and Lebanese backgrounds.  Through muslimvillage.com, the community can share news and views, as well as post, and access local classified advertising.   The Muslim community is united by their faith, and increasingly, mainstream companies are seeing the benefits of tailoring products and services to the needs of Muslim consumers.

One example is the so-called “halal” banking and insurance products to comply with Sharia law.  Fast food chains in Australia’s major capitals have been serving halal food for a long time now.  Similarly, airlines and tertiary education providers are keen to accommodate Muslim travellers and students.  Importantly the Muslim community are younger that the general population and this adds to their attractiveness as a “community of interest” for advertisers.

CHINA has become Australia’s biggest source of migrants, for the first time eclipsing the traditional main points of origin, New Zealand and Britain.

The latest migration figures show a record 6350 settlers arrived from mainland China in the four months to October, more than the 5800 who arrived from Britain and the 4740 who came from New Zealand.

The new Chinese ascendancy owes more to a collapse in migration from the traditional sources than it does to the 15 per cent annual growth in migration from China. The number of migrants from Britain is down 28 per cent over the year and the number from New Zealand is down 47 per cent.

An Adelaide University demographer, Graeme Hugo, said the global financial crisis had hit migration from traditional sources in ways that hadn’t much affected China.

In March the Government sliced 18,500 off the skilled migration program for 2009-10, disproportionately hitting Britain for which skilled migrants account for eight out of 10 flights booked. Chinese migration, dominated by family reunions, suffered less.

Professor Hugo said New Zealand migration collapsed as people decided to hang on to their jobs. ”Just as someone from Adelaide is likely to try to hang on to their job in the global financial crisis rather than move to Sydney or Melbourne to take their chance at a time of tightening employment, I think that would be the case in Auckland as well,” he said.

”It’s an immediate response. New Zealanders don’t need to apply to immigrate. There’s no pipeline – that’s why the response is so big.”

Figures for short-term arrivals, also released yesterday, show a change in where visitors are choosing to stay. NSW, traditionally the most popular state, received 6 per cent fewer visitors over the past year. Victoria and Western Australia received 9 and 15 per cent more visitors respectively.

At the same time the high dollar and the continuing effect of bonus payments sent a record 570,200 Australians overseas on holiday in October, meaning that for at least some of the month one in every 40 Australians was out of the country.

Departures climbed 20 per cent in October, swamping a 7 per cent recovery in arrivals.

NZ remained the most popular destination with travel to Indonesia and the US up 51 and 47 per cent on the previous year. Travel to Malaysia jumped 50 per cent, travel to the Philippines 40 per cent, and travel to Fiji 24 per cent.

The executive director of the Tourism and Transport Forum, Brett Gale, said the boom came at a cost to the local tourist industry.

”Over the past year departures have outnumbered arrivals by almost 600,000,” he said.

”On the one hand, it’s hurting domestic tourism, but more optimistically, there’s an opportunity because it has made so many new airline seats available to bring overseas visitors into Australia.”

*  Over three-quarters of Muslims in Australia speak English only or have good English proficiency.

*  86.5 per cent of Australian Muslims speak a language other than English at home.

*  Just over a third of Muslims in Australia speak Arabic (including Lebanese).

Other than Arabic the next most commonly spoken languages are Turkish (16.3 per cent), English (11.3 per cent) and Persian (5.8 per cent).

The Muslim population in Australia is a relatively young group with almost half aged under 25 years (34.5 per cent for the total Australian population). This is largely due to the Australian-born Muslims, mostly second generation Australians, where 85.7 per cent are under 25 years.

Overseas-born Muslims tend to be in the 25-44 year age group (47.5 per cent) which is consistent with their recent arrival in Australia.

Muslim events and festivals are based on the Islamic lunar calendar and specific dates can therefore change from year to year.  Main events are:

*  Dhu Al-Hijja: The month of pilgrimage (the Hajj) to Mecca. (December/January)

*  Eid-ul-Adha: The Festival of Sacrifice that occurs at the end of the Hajj and commemorates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son for God. (December/January)

*  Muharram/Al-Hijra: The Islamic New Year. (December/January)

*  Eid Milad al-Nabi: The birthday of the Prophet. (April)

*  Ramadan: Muslims must begin fasting between sunrise and sunset. (September)

*  Eid-ul-Fitr: The end of Ramadan. (October)

Source: Department of Immigration & Citizenship

Quality ethnic media outlets attract a large audience and are a highly effective advertising medium.

Australia is proud to be known as one of the world’s most multicultural societies, embracing migrants from all over the world.

Since 1945, 6.5 million migrants have found a new home in Australia. Today over 200 different languages are spoken in Australia and nearly one in four Australians was born overseas. 43%, of all Australians were born overseas or have at least one parent born overseas. *

(*Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Fact Sheets 2008)

And while migrant communities engage fully with Australian society, contributing to a dynamic whole, it is through ethnic media that advertisers can connect emotionally with Australians from a non-English speaking background. This is the media environment where your message resonates most significantly with its audience.

Ethnic media choices are extensive:

• 153 Radio stations producing 7506 hours of non-English broadcasting each week
• 200+ newspapers in languages other than English
• Non-English language television: Cable, subscription, satellite, community and public services
• Local, in-language websites

Inform, entertain and influence non-English speaking Australians with ethnic radio, ethnic newspapers, ethnic television and web advertising.

The Australian Muslim community will observe the Eid Al Fitr on September 21, the traditional holiday that marks the end of Ramadam this year.  Although customs differ from country to country, the day is one of prayer and of charity, remembering the dead and for quiet festivities with extended family.

According to the 2006 Census, there are 340,393 Muslims in Australia (ABS) and 82% of these live in Sydney or Melbourne.  86% speak a language other than English at home, with Arabic being the most common, followed by Turkish.

*  Muslims are encouraged to dress in their best clothes, preferably new, to attend the Eid prayers
*  Migrants from the Middle East eat lamb, as the traditional meat for the Eid family gathering
*  Children may be given gifts and sweets
*  After the prayers and the feasting – Muslims will ring friends and family, both local and overseas

The Muslim community is also significantly younger than the Australian average with a 58.6% aged 29 years and under.

As with other major cultural events, Eid Al Fitr does present opportunities for advertisers to connect to a unique audience and the community is well-served by specialist media.  In Sydney alone, there are two dedicated Muslim radio stations as well as numerous stations broadcasting in Arabic, Turkish, Bahasa and other relevant languages.

Broadcasting in both Mandarin and Cantonese on 91.5FM, the station will celebrate the upcoming Moon Festival and will be managed by the China Radio Network.  The Broadcast has started and runs for a full month, ending on the date of the festival – Sunday October 4.

The mid-Autumn festival, also known as the Moon Festival is the second most important event in the Chinese calendar after Chinese New Year.

Traditionally, the Autumn Moon festival brings Chinese families together to admire the bright moon and to eat mooncakes, the traditional food of the occasion. Chinese communities in Sydney will enjoy several high profile events in the lead up to the Autumn Moon festival – Kogarah Council hosts the annual Jadeworld Carnival on September 12, and a major celebration in Cabramatta on the 27^th of September in Cabramatta is expected to attract 70,000 people.

To be a migrant is a dislocating and often lonely experience, no matter what the circumstances of arrival in Australia.  Expat Brits, South Africans and Kiwis, get their ‘fix’ of home on websites such as Poms In Oz, (www.pomsinoz.com), Rainbow Nation (http://www.rainbownation.com/au ) and Stuff.co.nz (www.stuff.co.nz) But for many non-English speaking migrants, community radio quickly becomes their link to their original culture as they settle in to Australia.

Community radio provides a “home on the airwaves” for arrivals.   Here, they keep up with news from their country of origin, follow the fortunes of their hometown footy team, access local community news and, most importantly, listen to ethnic music.  Community radio is a vital part of the assimilation process for non-English speaking migrants, providing a vital link between their own culture, and Australian culture and helping to maintain community connections and networks. Far from separating non-English speakers from “mainstream” Australia, a recent study by Griffith University found that community radio greatly helps in the process for non-English speaking migrants.+

Communications on community radio can be specifically targeted by both language and location.   Since the early 1990s, Radio 2MIA in the regional centre of Griffith, New South Wales has added Tongan, Fijian and Samoan to its programming, as the community of agricultural guest workers from the Pacific Islands has continued to grow.

The programming on Wollongong’s 2VOX reflects this community’s steeltown roots with programming in the languages of the post-war arrivals – Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian and Bosnian.  For older migrants, community radio fulfils an important need for cultural maintenance,

The Somali community of Australia is too small and geographically dispersed to afford their own newspaper.   Furthermore, the Somali culture is oral and literacy levels in this community are low.  Community radio permits access to the Somali language, music and news on a suburb-specific basis in both Melbourne and Sydney.

Large multi-lingual stations such as 2000FM in Sydney, 4EB in Brisbane, 3ZZZ in Melbourne, 5EBI in Adelaide and 6EBA in Perth provide airtime access to an incredibly diverse range of non-English speaking communities.

Daniel Laforest of community media representation company Spots & Space says:  Community radio is extremely adaptable, in part because it is a not-for-profit sector – the stations are able to adapt quickly to the needs of emerging communities. There is without a doubt an advantage to advertising on community radio to new arrivals, they tend to establish their buying habits early on and there are good opportunities to ‘own’ the market before the media consumption habits broaden.

Melbourne’s 3ZZZ runs “Starting Out”, a media-training project for refugees.  Trainees Lilian Abbew and Yaa-dufie “Emilia” Otteng are collaborating to build the foundation for a rich multilingual program for Ghanaians in Melbourne.

Community radio in Australia is a powerful grassroots medium. For advertisers, non-English language community radio is a practical and cost-effective communications channel.  For the listeners, community radio is a friendly voice and a vital part of life in Australia.

+ Griffith University: Dr Sudan Forde, Associate Professor Michael Meadows and Dr Jacqui Ewart

Every night, more than 3 Million Hong Kong residents are glued to the top rating dramas on leading television channel TVBJ. “EU” is a cop show following the fortunes of two new graduates from the police academy, now on the beat in Hong Kong.  Thanks to Chinese Pay TV supplier TVB Australia, the same show is also available to the 250,000 Cantonese speakers living in Australia, in prime time.

According to the 2006 ABS Census, half a million Australians speak Mandarin or Cantonese at home. TVB’s Hong Kong-based parent company has implemented dedicated feeds of the three highest rating channels, solely for the Australian markets.  TVBJ and TVB News are in Cantonese, while TVB8 is the top rating news and entertainment channel in Mandarin.

TVB  Australia has recently appointed ethnic media sales rep Spots & Space as a sales representative for advertising.

Daniel Laforest, General Manager for sales representation company Spots & Space says: Chinese Pay TV offers advertisers a fantastic opportunity to book ads in the Chinese language equivalents of “Grey’s Anatomy” or “Australia’s Got Talent” – in prime time.  And because it’s a dedicated feed, ads are booked and scheduled locally and only seen in Australia, which means no waste for the advertiser.

Come the weekend, Chinese speaking audiences in Australia, enjoy high-rating games shows such as celebrity cooking show “Beautiful Cooking” and “Foodie Two Shoes”.  Both shows are based on cooking contests and are wildly popular.

Speaking at the launch of the new station, Tommy Jiang, Managing Director of the Austar group said: China Radio FM 88 Canberra will play a key role in enhancing friendship and understanding between Australia and China. 50% of the content will be in English, an innovative format that is a first for Australia

Lively Chinese teaching programs will introduce non-Chinese speakers to the basics of the Chinese language, while entertainment and news in Chinese will cater for the local Chinese community, said Jiang.

More than 10,000 Canberrans are of Chinese heritage, with 7000+ speaking a Chinese language in the home (ABS Census, 2006). Canberra is also a busy destination for Chinese politicians and diplomats, and home to a great many Chinese-speaking tertiary students.

As a commercial broadcaster operating 24/7, Chinese Radio Canberra will be an excellent vehicle for advertisers wishing to target Chinese speakers and those interested in China, in the ACT.  Specialist media representative Spots & Space Pty Ltd will represent the station for advertising sales.

The new station joins a growing network of Chinese media operated by Austar Media including:

*  Newspapers: “Asian Voice Weekly” (VIC) and  “Oriental Post” (WA)
*  Chinese Radio Stations: 3CW AM 1341 Melbourne, CRI Perth FM 104.0FM

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 2001 one in three homes spoke another language other than English in Sydney, while in Melbourne the ratio was one in four. But while the multicultural market continues to grow, ethnic media is still largely ignored by corporate advertisers.

There are many ethnic media outlets to choose from, with over 20 TV channels nationwide, 161 radio stations and 150 newspaper titles.

And while many advertisers may still need convincing, others such as Hutchison’s 3 and Westpac are reporting back continued successes in the targeted media campaigns they are pursuing through multicultural marketing.

Full Story http://www.bandt.com.au/articles/20/0C028A20.asp