Final Census Release on Income and Shelter Costs To Be Analyzed by EA Demographer Doug Norris

Census Expert to Provide Commentary and Host Web Seminar Household Income, Employment and Housing Concerns

With this Thursday’s final release of data from the 2006 Census, Dr. Doug Norris, chief demographer at marketing services company Environics Analytics, will provide expert commentary on the latest findings involving income, earnings and shelter costs. The eighth round of data concludes 14 months of data releases from the new Census, and Norris will lead an online web seminar on May 8th to help the general public and business leaders understand its implications. He will also be available to the media for interviews on May 1st and prior to then for background information.

The latest report of the 2006 Census represents the final piece in the statistical portrait that is present day Canada. The new findings will offer various measures of income, including employment earnings, government transfer payments and total family income. The new data is expected to show that Canadians experienced rising incomes during the past five years. “Our older, more experienced and better educated workers are largely driving the higher incomes nationwide,” says Norris. “But the downside may be a growing income gap between high earners and those with less education who are struggling to keep up.”

In addition, the new report is likely to reveal that Alberta has overtaken Ontario as the province with the highest income levels. “Alberta’s impressive natural resources are creating an economic boom that the Census will probably pick up,” says Norris. “In earlier Census releases we saw the impact the boom was having on population growth and I expect to see a similar trend with income.”

Norris will offer more detailed commentary about the latest Census release during a web seminar and online discussion to be held Thursday, May 8th at 1:00 pm ET. Pre-registration is available online at www.environicsanalytics.ca. For access to the seminar, please connect to www.environicsanalytics.ca five to ten minutes prior to session start and click the link to the WebEx session. A phone number will also be provided for audio.

In addition, media representatives interested in interviewing Norris for quotes and insight into the new Census findings should call Emma Flood at (416) 969-2733, or e-mail her at emma.flood@environicsanalytics.ca

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About Doug Norris
A Senior Vice President and the Chief Demographer of Environics Analytics (EA), Doug Norris, Ph.D., has nearly 30 years of experience in social and demographic analysis at Statistics Canada, most recently as the Director General of Social and Demographic Statistics. At EA, he works with companies, governments, and non-profit organizations in using census and other statistical information for planning and marketing applications. He also serves as a commentator on Canadian social and demographic trends, and is a frequent presenter at seminars and conferences across Canada. In 2006, Statistics Canada honoured him with a lifetime achievement Award for Career Excellence.

About Environics Analytics
Environics Analytics is the premier marketing and analytical services company in Canada. Specializing in geodemographic segmentation, site modelling and custom analytics, the Toronto-based company provides businesses with data-driven market insights to help reach their customers more effectively. It also has the most experienced team of geodemographic experts in Canada. Environics Analytics is a member of the Environics Group, a unique alliance of companies dedicated to providing intelligent research, analytics and communications.

ENVIRONICS ANALYTICS LAUNCHES DIVERSITY MICROMARKETING TOOLKIT

New Products to Help Marketers Serve Canada’s Multicultural Audiences

Environics Analytics, the marketing services company, today announced the release of a suite of tools to help marketers connect with Canada’s diverse communities. Called the Diversity Micromarketing Toolkit, the data and software products and services help companies and not-for-profits locate and appeal to Canada’s increasingly diverse population. The products include customized census data on ethnic and cultural groups from the most recent census; the PRIZM CE consumer segmentation system, with 12 of its 66 lifestyle types featuring significant ethnic presence; and an innovative software tool called OriginsCanada, which can predict the cultural, ethnic and linguistic origins of consumers based on their name alone.

The release of the new toolkit comes at a time when the Canadian population is becoming increasingly diverse. Between 2001 and 2006, close to 1.2 million people migrated to Canada, and nearly one in five Canadians are now foreign-born. Although immigrants tend to settle in Canada’s largest urban areas—Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal—the newcomers are also moving to smaller cities, such as Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa-Gatineau, Quebec and Winnipeg.

While the number of foreign-born Canadians is increasing, the variety of their countries of origin is also rapidly expanding. Before 1961, almost 95 percent of immigrants came from Europe or the United States. Today, the largest groups of immigrants arrive from Asia and the Middle East. As a result, about 6 million Canadians, or 20 percent of the populace, report a mother tongue other than French or English. The third most common language spoken in Canada today is Chinese, surpassing the Italian and German spoken by earlier immigrant groups.

For marketers, the growing diversity of the populace raises new challenges. Depending on their product, a company may want to define an ethnic audience by language spoken, mother tongue or place of origin. In addition, settlement patterns differ by group—an important fact for direct mailers. In Toronto, where Germans tend to live dispersed throughout the city, a direct mail campaign would have to target 172,415 residents to find 10,000 German Canadians. However, reaching 10,000 Chinese Canadians would require a campaign covering only 31,429 residents because these residents tend to cluster together.

“Marketers need to understand the many ways to define groups when they embrace an ethnic marketing campaign,” says Jan Kestle, president of Environics Analytics (EA). “With the Diversity Micromarketing Toolkit, clients not only get the latest data and software but our expertise in ethnic-based target marketing as well.”

The Diversity Micromarketing Toolkit features three main services:

• OriginsCanada - Based on a breakthrough ethnic name coding system, this service allows clients to assign a heritage to a customer database based on the first and last name of each consumer. With OriginsCanada, clients can acquire lists for addressed mail based on the same name-coding technique. In addition, marketers can create customer profiles based on ethnic origin to target neighbourhoods, media and products.


• PRIZM CE – EA’s signature segmentation system classifies all Canadian neighbourhoods into one of 66 lifestyle types—12 of which are ethnic and represent 15 percent of all households. Because PRIZM CE links to all major media and marketing surveys and databases—including PMB, BBM RTS, NADbank, Polk, CFM, InfoCanada and Cornerstone—marketers can describe the lifestyle activities, media patterns and social values for their ethnic targets. Incorporating proprietary survey data from Environics Research, the system allows organizations to profile customers through such values as Canadian Identity, Cultural Fusion, Early Adoption and Importance of Price. This information further helps marketers reach customers with the best message and channel—whether it’s the Globe and Mail, an ethnic newspaper or both.


• Ethno-cultural census data – With the most experienced geodemographic experts in Canada, EA offers the deepest knowledge in applying different census variables and concepts to help an ethnic marketing campaign succeed. Company analysts can determine the best approach to defining ethnic customers—by characteristics such as mother tongue, place of origin or wave of immigration—and how to find them.

No matter the industry, EA can enhance the appeal of products and services within different ethnic groups or within subgroups of a single ethnic group. Compared to the national average, ethnic Canadians exhibit high rates for attending computer shows, basketball games, film festivals and theme parks. But EA’s data show behavioural differences within ethnic groups. Among PRIZM CE’s ethnic lifestyles, the Asian Affluence segment (40 percent Chinese and 7 percent South Asian) has a taste for theatre and classical music concerts. By contrast, the Newcomers Rising segment (9 percent Chinese and 18 percent South Asian) prefers video gaming, fast-food restaurants and rock concerts.

Because the influx of new immigrants offers forward-thinking companies challenges as well as opportunities, EA’s Diversity Micromarketing Toolkit can help executives and marketers address the ways that growing diversity affects their business. Using OriginsCanada, companies can analyze their customer database to determine if their products and services have an established following among specific ethnic groups and whether an ethnic marketing strategy would be profitable. By tapping the latest census data on settlement patterns, marketers can increase their penetration rates among newly arrived immigrant segments. And PRIZM CE can help companies compare the behaviours, lifestyles and values of the most recent immigrants to those of second- and third-generation ethnic groups. With EA’s Diversity Micromarketing Toolkit, marketers can better understand Canada’s varied population and position their products and services in ways that will best speak to the needs and desires of specific ethnic groups.

“You can’t treat the ethnic market as one group,” says Kestle. “Because PRIZM CE is linked to all the traditional and new media, we can help design marketing campaigns to reach the people most important to any business. We know which language to use, what message will work and which channel they prefer. It’s a very powerful system for reaching ethnic consumers.”

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About Environics Analytics
Environics Analytics is the premier marketing and analytical services company in Canada. Specializing in geodemographic segmentation, site modelling and custom analytics, the Toronto-based company provides businesses with data-driven market insights to help reach their customers more effectively. It also has the most experienced team of geodemographic experts in Canada. Environics Analytics is a member of the Environics group of companies, including Environics Research and Environics Communications Inc.