Graduate from ESCP, #3 of French Business schools, founder of Antilles Television, first private TV channel in French west indies, General Manager of French biggest hip hop label, Olivier Laouchez had it all. He was undoubtebly qualified to launch a TV network dedicated to black culture. Too bad he was in France…nobody wanted to fund the project. Together with his partner Claude Grunitzky, founder of urban trend spotting magazine Trace, they were wise enough to cross the ocean where they met a young African American banker Richard Wayner, who helped them close a deal with Goldman Sachs urban investment group and then joined the crew. 3 years later, the French government refused to qualify them for the free digital TV network because of their american investors!
Meanwhile, goingt to numerous business pitches with Trace’s management, I wasn’t even surprised to hear " Those people don’t have money! ". Consistent market research later, feedback was "Interesting but it’s not our priority". Hopefully, Trace TV went worldwide with outstanding results in countries like Poland, no thanks to motherland.
Ramadan is busy season for Mohamed Ezzouak. One year ago, he was still working for Price Minister, the e-commerce French leader. On his busy nights, he was working on yabiladi.com, increasingly successfull website dedicated to overseas moroccan. He then decided, to return to the country he left when he was 3 and to settle down in Casablanca. He worked constently on launching new programmes and services, even creating an original web sitcom with the raising star of moroccan TV, director Ismael Saidi (from Belgium) who caught the attention of half of the population and the whole diaspora with his hit Rhimou.
The beginning of September when Ramadan started, yabiladi performed up to 100.000 visitors a day which puts it on the top 10 of content websites in France. Nevertheless, clients remain in Morocco, this population is not sexy enough for France.
In several occasions, after promising market research, some of our clients turned down media campaigns because they think going ethnic could affect their brand. It seems thet the country of Descartes lost its sense of rationality.