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 noity". ...

July 12th, 1998 – France celebrates its first soccer world cup and the largest celebrations since the end of WWII can be seen around the country. The news headlines are all about the “Black Blanc Beur” (Black White and Arabs) generation. Earlier the same year, a huge crowd of French people of African descent march to commemorate the abolition of slavery. It seems that France is finally acknowledging the country’s ethnic diversity.


The truth is that France has the largest black population, the biggest Muslim population, the most important Jewish community in all of Europe! Recognizing this and thinking everyone was ready made me decide to reach out to some of the top executives at the country’s largest advertising agencies. I pleaded with them to go multicultural and to start paying more attention to these diverse consumers; their continual answer was “There’s no room for that.”


Because of this constant mentality un-open to change, ...