Census Preview Spurs Move for Ethnic Consumers

SAN FRANCISCO — With the U.S. Census Bureau’s preliminary results for Census 2000 showing that the nation’s combined minority population could eventually become the majority, marketers are scrambling to capture the ethnic consumer base.

Most are focusing their ethnic advertising on the Latino and African American markets, the two largest minority groups. But a relatively small number of advertisers are reaping the rewards of targeting the largely untapped and fast-growing Asian American market.

An obvious gold mine for the telecommunications industry, such companies as AT&T; Corp. and MCI Worldcom Inc. have been targeting the market through ads in community newspapers and television spots on ethnic channels for as long as 10 years. But now, lured by the estimated $101-billion market, more businesses from the financial services, banking, airline and mass merchandising industries are moving in as well.

Most recently, Ford Motor Co. this month became the first major automobile manufacturer to launch an ethnic branding campaign aimed at Asian audiences.

“It’s one of the final frontiers for an automotive company to get a first-mover opportunity,” said Saul Giblin, vice president of strategic marketing services at New York-based Kang & Lee Advertising Inc., the nation’s largest Asian-market-focused ad agency.

According to the 1993 U.S. census, Asians comprise only about 4% of the total population, compared with 11% for Latinos and 12% for African Americans. However, the Census Bureau projects that the number will grow to 10% by 2050--much of it spurred by immigration.

Fred Teng, district manager in marketing communications for AT&T;, said this represents a big opportunity for any consumer products or services company. “When a new immigrant comes, there’s a lot of purchasing they need to do and there’s a lot of purchasing power,” he said.

Breaking every immigrant stereotype, census results show that Asians have the highest average household income at $46,695, the highest level of education and the highest growth rate in small business.

“That’s a formula for a population that is very, very important,” said Andrew Erlich, who specializes in cross-cultural market research.

Until recently, marketers tended to ignore the Asian ethnic market because of its multicultural complexities and hoped that their mainstream advertising would get through.

“The million-dollar question is whether to diversify general ads or target the Asian American market. Advertisers tend to think the message must be trickling out to the minority market, but it’s not,” said Julia Huang, president of Torrance-based ad agency InterTrend.

Huang said much of the reason for the failure was due to the Asian market’s overwhelming preference for communicating in native languages and differences in cultural insights and sensibilities. New immigrants, she explained, do not understand many of the mainstream ads linguistically or culturally.

But advertisers who overcome their fear and reluctance are finding that the market is not as difficult to tackle as previously assumed, because Asians tend to be geographically focused in select metropolitan areas, allowing cost-effective advertising in a limited number of cities.

Ethnic advertising executives agree that out of the 20 various subdivisions of language and culture, advertisers can prioritize by targeting the largest groups: Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese. Many of these cultures embrace similar values, so depending on the ad, the same concept could be used with different actors in different languages to target the various subgroups.

Kang & Lee, for example, created television spots for Bank of America depicting a multi-generation household in Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese. The ads, which differed only in actors and language, were well received by each community, Giblin said.

“Obviously the more specific you create the advertising, the more relevant it is to that specific group. But there are more costs involved,” he added.

David Kim, director of corporate relations for St. Louis-based brewer Anheuser-Busch Cos., one of the few beverage companies to see an opportunity in the Asian market, said its results have been satisfying.

“It may be difficult at times to measure [success] in certain terms, but we have been pleased with the way that the community views Budweiser and Anheuser-Busch,” Kim said. “Especially since not many other companies advertise to the Asian American community.”

While most Asian-focused ad agencies with similarly successful clients report significant increases in business, they insist that the market is still untapped, especially in the packaged foods, automotive and other consumer goods industries.

The industry “has almost no syndicated research. Because of the absence of that data, the opportunity is not staring them in the face,” Kang & Lee’s Giblin said.