Asian Women in Politics

The match of Hilary and Obama makes this year's presidential election the most interesting ever. Either one wins (at least for the Democrats Party) will make the history, because they are minority – woman and African American. Imagine it was an African American woman versus a white man. How about an Asian American woman? Trust me, it will happen one day, just not soon.

According to Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers University of New Jersey, there are 86 women serving in the 110th U.S. Congress, only two of them are Asian Americans. Of the 1,741 women state legislators serving nationwide, only 30 are Asian-American women. Consider 5% of the population in the U.S. is Asian; we are definitely underrepresented in Asian women politics.

Knowledge and culture could be the major reasons for the disproportion. Many Asian women immigrants simply do not know much about American politics. Some of them do not even realize women have the right to and should vote. They think their husbands, fathers or sons would represent the families.

Another issue is the complex composition of Asian Americans. Chinese, Filipinos, Asian Indian, Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese are only some of the subgroups under the Asian American label. We speak different native languages and have different community issues. The challenge is to unit the Asian American. Only then, Asian voice – men and women alike – will be heard in politics.

When it comes to Asian marketing, I always remind people to be sensitive about the differences among subgroups of Asian Americans. As for politics, I urge all the Asian American to look at our similarities instead.

To unite is to empower. I sincerely hope I will have a chance in this lifetime to vote for a capable Asian American woman to be the President of the United States.

Asian Languages

Here is an old story. Unfortunately, it still happens a lot.

A company asked me to translate a brochure into 5 languages. Which five? Whatever their current customer speak the most.

So, I reviewed their customer profile. There was no language information. Why? They thought it was legal issue. In fact, although the law says you can't ask people ethnicity background, it doesn't say you can't ask your customers their preferred communication languages.

How about the diversity survey the company had done some time ago? That should help. Let's see. Here was the customer ethnicity breakdown: x% African American, y% Hispanic and z% Asian American. Sir, please note that while all Hispanics speak Spanish, Asians speak a million different languages.

Could we review the customer's last name? Sure, but there were tens of thousands of customers.

Final solution: Review where the Asian American customers are. Compare it to Asian subgroup population. Then, make an intelligent guess.

There is another easy alternative: Just pick the top foreign languages Asian American depend the most – Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese. FYI, most South Asian, Filipino and Japanese speak English well.

Life Comes At You Fast

So, the Super Bowl XLI is over. One of the commercials people have been talking about -- at least on the press -- was Nationwide’s new spot featuring Kevin Federline. Fed-ex’s background and divorce with Britney Spears was just “perfect fit” for this special topic.

Steven Schreibman, VP of advertising and brand management for Nationwide said, "The Life Comes at You Fast concept was created to remind people that they need to think about preparing for the future. No one has personified [the line] in the media better than Kevin Federline." Sure Nationwide has a great sense of humor and is very smart to sell this "philosophy" by having celebrities like Federline poking fun at himself.

Nationwide's South Asian marketing effort applied the theme very well too. Several of their commercials have been very well received.

Reflection

Dancing Fountain

Sunset Dinner

Doll

South Asians prefer commercials that are entertaining. I believe they would like the Nationwide approach.

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Lack of Data, Lot of Promise For Asian American Media

CNNMoney posted an article "Lack of Data, Lot of Promise For Asian American Media" on December 18, 2006. Many key players in the market, including media and agencies, were interviewed. Their opinions vary sharply. (The link no longer works. See below for complete story.)

The Asian American market is definitely growing, just not sure at what rate. There is no data to support. Only one TV station is on Nielsen. Less than 5% of the publications are audited.

More and more Asian American media outlets come out every month. Many of them are branches of mainstream, eg. MTV Chi, MTV K and MTV Desi; OnWheel’s Asian On Wheels.

Asian marketing is a fun place to be at now and in the coming years. Though the harvest time may not come very soon, it sure is promising. Those who stay long and overcome all the challenges and learn the process will be the big winners – both media and marketers, both product and personal growth.

Lack of Data, Lot of Promise For Asian-American Media
December 18, 2006: 10:04 AM EST

Dec. 18, 2006 (Multichannel News) -- Asked about the state of the Asian-American television advertising market, more than a dozen media and marketing executives provided sharply different opinions.

"Definitely flatline," answered Elcid Choi, executive vice president and director of new client development for the multicultural agency GlobalHue.

"Nominal growth," said Michael Sherman general manager of KTSF, a broadcast station in San Francisco that transmits foreign-language programming for Asians.

"Very strong growth," said Saul Gitlin, executive vice president of strategic marketing services at Kang & Lee, one of the larger Asian-American advertising agencies.

But no one suggested the market was shrinking.

The different opinions point to perhaps the biggest challenge facing the Asian-American media industry -- the dearth of data. Only one media outlet subscribes to Nielsen Media Research ratings. And no firm collects industry-wide information about how much brands are spending on television advertising.

Still, there is widespread agreement about the attractiveness and potential of the Asian-American market. In September, the University of Georgia's Selig Center for Economic Growth released a report estimating Asian-American buying power at $427 billion.

This represents an almost 60% jump since 2000. According to the Census Bureau, the Asian-American population is approximately 11.9 million. This represents a 20% increase between 2000 and 2004. Almost half have a bachelor's or graduate degree and a little under a fifth earn over $75,000 a year.

"It makes strong business sense to target Asian-Americans," said Joe Min, account manager for Toyota at Long Beach, Calif.-based Asian-American ad agency interTrend. The automotive industry apparently agrees and is an active advertiser in the market.

Chrysler just recently re-entered the Asian-American advertising market with a television campaign promoting its Sebring model. It is the first time Chrysler has advertised a new model simultaneously in the general and Asian-American markets. The campaign began in late November and will run through the first quarter of next year.

The buy concentrated on Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco through a mix of broadcast and pay television. The campaign actually consists of spots in three languages -- Chinese, Korean and then English for Indian-Americans. The creative is the same, albeit with different actors and voiceovers. English was used to reach out to Indians from all different regions.

According to Holly Scerbo communications manager for Chrysler Marketing, "The demographics make it attractive and challenging," Sherman agrees the market is very attractive. KTSF, which broadcasts Chinese-language programming in primetime, including local newscasts in Mandarin and Cantonese, is the only Asian station or network that subscribes to Nielsen. In primetime, it is often San Francisco's second most-watched foreign-language station, behind Univision but ahead of Telemundo.

Last year, following the January 2005 move to Nielsen, Sherman saw a big jump in advertising dollars. But this year has brought in little additional revenue. A little over half of the station's advertising comes from national accounts.

"Over time the advertising community has come on board, although not as much as I would have thought," said Sherman. "People's understanding of the market is not that great. A lot of our work goes into explaining the Asian market."

Partly, that is a reflection of the inherent complexity of the Asian-American market. The largest immigrant groups are from China, India and Korea. English-language competency varies from near universal for Indian immigrants to significantly less for Chinese immigrants.

Aside from KTSF, there are only a handful of local stations and no national broadcast network transmitting Asian programming full-time. The stations typically carry programming from several countries, with primetime going to the largest immigrant group in the area -- Chinese in San Francisco and Korean in Los Angeles.

In addition, there are a few dozen pay television networks that feature original-language programming imported from Asia. Two networks, AZN and ImaginAsian TV, air a significant amount of programming that is either in English or subtitled.

There are also three MTV Channels that have launched over the past two years: MTVK, for Korean-Americans; MTV Chi, targeting Chinese-Americans; and MTV Desi, for South Asian-Americans. The VJs speak primarily in English as they introduce Asian music videos.

National advertising on these stations and networks comes in a range of languages, including Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean and Tagalog, as well as English. Although there is no industry-wide breakdown, a majority of Asian-American advertising appears to be in foreign languages.

"We know that overall the majority of Asians are immigrants and show a preference for their own language," Gitlin said.

Most of the advertising on The Filipino Channel is in Tagalog and comes from local businesses. Western Union (NYSE:WU) (NYSE:FDC) and California utility PG & E have both placed commercials in Tagalog. "Over the last three years, mainstream advertisers have begun recognizing us," said Jun Del Rosario, a product manager of TFC's Manila-based parent company ABS-CBN.

The network has some 200,000 subscribers via cable systems and DirecTV. Thomas Tseng, co-founder and principal of multicultural market research firm New American Dimensions, argues there is too much emphasis on Asian-language media. "There is a slew of media reaching that immigrant but there aren't a lot of media reaching the American generation," he said. Tseng pointed to surveys his firm conducted this summer, which find a sharp drop in Asian-language fluency by the second generation.

"When you look at a lot of the in-language media they tend to reach an older demographic," said Thomas Pyun vice president of advertising sales at ImaginAsian Entertainment.

Bill Georges, senior vice president of marketing and sales at Comcast-owned (NASDAQ:CMCSA) AZN, recommends first-time advertisers in the Asian-American market begin with English-language ads. Not to reach young U.S.-born Asian-Americans, but to reach the largest number of viewers possible.

"For too many years we had advertisers believing they were doing 'Asian marketing' when what they were doing was Chinese marketing in San Francisco or Korean marketing in L.A.," he said. "The English-language is a way to aggregate the Asian audience." Georges projects his ad sales revenues will increase some 75% next year.

The large number of networks for a relatively small audience that is fragmented by language combined with modest demand from national brands and little ratings information means that advertising costs are comparatively low.

"Your production costs a lot of times outweigh the media outlets. You are spending $100,000 on a spot and spending $75,000 on media," said Global Hue's Choi. Spending more money to produce a commercial than to run it is practically unheard of in other markets.

While the lack of ratings is an oddity in the market, it apparently is not deterring committed advertisers.

"We take a holistic view of how we are reaching our audience," Honda manager of emerging markets advertising Barbara Ponce said. "If Nielsen isn't available, we will look at other metrics while not closing the door".

Kang & Lee's Gitlin said those brands that make investments now in Asian-American advertising will reap tangible benefits. "The future is very bright. By the time we hit 2010, it is just going to accelerate," said Gitlin. "Asian marketing is going to shift from being an option to being an imperative opportunity."


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Why Taco Bell is Getting Multicultural Marketing Wrong

In one of his recent blog posts, Rohit Behargava, Vice President for Interactive Marketing with Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, asked why Taco Bell put their all multicultural marketing effort on Hispanic and African American while ignoring Asian Indian. He pointed out that Asian Indian preferred Taco Bell than other fast food chains, perhaps for its option of spicy and extra hot sauce. "Wouldn't it make more sense for Taco Bell to focus some of their multicultural ad dollars on the Indians and other niche markets like us [who already like its food]?"

Behargava argued marketers should not just look at the population numbers and dive in the two largest minorities (African American and Hispanic). They should "think more broadly" and understand where their niches are. I too believe many multicultural marketers forget to study the profile of each ethnicity group, and more importantly their current customer base as well as each segment’s perception of their product.

Asian Indian may be represent less than 1% of the population. But may be it is this 1% that can turn your needle. "Are you targeting your multicultural consumer right - or are you unintentionally ignoring some of your best customers?" Behargava asked, so do many Asian marketing professionals.

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Language Difference

The Asian-American immigrants bring more languages to the US than perhaps all other population segments combined. Just India alone, there are fifteen different languages. Not to mention the multiple dialects spoken by the various subgroups.

While Chinese has tens of dialects (Mandarin and Cantonese are the major two), the written form is the same. They all share the same set of Chinese characters and have the same grammar logics. (FYI, there are more than 10K Chinese characters, but you only need to know ~2500 to comprehend regular newspaper.)

Just like English, however, there are some language variations among regions. Ask for soda and French fries in London will not get you what you expect in New York. Same for Chinese, the fuel we feed the cars is called "gas oil" in Mainland China but "electric oil" in Hong Kong. The situation is further complicated for terms introduced by foreigners. Salad is an example; there are at least five different combinations of the Chinese characters to translate the term phonetically.

Years ago when McDonald's tried to promote its salad to Chinese customers, they gave out couples as pre-print insert to some Chinese newspapers. The Chinese translation they used for the term salad unfortunately was not the most popular used one. If only there were no product pictures, many readers would have no clues what it was about. I later found out that the agency just hired a freelancer for translation. No one at the agency or the client side was able to comment before the insert was printed.

Take away for marketers, especially those do Asian marketing: Don’t rely on one freelance for any translation and copywriting in any language that you are not familiar with.

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No one says "I am an Asian"

Go ask any Asian looking people around you for their ethnicity. I bet no one would say he is Asian. Rather, they would say they are Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, Vietnamese, Filipino, Thai, Malaysian, Indonesian and such. They may say they are from Asia (knowing you probably don’t know what Khmer is or where Cambodia is anyway). They just would not say they are Asian.

It is just like people would tell you they are French, Italian, German, Irish; or they may say they are from Europe. They would not say they are European.

"Asian" is a term used in Census, in survey, and in business. Asian Americans are learned to check the box next to Asian when filling out forms. They tell people we are Asian Americans in our online profiles. Yet they actually see themselves Chinese/ Korean/ Japanese/ Indian/...

Hispanic used to be a census term too. Years ago, there were Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican, Argentinean, Dominicans, Colombians, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Ecuadorian, Hondurans, Nicaraguans, Bolivians, Peruvians, Venezuelans, Spaniard and even Latino… but no Hispanic in America. It was then. Now, all the subgroups are happy to claim themselves Hispanic. Each Hispanic subgroup may have different culture, value and dialect. Yet they share the same media in the same language. Yes, it was the media that put them together.

This is not the same case for Asian. Though Asian subgroups share some similarity in culture and values, they speak different languages. They don’t see themselves as one big segment. In fact, people even further differentiate themselves within a subgroup. For instance, Mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong Chinese, Macau Chinese, Singaporean.

It explains why one of the first questions Asian marketing professionals have for any campaign is: Which segment/subgroup should be covered in the plan?

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