Presidential Election in Taiwan

I had dinner with my family in a Chinese restaurant tonight. I couldn't help but keep watching the TV. It was all about the presidential election in Taiwan and how people were celebrating on Ma Ying-Jeou's victory. I wasn't alone. Many of the patrons were more interested in the TV than the food.

As usual, I paid more attention on the commercial than the program itself. It was a satellite TV station I was watching. The program was 100% fed directly from Taiwan. The commercials were mixed – some local and some global. How could I tell?

HP's commercial featured their Compaq slim desktop, which is not available in the U.S. McDonld's offered their coffee at 50% off; I don't think we have the same discount here. In couple other commercials, celebrities were holding boxes of CIBA Vision's Focus Dailies written in Chinese.

I suspect these spots were not placed by the US office of the brands, but the office in Taiwan. They most likely were added value. Taiwanese marketers of course would not pay for such placement, but they might think more spots – regardless anywhere – was good for global brands like theirs; and so accepted the added value offer. They forgot the brands had different products, promotional offers and packages around the world. Though the audience does not mind – in fact, they are used to it, it could cause legal issues.

I am not saying overseas marketers should not accept such added value. They just need to be mindful about the creative placed around the world.

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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, Asian American
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Globalization

Crossover between general and diversity creative works because most of the time they are built on the same platform. In fact, most major global brands set up one platform for all regions and ethnicities. Localization allowed with all must be tie to the same theme.

The "Your Point of View" campaign of HSBC is one of the examples. Its print creative shows alternate images with attached "labels", showing how different people can have various points of view on the same issue. TV and radio creative are based on the same theme. Depending of the regions and ethnicities the ads are presenting to, different sets of "labeled images" apply. It works globally. McDonald’s "I’m loving it" and Dove’s "Real Beauty" other examples.

Some of the platforms, however, cannot be just translated to other markets literally. Take Chevy’s "An American Revolution" as an example. While American Revolution could symbolize the transformation of the all-new Chevy in a very positive way, it means nothing to Asian immigrants. Focus group further confirmed Chinese are scared by the word "revolution." It reminded them the painful history of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 1960’s. Thus, Chevy’s Asian marketing agency came up with the modified line "New Era" for Chevy’s Chinese American market. "New Era" perfectly translated the spirit behind "An American Revolution" without bringing up the American and/or Chinese history.

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, HSBC
, McDonalds
, Dove
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Crossover

Creative adaptation in diversity marketing is not necessary a one-way street. Even though most of the time, it is the diversity markets adapt the general market creative. In some rare cases, the opposite could happen.

Chevy’s Dream spot is an example. The spot was created by its Asian marketing agency, but was also aired in the Emmy Award night with English copy and VO.

Marketers should be open to such opportunities.

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Geico Caveman On Netflix Commercial

Geico’s series of caveman commercial promotes that Geico.com is "so easy even a caveman can do it." In the spots, the cavemen actually are very civilized and intelligent. They were very mad and Geico apologized. The series is like a story for people to follow. It makes people laugh and remember Geico.

Not sure if Netflix is trying to do the same. In one of its new commercial, a guy introduces Netflix.com to a room of people who all meant to look uneducated and not smart, including cavemen, Pinocchio and two Asian fishermen. I was very upset. Seriously, this commercial really pissed me off. But my husband, who is also an Asian found it quite funny. I tried to ask several Asian friends but none contacted have seen the spot yet. Nevertheless, I am very sure I am not the only one who found the spot very offensive.

It is common sense that if you have a TV spot trying to make fun of a particular group of people, you should do some research to make sure the group is ok with it and could laugh at the spot as well. I wonder if Netflix did the homework.

Chevy’s recent spot features a sumo wrestler in an Aveo. The message is small car, big capacity. The car manufacturer was sensitive enough to consult with its Asian marketing agency if Asian, especially Japanese, would find the creative offensive. It turns out Asians like the creative as well. Chevy later decided to translate the commercials and put it in Asian TV stations as well.

Take away for marketers: Be sensitive.

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Asian American
, Asian Marketing
, Chevy
, Geico
, Netflix

Fortune Cookies

I had talked about Asian faces in general market advertisements in my blog post "Asian on TV." How about Chinese characters and fortune cookies?

To promote its direct flight to Shanghai, American Airlines hired a street team to give out future cookies in Chicago. FYI, future cookie is NOT a Chinese traditional culture. It is just a "dessert" Chinese restaurants give to customers in the US. AA did not give the cookies in Chinatown either. Their team handed out the cookies in business district areas.

Wonder what are the fortunes in the cookies? There are there of them: "Nonstop to Shanghai on American Airlines, your perfect match," "You will enjoy nonstops to Shanghai on AA," and "AA nonstops to Shanghai looks very good."

AA also had scooters towing two-sided backlit panels (Chinese headline and English copy) toured the streets within Chinatown and the Central Business District. The campaign also includes some print ads on Chinese publications and online ads on Chinese as well as pan-Asian sites. The whole campaign indeed integrate both general and Asian marketing.

See also story on MediaPost.

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English Ad On Chinese Newspaper

In 2003 when I was working for a Chinese newspaper, I received an IKEA ad from its agency. It was a typical promotional ad with some nice furniture pictures and the headline saying sales ends on a certain date, followed by store locations and web address. The ad was nice, but only one problem -- it was in English.

I called the agency -- which was not one specialized in Asian marketing -- and offered translation of headline and typesetting free of charge. The response I got was that the client wanted it in English. They believed those readers who did not understand the simple line were not the target audience anyway.

It was true that more than half of our readers knew some English; yet they counted on the paper for in language news and product information. Other than some job classified ads, the entire paper was in Chinese (90+ pages daily).

After the ad was printed, several readers called our customer service team asking why we had that ad on our paper. Was it a mechanical mistake? Why didn’t we translate it? None of them asked about the actual product/service/promotion.

By placing an English ad on a Chinese newspaper, IKEA’s message to the audience was like "We want to tell you what we have/sell, but we don’t want to listen to what you need." Was that really what IKEA wanted?

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Asian on TV

In the past few years, we see more and more Asian faces on screen. Some well known Asian artists include Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Lucy Liu, Sandra Oh, Daniel Kim, Yunjin Kim, to name just a few. But are the roles these Asian play in the movies really Asian?

Tony Award winner B.D. Wong plays a doctor on Sesame Street, Jurassic Park and Law & Order. In the interview with ABC 20/20 Hollywood Stereotypes, he said the image of Asian "pisses him off". He wants to be cute but Asians are not in Hollywood.

In Hollywood, Asians are either boring professional or kung fu experts. Yes, martial arts are part of the Asian culture. Yes, Asians accounts for 30% of the medical scientists in the US, and that 17% of physicians and surgeons are Asians. But that does not mean Asians are not cool.

I found the recent Alberto VO5 "Break the Mold" spot (see below) which features two Chinese rebellious teenagers run away from a strict school, captures very well what Asians really are. Asians will find this spot particularly interesting, no matter they like it or hate it. The spot should be very eye-catching to non-Asian as well. After all, it looks so different from the other commercials.

Some of the marketers are smart enough to share general market creative with their diversity AOR before production to see if it makes sense to apply the creative in multiple segments. In some cases, some additional shadow shooting with Asian talents will work. That could save a lot of production cost.

What marketers should also do is to make sure Asian talents are included in the general market media as well. After all, it is the minorities in the US that are the majority. 5% of the population is Asian and they represent $260 billion annual buying power. While many Asians consume Asian media, they don'’t live in a vacuum. They are reached by general market advertising as well. Keep that in mind, whether you do Asian marketing or general marketing.

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