‘Tanks and artillery will get you nowhere,’ says Cleve Lu, CEO and strategist for Markham, Ont.-based Era Integrated Marketing Communications and a specialist in the Asian market. He likens niche marketing to jungle warfare, where intelligence and tactics are the key. That means concentrating on the upfront research.
‘Most clients are not too willing to learn the business,’ says Lu. In fact, many of them prefer to run a focus group or conduct a telephone survey rather than take a walk through Chinatown, or read up on cultural traditions. ‘What do you end up with then? Just a report on the table.’
Lu gives an example of a simple cultural difference in the Chinese-Canadian community that most marketers aren’t aware of.
‘When Chinese-Canadians go to purchase a car, the whole family comes along. A friend of mine asked me about that. ‘Cleve, what is this? Are they having a party or something?” The reason is partly that many new immigrants from China have little knowledge of cars beyond taking them into the shop for repairs. Mainly, however, it’s cultural. ‘They want to share in the major purchasing decisions.’
Family trips to the dealership are one of the reasons that SUVs and vans are more popular with this group than smaller cars. They are more interested in hauling passengers than goods, which means their purchasing criteria are different. Lu himself has a personal record of visiting Niagara Falls eight times in one summer while showing the local sights to visiting relatives.
Lu suggests marketers get to know their target market by hiring somebody from the Asian community onto their sales force. It’s an inexpensive way to create direct contact with the cultural group you are targeting, while learning something yourself about that market. And besides, what’s the point of advertising to the Chinese community if you don’t have somebody in your company who can offer services in that language?
Strategy asked three other multicultural marketing experts for advice to those new to niche marketing.
Sarah Hood, owner, cadmus communications, specializing in cross-cultural PR, Toronto
Sponsorship is a very important way to reach various communities. One of the other things that’s important for somebody trying to reach an ethnic community, or for that matter, any cultural community, is that they have to have something genuine to offer so when the person responds, they find something there that actually has some appeal for them.
Western Union’s sponsorships with Caribana were ingenious. Their slogan is: ‘The fastest way to transfer money worldwide.’ They target communities in Canada that are still in touch with communities in other countries and who would be very likely to want to use the service, to wire money back to family members, for example. They saw the Caribbean community in Toronto and the Caribbean community that comes to Toronto for Caribana as a very important group to communicate with and they sponsored the event officially for many, many years.
They did product giveaways that related to what people were going to use at the festival. They figured out that in the Caribbean tradition people like to have around a little towel or handkerchief or scrap of cloth that they can wave to the music. They saw that tradition as something they could use and they printed yellow and black handkerchiefs with their logo that people could wave. These days it’s difficult to get a photo of Caribana without seeing them. I still see them all over Toronto. That gave [Western Union] an extremely high profile. People were very aware that they were a sponsor and there was a general warm and fuzzy good feeling about that.
They also did a promotion with cardboard visors. Entire crowds would be wearing them at all the events and the television images would show hundreds and hundreds of people wearing these very recognizable yellow visors.
What made this promotion successful was that they did it for many years, they had a clear audience they wanted to reach, their message was simple and when people came to the company they had something to offer – Western Union actually can transfer money to Caribbean communities.
I remember seeing a promotion in B.C. that was purporting to be Caribbean. What made it Caribbean was that they had inserted the word ‘mon’ into their slogan. I see this absolutely all the time. Many people just don’t stop and think before they try to speak to people who aren’t exactly like themselves.
I can’t remember a campaign as lame as the Western Union one was good. One of the reasons is that a lot of people try things once and give up. People don’t realize that if you really are trying to make a connection with a community you don’t succeed by doing something once.
David Chow, director, crimson advertising, specializing in the Asian market, Markham, Ont.
Marketers need especially to consider the various stages or processes of integration when targeting Chinese immigrants.
The first three months is the honeymoon stage. They are almost like tourists. They are excited and very positive about the cleanliness of Canada, the wide open spaces, things like that. This is a discovery mode. They are feeling positive about settling in and settling down in Canada.
The first year is what we call the stage of initial culture shock, where they discover it’s not as easy as they think. The pace is very different, taxes are high, and the winter is not really as pretty as the postcard shows. This can be a stage of disappointment as well. A lot of people can’t find satisfactory jobs. In a way, it’s more negative. The second stage can last one or two years.
In the third year, there are a lot of hardships they have already overcome (and those who couldn’t take it have already decided to go back to Asia). This is the stage when they are balancing their own culture with the Canadian culture here.
In the earlier stages, a friend’s opinion or word-of-mouth has a big influence on purchasing decisions. [But] after two or three years, advertising will work very well with them because they’re more confident about making decisions and more educated like the American consumer.
Different products will target immigrants at different stages in this evolution.
For example, with all new immigrants from Hong Kong, the first bank they choose is HSBC. They are familiar with that. In our campaign for Royal Bank, we wanted to overcome the emotional barriers that make immigrants feel that Royal Bank is a foreign bank, and show them [that] now it is exactly the contrary: Royal Bank is now a local bank and HSBC is the foreign one. We made that campaign very emotional because the initial hurdle is an emotional one, not a rational one. Royal Bank became a very popular bank for the Chinese.
Our work with General Motors targets immigrants who have been here for five to 10 years. Domestic cars are categories that would take them a lot longer to develop a more favourable perception. Automotive is a category that takes longer in general, unless you are Honda or Toyota. Then it would be easy.
Elsa Lai, Asian group leader and CD, Koo Creative, a division of Cossette Communication Group, Toronto
Marketers who want to target Asian-Canadians need to recognize that their brands might be at a different stage in this market. Petro-Canada is one example. In the mainstream, it’s a well-known brand and, it’s very familiar. Chinese immigrants are much more familiar with gas companies like Esso or Shell that are established in Asia. They consider a new brand like Petro-Canada like a second grade.
Our campaign had to start from scratch – at the brand building stage. Only with a credible brand could our messaging be credible.
The product category may also be at a different stage. For example, the cell phone and mobility industry in Hong Kong is more advanced. New immigrants are more familiar with the products and usage is different. In the Canadian mainstream, advertisers are still advertising what a cell phone can do. The Chinese are already past that stage. You have to have better offers. Something that would drive a different campaign from the mainstream.
There are still opportunities for clients to really own this market. When we launched Petro-Canada, no gas companies were targeting this group, yet car ownership in this group was higher than the mainstream average. If you are the first in your category and you commit sufficient resources, it’s easier to get results than in the mainstream market.
