Over a million people, or 3.5% of the Canadian population, has Chinese ancestry, and that benchmark will have major implications for marketers.

‘Basically, anybody’s who’s prepared to get off their butts and design a specific marketing program will be extremely rewarded,’ says Lindsay Meredith, marketing professor and associate dean of business at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C.

‘Marketers have a basic rule. There have to be enough people and they have to have enough money. When you get a niche this large, that makes it very worthwhile.’

Ken Koo, Vancouver-based director of national Asian advertising firm Koo Creative (a division of Cossette Communications’ branding arm Koo Grapheme), also believes that more companies can benefit by venturing into this market.

‘If I am a soap-seller, this particular market may not be the most obvious market to sink commitment or energy into. It’s purely a population gain. But even that, with over a million Chinese in Canada, and with most residing literally in a handful of major cities, this is a pretty good group, even to sell things that are not specialized to them.’

Koo client Bell ExpressVu grew its Chinese subscriber base by 50% after a five-week Chinese language TV, print and radio campaign last summer that offered ‘TV on your terms,’ and a discount to those making the switch from basic cable.

Petro-Canada hired Koo to target the Chinese community in 1999 after research showed Chinese consumers believed word-of-mouth rumours that Petro-Canada sold second-rate gasoline. An informative print and radio campaign designed to teach people about auto care while positioning Petro-Canada as a knowledgeable brand drove home the message that Petro-Canada was ‘Canada’s Gas Station.’ Market share grew by 5%.

The agency recently produced a campaign for Clarica using Chinese slang to convey the confusion most customers feel when dealing with financial institutions. One print ad shows a man doing tai chi, because ‘playing tai chi’ describes people who beat around the bush. A Chinese New Year ad shows the god of prosperity holding a crystal ball, reinforcing the ‘Clarity in financial matters’ promise, and generating a high unaided recall.

Says Koo: ‘I always ask: for a client to get 1% market share growth in the mainstream, how much money would they have to spend to truly gain that one point? And how much do they have to spend if they are going after a very specialized group when their media alternatives are somewhat restricted? It’s going to be much cheaper, then, to get the attention of one million Chinese than in the mainstream.’

In the past three months, Markham-based ethnic specialty agency Dynasty Advertising has noted a significant increase in interest from blue-chip companies which want to join the agency’s current roster of clients, which includes Tridel, a leading condominium developer in the Greater Toronto Area, and Primus, a telecom provider.

Others have not rushed in as quickly as they might have. Koo speculates cutbacks in advertising budgets and staff shortages in marketing departments are the root cause and says many of his accounts, such as TD Canada Trust, Concorde Pacific, Bell and Petro-Canada, ‘have had very slow growth or are cutting budgets.’

New immigrants not new for long

For companies new to Chinese marketing, there is, of course, the sticky problem of assimilation. As a national myth the Canadian mosaic endures, but marketers worry that once immigrants spend a few years in the country, it’s too late to set them apart.

‘How long will that critical mass sustain itself?’ Lindsay asks. ‘The second generation on are really much more oriented towards integration. Chinese kids walk, talk, behave and have the same objectives as Caucasian Canadian kids. But there are still elements there. It’s a culture that’s managed to keep alive because it still has an active in-and-out migration. People go back all the time.’

And immigration continues to rise. Almost three-quarters of Canada’s Chinese were born outside of Canada.

Up until 1997, the majority of immigrants were from Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong. While Hong Kong Chinese still make up the greater volume, the influx has dropped. New immigrants are predominantly Mandarin-speaking mainland Chinese.

Mandarin on the rise

If language is the best indication of cultural alignment, census data confirms that the Chinese community continues to set itself apart. Eighty per cent of the 1990s immigrants born in China prefer to speak their own language at home, and 29% are unable to converse in English or French.

A recent direct-response television test by Toronto’s Brand Matters for Communications Canada found that billboard ads for a Chinese-language directory of government programs and services resulted in some 8,000 telephone requests for the brochure, or double the original estimate.

Patricia McQuillan, Brand Matters’ president says, ‘Mandarin pulled very strong – about 82% of the level of Cantonese. Yet, if you look at the census data, it should really be only 25%. This speaks to a greater need for information for the Mandarin-speaking Chinese.’

‘This is an interesting dimension,’ says Albert Yue, director of Dynasty Advertising, who has also been crunching the numbers.

‘Of immigrants from Hong Kong, like myself, only 7.7% have no knowledge of an official language. From Taiwan it’s 12.7%. This means that the Chinese media is very efficient and very important for the Mandarin-speaking mainland Chinese.’

Toronto’s Omni Television is now broadcasting daily news in both Cantonese and Mandarin, and has recently increased its Chinese programming from 19 to 28 hours per week to meet the growing demand.

‘There are many good things about this target audience,’ Koo says. ‘And much of it is that a certain number of the Chinese immigrants are quite well off with a high net worth and may spend quite a bit of money on consumer goods, most of them mainstream. This group is definitely more lucrative. I guess it’s a matter of time.’

Source: Statistics Canada 2001 Census