More and more, sellers reaching out to ethnics

Publication:
Chicago Sun-Times
Publish date:
August 8, 1990
Author:
Nancy Millman


When the U.S. Census Bureau turned to public service advertising to encourage participation in this year's count, ads in six different Asian languages were used in America's biggest cities.

For the 1980 census, the bureau created advertising for the general population and then had the ads translated into Spanish to reach Hispanics.

That kind of superficial targeting no longer is sufficient to communicate with a diverse population, with most groups having their own newspapers or magazines and even radio and television stations.

Ethnic marketing, part of the general trend to sell products and services to particular population segments rather than to the masses, is on the rise. While marketers have advertised to Hispanics and African-Americans for more than a decade, major companies now are tailoring their ads to groups as individual as Chinese-Americans or Jewish consumers wanting kosher foods.

The census campaign, an example of a national effort that had to communicate with a broad spectrum of people, addressed different issues with each group, said Ruth Wooden, president of the Advertising Council, New York, which administered the campaign.

Asian-Americans, for example, "had the view that you had to be a citizen to participate," Wooden said. "So the Asian-American campaigns educated them that you didn't have to be . . . and on the benefits to the Asian-American community." Advertising was created in Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese as well as in English by one of the few ad agencies specializing in this field, Muse Cordero Chen Los Angeles.

The marketers of consumer products are beginning to pay special attention to affluent Asian-Americans. The approximately 8 million Americans of Asian descent have higher household incomes, higher educational levels and hold more professional and managerial jobs than all other demographic groups.

The producers of whiskey and cognac and banks and financial services are the first to tap into this segment with special advertising.

"A typical brand manager at a liquor company would not know what to do when approaching the Asian market, so he thinks it is best to ignore it," said Patrick Chu, senior partner at Loiminchay, a New York ad agency. "We can open it up to him."

Chu's company creates ads in Chinese for $85-a-bottle Hennesey cognac and Korean ads for Johnnie Walker scotch, both products of importer Schieffelin & Somerset.

"The Chinese and Japanese drink 50 percent of all the cognac produced," Chu said. "We are only targeting Chinese at the moment, because the Japanese who come to this country only stay here for a few years and then go back."

Schieffelin's targeting of heavy users of cognac is the same principle as a diaper manufacturer, for example, creating special campaigns for the Hispanic market. Battling for sales gains against their competitors, companies that try to win the loyalty of ethnic consumers can be the winners.

"Companies that have tapped out in the general market with their products can affect their market share by targeting Hispanics," said George San Jose, president of San Jose Associates, a Chicago ad agency.

"Blacks are very heavy uses of hygiene products, certain food products and quick-service restaurants," said Thomas J. Burrell, chairman of Burrell Advertising here. "An advertising budget for the black consumer market could mean the difference between a profit and a loss for the marketer.

"Black people are not dark-skinned white people," Burrell said. "Differences in history and culture make them different as consumers. It is false to believe that as blacks become more affluent they become less black."

Advertising targeting black consumers has to "lessen the psychological gap between the marketer and the black consumer," Burrell said. "When you're white, there is no question that you're being extended the invitation" to become a customer, he said.

"But decades of messages that have excluded blacks make the customer wonder, `What is the company's relationship to me?' "

Building a bridge to the customer when he is young is a strategy used by Burrell's client McDonald's Corp. as well as one that General Foods is trying with Jewish children.

The Post division makes many cereals that are kosher products and suitable for children who spend more time in Hebrew school than in front of a television.

So, a booklet called "Brachos (blessings) for Breakfast" that contains games, puzzles, cereal coupons and ads and special blessings was created by Lubicom, a specialized ad agency, and sent directly to the religious schools. New American lives after all

Reports of the death of New American Magazines, the publishing company owned by Owen Lipstein, were premature.

Lipstein has found a Japanese investor, Japanese Independent Communications Co., to buy a 50 percent interest in his company. Lipstein publishes Mother Earth News, Psychology Today and Smart, which he co-owns.

The infusion of capital means that Lipstein won't sell the men's magazine Smart, as has been widely reported, and that he will be able to relaunch Psychology Today in November. Publication had been suspended earlier this year because of limited funds.

Lipstein sold his first magazine, American Health, to Reader's Digest Association earlier this year for $29 million.

Nancy Millman's expanded marketing column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.