Report on multicultural marketing

Staying Put Once the fireworks had died on the morning of July 1, the long-anticipated repatriation of Hong Kong to China was a fait accompli. We in the world outside turned our attention elsewhere--until such time as something happens that might derail the carefully planned transition in the territory. But whether the transition goes smoothly or not, the handover will bring about changes in Canada's Chinese community, dominated as it is by immigrants from Hong Kong. We have grown accustomed to a largely Cantonese-speaking population clustered in Canada's largest cities, relatively well off as immigrants go. But as the stream of immigrants from Hong Kong slows to a trickle, this is likely to change, and so must companies' approach to the Chinese market in Canada. A lot of people think the Chinese immigration wave will stop in 1997. I don't think so," says Raymond Ng, a consultant and author of Customers from Afar. Your Key to Serving Chinese Consumers. "When you look at the number of applicants from that area of the world, by and large we see a constant stream of immigrants coming." The difference is where they're coming from: Taiwan and mainland China, instead of Hong Kong. Citizenship and Immigration Canada figures show that 11,700 people moved here from Taiwan last year, up from 7,400 in 1994; and 15,700 arrived from mainland China last year, up from 12,500 in 1994. In contrast, immigration from Hong Kong was 26,500 last year, down from 44,200 in 1994. The most important issue here for marketers relates to language. While the vast majority of Chinese-Canadians now speak Cantonese, to day's Chinese immigrants mostly speak Mandarin. The "panic years" of 1988 through 1993, when 170,000 immigrants moved to Canada from Hong Kong, saw the flowering of Chinese--especially Cantonese-media on this side of the Pacific Ocean. In Vancouver, for example, the Chinese daily papers outnumber the ones in English. But where, a few years ago, mainstream marketers lined up to buy space in the Chinese-language media, now they question the cost-effectiveness--and sometimes even the point--of advertising to a Chinese audience that, at least in part, has moved back to Hong Kong. Moreover, the new arrivals from Taiwan and the mainland speak Mandarin, not the Cantonese heard on the radio and TV. The growth of our business depends on immigration growth," states Joseph Chan, chief operating officer of Fairchild Television and chair of the Vancouver Chinese Advertising, Marketing and Media Association. Because that immigration growth is likely to come more from Taiwan and mainland China, Chart anticipates a gradual shift toward Mandarin in the broadcasting business. Though written Chinese can be read by both groups, the newspapers tend to align themselves with Hong Kong, Taiwanese and mainland Chinese communities in Canada by way of content, and here ones serving the latter two will see growth. Marketers, however, should not only look at immigration but also integration. The large numbers of Hong Kong Chinese who arrived in the 1980s and '90s were largely young and had larger families than the Canadian average. On average, students in programs of English as a second language take five years to progress from complete unfamiliarity with English to reading university-level textbooks. And, although the prevalence of Cantonese at certain high schools tends to slow the adoption of English, almost all child and teenage immigrants end up communicating chiefly in English in their adult lives. While it loses ground to Mandarin among recent immigrants, Cantonese is also slowly losing out to English in the longer-established Chinese-Canadian population. To broadcasters like Chart, that means competing with mainstream radio and TV on the basis of content. (Not waiting for viewers to come its way, rival BCTV dubs its top-rated News Hour into Cantonese through a secondary audio program channel to some 33,000 viewers.) Newspapers, he notes, face an even tougher task appealing to a younger generation. Though most grow up speaking Chinese, few who attended Canadian schools can read it. With the same work ethic as their parents but without the cultural obstacles, the new generation of integrated Chinese-Canadians will represent a more lucrative market than the immigrant one, explains Sonny Wong, the Canadian-born son of Hong Kong parents who now runs Hamazaki Wong Advertising in Vancouver. Surprisingly, he adds, "Most companies aren't aware of it." He cites General Motors' and Air Canada's sponsorship of a sold-out "Canto-pop" benefit concert last February at Vancouver's GM Place as a successful way to target younger, bilingual Chinese consumers. Still, ifs premature to abandon the adult, Cantonese-speaking majority in the Chinese population, notes Ken Koo, president of Ken Koo Creative Group in Vancouver. He thinks of his elderly uncle who, even after eight years' residence in Canada, still reads Chinese newspapers because he can do so faster in English, and because he prefers their choice of content. Koo believes that Hong Kong Chinese should remain the mainstay of Chinese marketing efforts for at least three years. Part of the effectiveness of ethnic marketing is the sense of kinship it can create, and here it still pays to milk the unique culture of Hong Kong. In ads for a condominium development in Toronto, Koo adopted the Cantonese expression, "You must have the first sip of the soup"--meaning get in ahead of the crowd to maximize your investment. (The ads literally depicted a howl of soup.) In ads for BC Tel Mobility, Koo appropriated the expression for a deal that sounds too good to be true: "Is there such a big, fat frog jumping around?" When you're looking for customer loyalty, you should speak not only the same language, but the same colloquialisms. The two sectors that have seen a measurable decline in their Chinese business are real estate and retail. The Hong Kong-style shopping malls of the Vancouver suburb of Richmond have recently been advertising in the mainstream media, positioning themselves as a cultural experience for non-Asians. For the first time in 13 years, I have lots of Hong Kong sellers," says Patsy Hui, one of the top real estate agents in Vancouver. Those who have settled into life in Canada have a better grasp of real estate values and are opting for smaller homes. Others--between 100,000 and 150,000 Canadian citizens--have found "they have to work 10 times harder to make a tenth the money" in Canada and have returned to Hong Kong to work, Hui says. As long as business is good and the rest of their lives is not too compromised, they'll stay there, she says. "If there's a crisis, they'll all be back." The Symbolic Power of Security With a fast-growing Chinese population across Canada, ethnic marketing has become a buzzword in the marketing industry. More and more communication. firms and advertising agencies are now specializing in this area, which is so challenging due to the lack of resources, and yet so rewarding because of exactly that. Since my background is on the crosscultural-training side, let me first identify some of the general characteristics of the Chinese culture and then attempt to apply them to marketing. For those readers who are experienced in the Chinese marketing field, you may already sense that I am setting a trap for myself to step into, because many--including yours truly--will concur that there is no one Chinese cultural attribute that can be applied to all the more than one billion Chinese around the world. Geographically speaking, we are already dealing with quite a number of subgroups of Chinese who have integrated some of their local cultures with their own. Even if we lump all the ethnic groups in Mainland China together as one group, there are still the Hong Kong Chinese, the Taiwanese, the Southeast Asian Overseas Chinese, recent immigrants to Canada, not-so-recent immigrants, and second, third, fourth, fifth and even sixth-generation Chinese-Canadians, just to name a few. There is even a large representation of South African-born Chinese living in Vancouver. Furthermore, John Kao, an associate professor at the Harvard Business School, recently wrote in The Harvard Business Review that the Chinese "now encompass an array of political and economic systems that are bound together by a shared tradition, not geography." This tradition of Chinese entrepreneurs operating comfortably in a network of family and clan finds its roots in Confucianism, which "codified the ties of individual, family, and society that define a person's proper place and position." Kao went on to explain in his article that, because many Chinese today went through a history of political and social turmoil, they have come to develop a few Confucianism-influenced habits that are based on what he calls "life-raft" values. These values include: Trust family; Work hard; Be thrifty; Maintain a high savings rate; Have tangible (and liquid) goods whenever possible. So how does all this apply to Chinese marketing? If we keep in mind that most of the time a customer purchases a product or service because of its benefits rather than features or advantages, then it would seem that Chinese value security before other considerations. It is important to feel secure that their families' needs are addressed first; and that they are paying the best price for the best value while satisfying those needs. An excellent example of capturing this point is an Air Canada advertising campaign conceptualized by the Vancouver agency Hamazaki Wong Marketing. Faced with the challenge of designing an ad that would stress security and at the same time emphasize Air Canada's symbol of the maple leaf (since Air Canada's Chinese name is Maple Leaf Airlines), Hamazaki Wong came up with the idea of creating a maple leaf using embroidery. The concept is that families, although they may be thousands of miles away from their homeland, can still be connected through the network provided by Air Canada. This symbol has perfectly merged something that is so Canadian--the maple leaf--with something that is so Chinese-embroidery. Perhaps idealistically speaking, the piece is also a symbol of fusing two cultures into one, without sacrificing the characteristics of either. Some may argue that the magic of marketing is that you can simply take a TV commercial that works at home and just change the language using voiceovers to cater to another country--which is what some infomercials do in China, with much success. But I would like to think that the Air Canada ad reaches deep into the heart of its audience and comforts them with the one benefit they are looking for: security. Let me finish by qualifying myself that, with one out of five people on earth being Chinese, there will be exceptions. In the early 1970s, a major fast-food chain conducting a feasibility study on the Chinese market was told that Chinese don't eat hamburgers. Despite this finding, the company decided to take a gamble, and 22 years later it now has more than 100 restaurants in Hong Kong, including four of the world's 10 busiest among its chain. This restaurant is, of course, McDonald's. Humans will continue to revolutionize, and so will ethnic marketing. Targeting the Second Generation Tokenism doesn't cut it anymore. Including people of different ethnic backgrounds in mainstream ads doesn't make consumers within that ethnic group relate to the company. Consumers are looking for marketers to make a commitment to their community, and see supporting an ethnic publication or TV show as one way to do that. This commitment can be further demonstrated with ads specially tailored for the target audience. English-language media targeted at second- or third-generation Canadians provide an intimate advertising medium for marketers. That intimacy can be used to build a strong relationship and thereby develop customer loyalty. And national marketers are starting to realize this. This works well with some ethnic groups, though not all. The Italian-Canadian community, for example, supports several media outlets targeted to second-generation Italian-Canadians. These include Eyetalian Magazine, Tandem newspaper and Jump Cut and Agenda--two programs on Toronto's multicultural TV station CFMT. And Mehfil, an Indo-Canadian magazine based in Vancouver, is also a success, increasing its run to 40,000 copies and its distribution from across B.C. to all of Canada with its August/September issue. Such targeted media don't exist for all ethnic groups in Canada. For instance, Typhoon, a magazine that was targeted to the second-generation Chinese-Canadian population in Canada, didn't succeed. Madeline Ziniak, vice-president and executive producer at CFMT, says whether or not English-language ethnic media work depends partly on the role of the language within the culture: "You can't make blanket statements that once a group has been here for a certain number of years they will prefer to communicate in English." Eyetalian publisher Nicholas Bianchi says he thinks the Italian community has embraced such media because they have been in Canada long enough to develop an Italian-Canadian culture that is distinct from both Italian and Canadian culture. Tandem is a weekly English-language newspaper published in Toronto by October Press, which also publishes Corriere Canadese, an Italian-language daily newspaper. Tandem's readers, says publisher Dan Iannuzzi, are Italian-Canadians age 18 to 34 and maybe a bit older-people whose parents read Corriere Canadese. While most of the advertising is for businesses, services or products that cater to or originated in the Italian community, Iannuzzi says, Tandem also offers mainstream marketers "a great way to enter the community and gain acceptance." He says "because people identify with the publication, they begin to identify with the advertisers." Mehfil publisher Rana Vig says he thinks consumers are consciously "looking to see what major companies are interested in their community." And marketers must agree: the most recent issue of Mehfil includes ads from the Bank of Montreal, Bravo!, Bell Canada and Ford of Canada, all in the first 10 pages. Mehfil's readers are mainly 24 to 49, second- or third-generation Indo-Canadians, highly educated and with above-average incomes. Vig says many are young people just starting their own families who want to ensure their children don't forget their roots. He sees his magazine, with nine issues a year, as "a pipeline into those homes." Marketers are starting to recognize the value of this type of environment. Eyetalian's Bianchi says the four-year-old quarterly magazine is attracting more mainstream marketers like Toronto's One of a Kind Canadian Craft Show and Sale, which is advertising in the fall issue. Steven Levy, director of the One of a Kind Show, says the show turned to Eyetalian after focus groups showed that its advertising was missing the Italian and Chinese populations. The show chose an English-language Italian publication because further research showed that Italian-Canadians who read only Italian-language media and are immersed in Italian culture wouldn't be interested in Canadian crafts, but later generations of Italian-Canadians would be interested and could be reached through such a vehicle. The show modified its mainstream advertising, "One of a Kind Shopping, One of a Kind Gifts, One of a Kind Show," to read "One of a Kind Casa, One of a Kind Famiglia, One of a kind Show" to reflect the importance of home and family in the Italian community. Levy says although many second-generation Italians are not completely fluent in the language, they responded to the use of Italian key words. In the case of the Chinese community, he says the show found the opposite. Chinese-Canadians who read Chinese media would be interested in Canadian crafts and can be reached through Chinese-language media, while later generations can be reached sufficiently through mainstream media. Specially designed or adapted ads are key to making the best use of English-language ethnic media. Levy says as well as just advertising in the publication "you have to link to something that provokes an emotion." Mehfil's Vig says his publication consults with advertisers about how best to communicate with the Indo-Canadian market. And Jatinder Rai, senior account manager at the Vancouver office of LLT Advertising Canada Inc., says the ads he places in Mehfil for clients like BC Tel are specifically created for the Indo-Canadian community. Vig says advertisers are "starting to recognize that even though second-generation Canadians read, watch and listen to mainstream media, we are very attached to our own cultures as well." While those cultural media don't draw as many consumers as mainstream media, they offer very personal access to the groups they attract. And with relationship-building being one of the biggest trends in marketing, media that consumers hold close to their hearts offer one way to develop those all-important relationships.