Advertising to Asian-Americans

This is a response to Understanding and Advertising for the Asian-American Market, published on November 14, 2005.

The Asian-American community presence is growing posthaste in the U.S and, thus, they should be heavily concentrated on in areas of advertisement. However, using generalizations and stereotypes is not the approach any advertising company should be taking.

Asian-Americans have been generalized as the “model minority,” highly-educated, family-oriented and high income earning community. Growing up as an Asian-American in a gigantic Asian-American community in San Francisco, this could be further from the truth. The Asian-American community is as varied as other Americans, no more and no less. They, as do other Americans, have the nerds, the jocks, and the flyboys.

Stereotyping them as model minorities in advertisement will be mistake, especially with the growing awareness of these stereotypes within the community (this is as a result of the boom of Asian-American online communities and Asian-American college courses). Although the Asian-American community has many different ethnicities, they shared man common bonds, especially the second and third generations. No matter of ethnicities, many Asian-Americans grew up in the same environment with each other; as a result, many portion favorite interests and hobbies.

Also, the perception of Asian immigrants as poor is also false. Well it’s not completely false; pre-World War II, Asian immigrations were exclusively “coolies,” poor laborers, almost always males, coming to America looking to invent ends meat. However, after the Second World War, with the help of the 1965 Immigration Act, the second wave of Asian immigration (which continues on into the display) is populated by students and businessmen, in addition to poor laborers.

The myth about how the second and third generations of Asian-Americans having a better quality of life also needs to be debunked. Asian-Americans, like all other Americans, have their own successes and failures. Hence, the concept of the second and third generations having a better quality of life applies to all Americans.

The other potential major fallacy is how the advertisement is made, mainly the hiring of actors and actresses. Advertising companies should hire Asian-Americans actors and actresses instead of actors and actresses from Asia. The Jackie Chan’s and Yao Ming’s of Asia have no appeal to many Asian-Americans, especially those of the second and third generations who have no connection with Asia. The fact is the stars from Asia rarely connect with the Asian-American community. The main reason is that they represent the Asian country from where they came and not the Asian-American community. While that kind of advertising may work for first generation Asian-Americans who still has some attachment to their birth dwelling, the second and third generation is less susceptible. It is thus distinguished to use Asian-Americans instead of Asians if advertising companies want to advertise to the Asian-American demographics.

Advertising companies using Asians instead of Asian-Americans is the direct result of another problem: the under-representation of Asian-Americans, especially for Asian-American males, in the American media. Asians are hardly ever seen in television programs and movies and, if there are any at all, they only represents Asian, not Asian-American. What’s worse is that Asians in the entertainment industry are always stereotyped. There’s the evil dragon lady, the submissive china doll, and the kung fu master. Never would you see Asian-Americans displayed as normal people. They almost always have some kind of stereotype. Advertising using racial stereotypes would draw strong negative attention from within (and out of) the Asian-American community.

Another problem that’s perpetuated by the media is that Asians are portrayed as “forever foreigners” or “strangers from a different shore,” they are rarely portrayed as American. It is important for advertisers to differentiate between Asian and Asian-American customers. Otherwise, they would be advertising to the wrong demographic.

As for which language should be used, advertisement companies can use whatever language they want. Using foreign language is insignificant attain because nowadays any language could be easily translated to English and vice versa.

Okay we know how not to advertise to Asian-American. So how do you advertise to the Asian-American community? You don’t. Instead, just advertise to the Asian-Americans the same way every other demographic is advertised. Don’t advertise based on race or else issues of generalization and stereotyping will occur. Again, Asian-Americans are no different than regular Americans. Therefore, they don’t need any Special requirements in advertisement.