ASK ANY WEB PUNDIT ABOUT the
state of online marketing to multicultural audiences, and
you'll likely get some variation on the following: "It's a
globally wired world, dude. The opportunities are, like,
totally endless, and everybody wants in." Dig a little deeper,
however, and you find that this is only partly true. Sure,
most marketers say they want to lure culturally diverse
consumers, but few seem to have acted on this sentiment. Take
the financial space. Many investment firms supposedly are
targeting Asian-Americans with marketing pitches. But look on
the Web and you'd be hard-pressed to tell. One can navigate
Merrill Lynch's international site for 10 minutes, for
instance, without finding any culturally specific content.
Only Charles Schwab seems to walk the
walk, with its international Web portal offering easy-to-use
links to fully functional Chinese- and Korean-language
sites."They've set out to reach Asians with the same rigor
that they've shown in approaching the general market," says
Larry Moskowitz, vice president of strategic marketing
services at Kang & Lee (K&L) Advertising, which does
not count Schwab among its clients.
Yet online marketing to multicultural
audiences remains in its infancy. Some ethnic groups have been
targeted with more success than others. America Online in
particular receives high marks for its aol Latino section,
which appeals to a range of otherwise underserved
Spanish-speaking cultures.
"People who are in charge of strategy
tend not to have an understanding of what multicultural
markets are about," notes Felipe Korzenny, professor of
advertising and integrated marketing communication at Florida
State University and director of the school's Center for
Hispanic Marketing Communication. Even where there are
appropriate venues for would-be advertisers, the process of
coordinating content is arduous. Moskowitz notes that k&l
client Western Union has a contact person based in the U.S.
for the Asian outbound market and contacts in each of the
Asian markets it serves, in addition to a Western Union Web
maven in charge of online marketing.
"Western Union has checks and balances in
place that make it work," Moskowitz explains. "But if a
structure like that isn't managed carefully, a leading Web
site in any of the Asian markets could have three or four
people approaching [it] about a single company's projects."
Still, marketers remain sluggish in their
response to online opportunities. Jay Rossi, founder and ceo
of multicultural marketing and translation firm ddr Global,
notes that even the most eager clients often face
administrative obstacles. "It takes a lot of convincing to get
the lower echelon of decision-makers to buy into the concept,
let alone to get them to take it to their higher-ups," he
says.
As a result, quick fixes are often made;
most notably, rote translations of English-language sites into
other languages. Needless to say, an awful lot can get lost in
translation. "Companies think that they just have to get the
language right, but the language is the easy part," notes
Sherrie Aycock, co-owner of AllPoints Research.
Adds Marla Skiko, vice president/director
of digital innovation at Tapestry, Starcom MediaVest Group's
multicultural arm: "You don't see too many people taking a tv
commercial and just retrofitting it for another language. Why
would anybody do the same thing for a Web site?"
Indeed, lost on many otherwise
sophisticated marketers is the diversity of the ethnic groups
whose members they hope to attract. Companies attempting to
reach a greater number of Hispanics rarely take into account
the cultural and linguistic nuances that exist among consumers
from different Spanish-speaking regions. Even within the
United States, a program that resonates with Dominicans might
fall flat with Cubans.
