Avoiding Embarrassing Ethnic Marketing Mistakes
Five Common Errors That Can Doom Your Multicultural Marketing Efforts
by X. Rick Niu, CLU

California is home to a large, exciting array of ethnic groups, each with its own cultural complexities and marketing requirements. As a result, financial professionals in California understand that multicultural communities represent a significant and growing business opportunity. They are particularly attuned to opportunities within Hispanic and Asian communities. That’s because roughly half the people in California now identify themselves as belonging to one of these two groups, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

You would think that this convergence of market opportunity and broker interest would result in high sales numbers within Hispanic and Asian populations. And, indeed, many brokers are serving these markets effectively. But, in many other cases, there are missed opportunities and missteps in marketing that erode short-term sales and diminish the ability to form lasting, trusting relationships.

In our work with multicultural markets, we’ve observed some of the more common marketing mistakes and the assumptions that underpin them. Here are just a few of them for your consideration:

Mistake #1
Assuming that translating marketing materials will automatically be effective in the multicultural marketplace.

Sure, we’ve all heard this one before. Yet, we still see embarrassing misfires in the marketplace. Typically, English-language brochures are prepared, approved, and printed and then later transformed for use with specific ethnic groups in mind. In the process, everyone seeks out professional translation. Nonetheless, errors like these still creep in:
• Your English brochure for life insurance talks about an “accelerated death” benefit. Translated into Korean, it is read as “die faster” rider.
• An annuity service form is translated into Chinese, which requires the bewildered prospect to “spit here,” rather than sign here, which has a very similar Chinese character, in order to seal the contract.
• A 401(k) information sheet is translated into Hindi for Asian-Indian customers. In fact, Hindi is just one of many dialects spoken by Asian-Indians. English is actually their official written language.
• A translated brochure uses a perfectly accurate Spanish word for “affordable” even though Hispanics rarely, if ever, use this word.
To imagine the effect of this last example on the reader, suppose you are browsing a brochure that describes a product as being “dear.” You might understand what this means, but wouldn’t it be better if the writer had used the word “expensive” instead?
Before using marketing materials, ask the carrier precisely what steps they took to ensure that the materials were created “in culture” so as to ring true for the prospective client. Ideally, the carrier will have gained the input from an array of native Spanish speakers whose families come from several parts of the Caribbean or Latin America to weed out any embarrassing cultural or linguistic misfires.

Mistake #2
Believing that if a marketing piece displays happy, “ethnic-looking” faces, it’s bound to be appealing to the target audience.

Try this simple test. If a police officer, firefighter and soldier were standing in a row in their uniforms, would you be able to tell them apart? Of course. Now, if three businesspeople–Japanese, Chinese and Thai – were standing in a row, would you be able to do the same? That’s a bit tougher for some people, but for someone of Asian descent such differentiation would likely not be a challenge.

As a result, a company’s haphazard approach to selecting imagery of Asian people can lead to trouble. For example, a company that develops a billboard with a Vietnamese-language message, but with a photo of a smiling Filipino family, is likely to elicit chuckles from members of both ethnic groups and the patronage of neither.

The same concept holds for using images of Hispanics. The unseasoned marketer gravitates toward using photos of dark-haired individuals with a distinctly Incan look, not realizing that across Latin America and the U.S. there are Hispanics with a wide array of facial structures, hair, and skin colors and other physical traits.

You must also take note of what is actually happening in photos. Marketing brochures often depict happy couples enjoying life – perhaps on a beach, on vacation, or at a nice dinner. But, for Asians and Hispanics, something crucial is missing in these photos: family. Broadly speaking, family relationships are extremely important in Asian and Hispanic cultures. So, including children and older family members in photographs reinforces that financial products are designed to strengthen the family as a whole, not to generate extravagances for the buyer and their spouse.
As with translation, it might be wise to ask the carrier which methods they used to ensure that imagery will resonate favorably with the intended audience.

Mistake #3
Focusing attention solely on a middle-aged, male breadwinner when selling to Asian or Hispanic prospects.

As with any sales process, nothing happens until someone signs (or, as we mentioned earlier, spits) on the dotted line. As a result, there is a tendency to focus marketing and face-to-face follow-up on the family breadwinner. But this can be a mistake when selling to Hispanic or Asian families.

You might correctly point out that there is a “macho” tradition among men in Hispanic cultures, one that might lead to a focus on the man as the decision-maker in a business negotiation. However, the macho behavior is typically reserved for public consumption. In the privacy of the home, the woman of the household often rules, particularly when it comes to financial matters. The man’s focus is on “taking care of the family” through hard work and physical protection. This kind of dedication to security in the here and now often doesn’t extend to thinking about financial protection when he is not in the picture. So, the woman is more likely to be interested in a life insurance policy on the man; the man must then be convinced that buying the policy is an important part of being a good provider in the present.

In Asian families, a different person deserves focus: the oldest one in the room. Asian cultures hold special reverence for the elderly. To dishonor parents or grandparents can be viewed as grave and inexcusable. What may seem to be a simple financial product sale to a man of 40 can be more complex when his 70-year old father is present. Even if the father is not capable of understanding the finer points of the contract, he must be included, spoken to directly, and treated with genuine respect. You can bet that the deal will never be closed if the elder is ignored, regardless of how spectacularly the sales presentation might go with the younger client. Needless to say, this is important for all retail financial services products, including those for retirement.

Mistake #4
Approaching Asian and His-panic clients using an identical sales process.
It’s an easy trap to fall into: Use one sales process for “traditional” clients and a second process for “all others.” Yet producers who use this method are likely to fall flat in both the Asian and Hispanic communities.

Attention to detail is highly prized in most Asian cultures. People in these cultures who make purchases of financial products want to understand the machinery the gears that drive an annuity, the engine of a mutual fund’s potential growth. Producers must be prepared to go as deeply into the product as necessary to ensure the Asian client’s comfort level.

In contrast, Hispanic customers may not be as interested in the details, but they will want to understand the concept and be comfortable with the producer’s genuine interest in providing the right solution. So, for example, a producer might alienate a Hispanic buyer by diving into the finer points of a product without being asked. A very linear approach is preferred. If the producer strays from the original intent of the meeting – say, abandons the sale of a term life insurance product to discuss a universal life option, the Hispanic buyer might see this as a “bait and switch” attempt and question the producer’s motives.

Using one multicultural approach neglects to factor in biases among Asian and Hispanic buyers. For example, Asian consumers take a negative view of financial product features that promise to pay for elder care without any consideration of family support. The belief in Asian cultures is that family will actively participate in taking care of the elderly. To suggest otherwise is insulting.
For many Hispanics, life insurance may carry similar baggage. In certain Latin American countries, life insurance is reserved for the very wealthy, with high face amounts and high premiums. For U.S. Hispanics, this kind of “rarified” image of life insurance can be difficult to diffuse, especially when so many insurance brochures feature silver-haired gentry, beach houses and schooners.
Producers might want to ask the carrier for insights into Latin American insurance practices, particularly if they are targeting certain communities that may have nurtured specific biases born in their motherlands.

Mistake #5
Making a large, dramatic push into the marketplace to gain attention and win respect.
Multicultural clients can be very brand loyal. In fact, it can be hard to dislodge a competitor’s hold on a multicultural client once a trusting relationship has been established. When we think of consumer product brands like Goya, which has been selling products to Hispanics since 1936, we see this dynamic in action. Even though competitors can sell a can of beans that’s less expensive than Goya’s, the missing ingredient – long-term commitment – justifies Goya’s higher price tag among loyal buyers.

The same principle of commitment-over-dazzle applies in financial services. In recent decades, highly respected companies have boldly declared their intention to serve specific ethnic groups with a range of products. These companies hire staff, create materials, buy advertising, and move into the marketplace. But, because of a lack of fundamental understanding of how to approach multicultural markets, within a few years they notice that sales results were not what they had projected. These companies retreat quietly, never to return.

As a result, multicultural communities are wary of bold new market entrants who may be promising too much. Companies are better served by starting low and slow – perhaps a small number of products, with a modest advertising budget, followed by other offerings only after initial financial results are favorable. Not only will this approach preserve the company’s ability to justify further efforts to serve the target market, but it also will give the community time to warm up to the company and take its measure without the distortions of media hype.
Walking the Talk

Companies that are serious about marketing to a specific group also will make sure they’re “walking the talk” beyond the sales process and collateral. Their executives, sales staff and customer service teams will reflect the same interest in diversity that their products espouse. Additionally, they will sponsor activities, act as volunteers, and lend their voices and ideas to solve problems that affect multicultural communities. It is this kind of holistic involvement – combined with a thoughtful, long-term marketing strategy – that separates the truly committed players from those who are merely opportunistic and likely doomed to fail.
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Rick Niu is executive vice president and chief growth officer for the US Insurance Group of ING. ING is a global financial institution with clients in more than 40 countries. In the U.S., ING offers its array of financial services and products through the ING family of companies. You can email Rick at rick.niu@us.ing.com.

The Five Cs of Multicultural Marketing

Commitment – Start small and tthen grow your product and service -offering over time so you can earn customer loyalty and avoid a damaging retreat.

Coordination – Engage the commu-inity on a number of levels, blending marketing, sales, community involvement, volunteering, and other activities.

Connection – Take the time to give idiverse customers what they need in the context of their cultures, whether that involves additional education or deep immersion into policy or program details.

Concentration – Step beyond the la-ibels of “Asians” or “Hispanics” to learn more about motherlands of those you serve, which will reveal hidden influences and biases that you must overcome to deliver what they really need.

Care – Ensure that the carriers’ mar-iketing materials you use have been created with exceptional rigor so words and images resonate with customers, rather than alienate them.