While millions of U.S residents were sweating out the Jan. 1 arrival of the year 2000 a few months ago, a certain portion of the country was happily anticipating what to them was a far more significant flip of the calendar: the beginning of the Year of the Dragon, which symbolizes wealth, fortune, and everlasting life – not computer glitches, widespread chaos, and Armageddon.

The Year of the Dragon began Feb. 5, the start of the Asian Lunar New Year (number 4698, for those keeping score at home) and the grandest annual holiday for Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese Americans. Marketers including Sears, AT&T, and Bank of America celebrated the occasion with Year of the Dragon promotions which went largely unnoticed by non-Asian members of the population. But by 2012, when the Dragon next returns in the Asian calendar’s rotating animal schedule, the event should raise a much bigger commotion.

A closer look at the dynamic Asian-American community is becoming imperative for marketers. Current data – scant as it still is – depicts a robust and largely untapped base of nearly 11 million Asian-Americans claiming ancestry from China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and other Asian nations. More than half of that number is geographically concentrated in metropolitan areas in California, New York, and Hawaii. Among all Americans, those of Asian descent maintain the highest levels of average household income, education, and business ownership. According to the University of Georgia’s Selling Center for Economic Growth, their total annual buying power is $229 billion.

As if that’s not enough info to get marketers salivating, Asian-Americans are also the fastest growing segment of the population, increasing at a yearly clip of 5.2 percent.

So why haven’t more marketers been embracing such an attractive group? “People have been timid to embrace the Asian-American market because they’re concerned that it’s not do-able,” asserts Dr. Andrew Erlich, president of Erlich Transcultural Consultants, a marketing and consumer research firm in Woodland Hills, CA. “They’ve been looking at the multitude of sub-populations, languages, and cultures, and using that as a rationalization.”

Things are gradually starting to change, Erlich notes, due in part to sharper and smarter research – some public, some proprietary – that is allowing marketers to zoom in on specific needs and preferences within those groups. For instance, he says, Chinese are found to be especially price-driven, whereas Koreans are much more status-oriented.

Kang & Lee Advertising keeps a bird’s-eye view on this burgeoning segment. The New York City-based division of Young & Rubicam specializes in linking companies including Sears, AT&T, Bank of America, Hallmark, and The New York Times Corp. to the Asian-American marketplace.

“Corporate attention to this market is a fairly recent development, and has grown mostly in the last 10 to 15 years,” says Saul Gitlin, Kang & Lee’s vp-strategic marketing services. “Promotions are somewhat of a novelty from the [Asian-American] consumer perspective.” That uninitiated view of promotion is in part a cultural function, since such basic tactics as coupons and sweepstakes are anomalies in some Asian countries.

Once exposed to promotions, however, Asian-Americans are “very responsive,” Gitlin reports – sometimes simply because there are relatively few marketers vying for their attention. “The breadth of promotions is narrower than in the mainstream market, so they get a lot of visibility,” he says. “They’re novel and interesting, so they grab more attention.” Unlike the general population, which is all too familiar with promotional tactics, Asian-Americans are “less sensitized and therefore are more compelled by them.”

THE CHINA SYNDROME

Chinese Americans comprise the largest single Asian group in the U.S., numbering about 2.5 million total; the greatest concentration – about 500,000 – lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Last year, that market’s Asian TV station, KTSF, funded a study that uncovered some intriguing findings regarding brand preferences.

For example, 50 percent of Chinese-American households polled reported using Tylenol, with Advil coming in a distant second at nine percent – not because McNeil Laboratories’ Tylenol is disproportionately promoted in the community, but because nearly 70 percent of Chinese Americans were born in China, where Tylenol is a leading brand and Advil has yet to create a presence.

Other strong brand affinities were revealed for AT&T, Coca-Cola, Toyota, United Airlines, and Charles Schwab (which was the first brokerage to offer a Chinese-language option on its Web site). Strong dispositions toward Bank of America and McDonald’s were likely a determining factor in a joint coupon promotion run in February by East West Bancorp and Burger King.

Understandably, California has become fertile ground for Asian-American promotions. Los Angeles-based Imada Wong Communications, which was recently acquired by True North Communications (March promo), has developed programs for Merrill Lynch, Chevron, SmithKline Beecham, and the U.S. Census Bureau. Public service announcements and promotions for the 2000 Census are centered on encouraging Asian-Americans and other hard-to-reach minorities to be accurately counted. The results, though still at least two years off, will provide valuable data for marketers who are still using numbers from 1990.

Among other recent findings, lofty education and income levels have translated into a tremendous appetite for the Internet within the Asian-American community. An independent mail survey of 100,000 Asian-American households conducted by Boston-based Forrester Research found that 74 percent were online – compared with less than 40 percent of Caucasian-American households. Among those Asian-Americans, 94% are using the Net for e-mail and 89% for Web surfing; 56% visit company or product sites and conduct research related to product purchases, 42% read daily newspapers and magazines, 40% view stock quotes, 33% percent read reviews about entertainment options, 26% visit sports sites, and 24% visit financial sites.

“Asian-Americans are younger than other ethnic groups online and are optimistic about technology,” says Forrester analyst Ekaterina Walsh, adding that with household penetration already so high, the numbers have probably reached their ceiling.

Overall, Walsh feels that Asian-Americans are still difficult for marketers to target “because they’re not a monolithic group. I doubt that marketers will be successful in reaching all types of Asian-Americans.” A better strategy, she suggests, might be to include them in promotions designed for anyone with high income and education or with specific interests regardless of ethnicity.

“The Asian-American marketplace is really just beginning to come into its own,” Erlich concludes. “Marketers can get in there now.”

It’s time to Enter the Dragon.

Unshelled pistachio and peanuts generally evoke the image of old-timers on park benches in springtime. The older part is true, but the only benches you’ll find many nut-nibblers on are near the third tee at the local country club. Those partial to unshelled nuts hold executive jobs (if they haven’t already retired), go to big-time tennis and golf tournaments, attend live theater, and listen to symphonies in their foreign sedans on the way home from the club. Not surprisingly, they’re significantly more likely than the average household to pull in more than $75,000 a year.

That’s the unshelled nuts consumer profile synthesized by Spectra Marketing, Chicago, using ACNielsen, MRI, and Simmons data. Mature, sophisticated appeals will resound with these consumers.

AGE AND DEMO

35 to 54 without kids in metro elite and suburban areas; 55+ in affluent metro and suburban neighborhoods

Housing: Own home

Occupation: Professional/managerial or retired

Car rental: Avis

Popcorn: Newman’s Own, Orville Redenbacher Light

Potato chips: Laura Scudder, Cape Cod

Credit card: American Express Gold

Catalogs: L.L. Bean, Land’s End, Reader’s Digest Association

Hotel/Motel: Hampton Inn, Marriott

Leisure activities: Live theater, museums

Sports participation: Golf

Sports event attendance: Golf, tennis

Sports viewing: Tennis, golf, horse racing

Radio formats: News, classical

Cable networks: Bravo, American Movie Classics, CNBC

Books: Biography, history

Athletic shoes: Rockport, Etonic

Cigarettes: Ultra low tar

TV programs: Wall Street Week, Live from Lincoln Center

Internet: AOL

Newspapers: Travel, business/finance, fashion

Gum: Stick-Free

Public conscience: Political candidate support

Family restaurants: Tony Roma’s, Friendly’s

Fast food: Roy Rogers, Round Table Pizza

Source: Spectra Marketing Using ACNielsen, MRI, Simmons

THE ASIAN ART MUSUEM of San Francisco hopes to double its membership by the time it moves into its new building in June 2001. To increase its rolls to 20,000, the museum will target the Bay area’s Asian-American communities, according to Tim Whalen, the museum’s associate director of development.

“The future of the museum is Asian,” Whalen says, despite the fact that the Asian is not perceived as a museum for Asian Americans.

The museum is testing a new program to reach the estimated 350,000 Asian Americans in and around San Francisco with efforts focusing on current major exhibitions. During the summer, for example, the museum targeted the Filipino community because the major exhibition was “At Home & Abroad: 20 Contemporary Filipino Artists.”

The packages went to members of less than a dozen organizations (such as a Filipino bar association) at what Whalen described as “500 to 1,000 pieces a pop.” About 6,000 pieces were sent; the response rate wasn’t available at press time.

Whalen says the museum is most interested in young professionals, and offers a family membership.

The museum is continuing the test with the fall and winter exhibition, “Hokusai and Hiroshige: Great Japanese Prints From the James A. Michener Collection, Honolulu Academy of Arts.” The “labor intensive” program depends on making connections with each organization. This sometimes pays off: The head of one Japanese group the museum contacted wants to write a letter of endorsement for the package going to his organization.

Whalen will also use a mail house for the current mailings-not only for a merge/purge of membership lists, but also to guarantee the next 6,000 pieces go out on time.

The new program came about after a 50,000-piece membership drop in 1997 failed to produce the numbers the museum hoped for. Whalen credited the lack of response to the lack of a blockbuster show. An earlier drive tied to a “Splendors of Imperial China” exhibition in 1996 spiked the membership by more than 25%, although 2,000 did not renew the following year.

The next phase of the Asian’s membership effort will coincide with its capital program to fund the move to the new location in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. Whalen also hopes the museum’s Web site (www.asianart.com) will be able to accept credit cards for membership applications.