KANG & LEE and Admerasia have two things in common. Both specialize in Asian-American marketing and both extended their services to firms targeting recent immigrants from Russia and Poland by offering in-language material.
Coincidence? Perhaps. But while Slavs are hardly one of the big three ethnic markets in the United States (i.e., Hispanic, Asian American and African American), Poles and Russians have achieved the critical mass necessary to make them targetable and marketable communities.
According to Saul Gitlan, Kang & Lee’s vice president of strategic marketing services, once there is more than half a million of a identifiable group concentrated in a specific area, then that group is viable in terms of being a target.
But why would an agency specializing in Asian Americans be suitable for Slavic Americans? Gitlan suggests that such agencies already know how to market to ethnically diverse groups. To help such clients as AT&T and the U.S. census bureau reach the Polish and Russian markets in this country, Kang & Lee established the Diversified Markets Group, headed by creative director Yuri Makarov.
Admerasia, which views the Polish- and Russian-American markets as a “secondary specialty,” recently launched a direct response campaign for the Fannie Mae Foundation. It includes DR space ads and coupons targeting Polish- and Russian-speaking immigrants in addition to five other groups.
Kang & Lee maintains that the Russian market alone has grown 254% between 1990 and 1998. The current population is more than 1 million and is concentrated primarily in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Media catering to Russian Americans in Russian include 90 publications, 13 radio stations and two 24-hour television stations. Russian is not defined ethnically, but linguistically. It includes groups whose primary language is Russian even if the prospects are from one of the old Soviet-dominated groups like Latvians or Armenians.
The population of Polish Americans lags behind at 800,000, representing growth of 180% for the same period. The heaviest concentration of Polish Americans is in Chicago and New York. Thirty publications and 20 radio stations serve this market.
Gitlan speculates that the telecom industries are behind much of the interest in these and other ethnic and racial markets. The niches are prime prospects for placing long-distance calls to the old country.
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