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A singer croons in Farsi while musicians strum their instruments before an audience of families gathered in a park for an Iranian holiday feast.
A banner looms over the crowd wishing them all a happy Norooz — the Persian New Year — from Lufthansa, the German airline.
Such scenes are becoming part of the marketing landscape as global companies look beyond Cinco de Mayo and Chinese New Year in their efforts to reach immigrant consumers who might miss a more mainstream message.
Just as Norooz offers firms a window into an untapped community, so too does the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, or Malanka, when Ukrainians celebrate the coming of spring.
“You can reach any community, any population, any small target group with the right expertise, the right media resources,” said Givi Topchishvili, chief executive of New York-based Global Advertising Strategies, which helps develop niche ethnic markets for Lufthansa and other corporate clients.
By working with advertising consultants who understand a group’s unique values and spending habits, he said, firms aim to deliver a relevant message at the right time, in the right place, in the right language.

“You can be effective not only with larger communities, like the Latino community,” he said. “You can reach the Polish community in Chicago or the Greeks in New York.”
Ten years ago, advertisers did target broad groups like Hispanics or Asians, said Greg Anthony, senior vice-president of Alloy Access, the multicultural division of the marketing firm Alloy Inc. But today’s clients want to go deeper, beyond such broad descriptions, and reach the more than 35 million foreign-born residents in the U.S. who hail from more than 400 countries, according to the U.S. census.
“Any time you can get more specific and more targeted, the better your campaign will be,” he said. “We’d love for it to stay easy, but it won’t.”
MoneyGram International Inc., a company that allows customers to wire money around the world, used International Women’s Day on March 8 to reach out to Russians, Armenians and other immigrants from countries that celebrate the blend of Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.
Ethnic radio programs and newspapers from New York to San Francisco carried ads wishing listeners a happy Women’s Day. And on March 8, MoneyGram representatives fanned out into neighbourhoods handing out carnations, a flower symbolizing admiration and devotion in those cultures, and discussing the company’s products in relevant languages.
The message of the campaign: that the company cares about the community’s culture.
“Even though you’re not in your country of origin, you can celebrate, and we can help you send money to your loved women,” said Anna Abelson, the company’s global advertising account manager. MoneyGram is presented as “a means of sending that gift.”
Targeting frequent flyer immigrants
Lufthansa tried ethnicity-specific advertising in the United States to promote its online booking system, weflyhome.com, which was created with immigrants in mind.
Many immigrants are frequent flyers who return to their home countries regularly, sometimes ignoring factors that deter other travellers, like wars and the economy. But they don’t generally take their business to the internet, preferring local travel agents who speak their language. The airline’s marketing campaign aimed to present the online booking tool as an alternative to these neighbourhood storefronts, said Lufthansa spokeswoman Jennifer Urbaniak.
The strategy included sponsoring events around Norooz, which falls in late March. Last year, in California, Lufthansa raffled tickets to Iran and brought singers and musicians to parks, where Iranians traditionally gather to celebrate the New Year with food and music.
“It’s the airline coming to their backyard, their festival, being part of their community,” Urbaniak said.
Three months after the launch of its new website, Lufthansa had 190,000 visitors to weflyhome.com, and revenue generated through the site was 91 per cent over the target, according to Lufthansa.
© The Canadian Press, 2007
http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2007/03/19/marketing.html