Chasing Desi Dollars

At first glance, that might seem fairly simple. Unlike Hispanics and other Asian minorities, South Asians often arrive fluent in English. The influence may be more British than it is American--cricket is preferred to baseball--but a desi in the U.S. can still pick up USA Today and understand a Gap ad.

Whether that message gets through, though, is a separate matter. "We speak English, but we don't speak the same language," says Vivek Sharma, senior manager of India Abroad, a U.S.-based newspaper that, along with titles such as India Today, India-West and New India Times, is attracting ads from the likes of Mercedes-Benz, Lufthansa, New York Life, GM, Western Union, AT&T and the New York Times. Just consider that Sean, in typical eyebrow-raising rock-star fashion, picked actress Bipasha Basu for his music video in part because she was racy enough to have had an onscreen kiss--a rarity for a Bollywood star. The mores of bare-it-all Hollywood could not be further away.

To make an advertising message culturally relevant, says Saul Gitlin, executive vice president at Kang & Lee Advertising, you have to do more than toss a desi face into a commercial. Values such as education, hierarchy and status are unshakable for desi families, even if modified to reflect American lifestyles. "There's a core belief in higher education and studying and saving," says Phil Salis, vice president of consumer marketing at MetLife, which has created desi-specific television advertising to run on satellite channels such as ZEE TV, B4U, Sony TV and TV Asia. He's not kidding: 64% of Indians in the U.S. hold a bachelor's degree, vs. 24% of the overall population. Says Salis: "That's a great opportunity for financial services."

Marketers are also recognizing that in close-knit, largely immigrant communities, familiarity with a brand plays a much more important role than it does with the general public. "Word of mouth is huge," says Lakshmi Bhargave, 25, a graphic artist in Chicago. "We have this theory that between Indians, it's more like two degrees of separation rather than the usual six." So firms show up at desi events and subtly introduce the message: We're a part of your community too. Wells Fargo sponsored a Bollywood concert in Cupertino, Calif., in June, setting up a table in the lobby and dispensing brochures touting its new money-transfer service to India, an initiative aimed at stealing business from Western Union. "It's not just about advertising," says Michelle Scales, director of the diverse growth segment at Wells Fargo. "It's about being visible in the community."

It took Hispanic marketers 20 years to convince media executives that there was a case for targeting Hispanics, and today people like Vimal Verma, chairman and CEO of American Desi, a satellite network that launched earlier this year, are engaged in a similar campaign for South Asians. He hopes what many in the industry do: if the entertainment platform is built, the advertising dollars will follow.