A Lesson in Marketing to U.S. Tastes : Hong Kong Maker of Oyster Sauce Changed Its Label--And Won Over a New Following

Lee Kum Kee oyster sauce--a mild-tasting mixture used in Oriental dishes--had been sold in Asian stores for nearly a century when its Hong Kong maker went after the U.S. mass market. But the effort failed, and the reason, as it turned out, was not the product. It was the label.

“We found out American consumers did not understand the labels that we had,” said David W. H. Lee, who heads Lee Kum Kee’s U.S. subsidiary based in Alhambra.

So, with the help of S&O; Consultants Inc.--a San Francisco marketing and design firm--Lee Kum Kee changed the name of its products sold in mainstream supermarkets to House of Lee and redesigned the label to feature an all-American steak topped with a dab of brown oyster sauce. Similar changes were made to labels on other lines of company sauces.

After one year on the shelves, the House of Lee brand has attracted more non-Asian customers, and supermarkets are more willing to make room for the line, Lee says. “There was a lot of resistance” on the part of the family-run business to change, Lee said. “But we have to suit our product to the market.”

Asian businesses, like Lee Kum Kee, have learned that they must change long-practiced packaging, advertising and marketing methods to lure American consumers. Having found that familiar marketing practices usually do not work here, they often turn to advertising and marketing firms on the West Coast for help.

Cultural Differences

American companies doing business abroad have also learned the hard way to rely on local advertising and marketing talent. A classic example involved General Motors. The giant car maker had publicized its Nova automobile in Latin America only to discover that the name of the car in Spanish means “doesn’t go.”

“You can’t just translate (advertising and labels),” said Taka Arai, assistant general manager for the Los Angeles branch of Hakuhodo Advertising America Inc., a subsidiary of the second-largest Japanese ad agency. “You may not meet the objectives that you are trying to reach.”

Cultural differences between East and West influence the way products are advertised and marketed. For example, the Japanese culture places a premium on group cohesiveness. As a result, Japanese advertising stresses how “this product will make you part of that group,” said David E. Canaan, vice president and creative director at S&O; Consultants.

But Japanese advertising, on the other hand, tends to overlook individualism--a trait admired among Americans that is often exploited by U.S. advertisers.

“The American approach has been to load up ads with information,” said John L. Graham, who teaches international marketing at USC. “The tradition in Japan has been much less information and much more of an emotional appeal.”

Packaging in Asian countries tends to simply identify the product and price. It is a different story in the United States, where food makers use packaging to make their products stand apart on crowded supermarket shelves. “We have to design a package that does the selling,” said Shelly Ostrowe, president of Haas-Zimmerman-Ostrowe Inc., a Los Angeles packaging design firm that has worked with many Asian clients. “It has to say: ‘Look at me, pick me up, buy me.’ ”

Attempts by Asian marketing and advertising executives to give their promotions an American look often fall short. Dated fashions, colors and phrases often creep into advertising and promotions. “If a package is done in Japan, it still has a foreign feel to it--they might use cliches that are already dated here in the U.S.,” said Tets Yamashita, creative director for Harte Yamashita & Forest, a Los Angeles advertising and packaging design firm.

Arai of the Hakuhodo agency said: “Sometimes you will see in teen magazines things like, ‘Coca-Cola is groovy.’ ”

Besides promotion, Asian firms must also familiarize themselves with American business standards. When Nissin Foods introduced its Top Ramen noodle product to the United States in the 1970s, the company took pains to come up with a new name (the original name was Demae Icho) and a package for the market. But when they started selling cases of Top Ramen in quantities of 10, 20 and 30--as is common in Japan--American grocers shook their heads. Food products here are sold by the dozen.

“We didn’t know we had to change the cases to a dozen; we didn’t know they are more readily acceptable,” said Tom T. Kiyomura, a former Nissin employee who is now an independent Asian food consultant. “It was like the blind leading the blind. We had to learn the hard way.”

Marketing specialists note that Japanese and Asian exporters are prone to make the same mistakes that Americans make overseas. “The Japanese don’t always do it right the first time,” said David B. Montgomery, who teaches a class in Japanese marketing at Stanford University, “but they are very adaptive and persistent.”

The Asian firms have also proven very flexible, adopting new approaches overseas while hanging on to customs that have served them well at home. Lee Kum Kee, for instance, has kept its name on sauce products sold in Asia or in U.S. groceries that cater predominately to Asians.

Those same products also bear the original label--created by the company’s founder 99 years ago--that features a colorful drawing of an Asian woman and a boy on board a sampan loaded with giant oysters.

“We will not change that label for another 100 years,” said Lee.