When West Meets East : Asian Clients Are Crucial to Some Southland Ad Firms
When a tiny Los Angeles ad agency was visited recently by executives from Apple Computer’s desktop publishing operations in Japan, the Asian guests were greeted by the whole agency staff--even the president--singing a spirited version of the ad firm’s company song.
In Japanese.
While they crooned, the employees stood shoulder to shoulder, wearing armbands designed like the Japanese flag with the agency name etched in the center. Then each employee bowed and handed his or her business card to one of the visiting executives.
Sound a bit odd? Not for Arlen Advertising, a struggling specialty agency that lost more than half its business during the depths of the recession three years ago and is trying to regroup by picking up business from Asian advertisers. The formal greeting wasn’t a pitch for a specific piece of new business, but for future business Arlen hopes to land.
A growing number of relatively tiny Southern California ad agencies and design firms--among them Venice-based Bright & Associates and Wayne Hunt Design in Pasadena--are also chasing small pieces of new business in emerging Asian nations such as Taiwan and South Korea, primarily because they can no longer get enough new work to survive otherwise.
It is one thing for ad giants, such as Ogilvy & Mather or J. Walter Thompson, to operate huge offices in Tokyo in search of big-name clients. And virtually all the big Japanese car makers have turned to California agencies to churn out their U.S. ad campaigns. But this is something new: tiny Southern California agencies chasing after equally tiny clients in Asia.
“We had to diversify--or disappear,” said Michael Arlen, president of Arlen. It has taken a few years, but Arlen says he now knows how best to appeal to Asian advertisers: by demonstrating spirit, teamwork and solidarity. Experts warn, however, that this is often extremely difficult.
“I admire their tenacity,” said Lynne Choy Uyeda, founding president of the Asian American Advertising & Public Relations Alliance, “but they won’t find it easy.” The cultural and financial barriers are enormous, she said.
For example, after an Arlen presentation, one client took two years to decide to sign with the agency. Another Japanese client fired Arlen after the agency neglected to have the client’s chairman cut a ribbon at a store opening.
Also, Arlen couldn’t afford the rents in Tokyo--often twice as high as office rent in New York City--so it became affiliated with an individual already running an office there.
Arlen at one time specialized in writing corporate help-wanted advertising. When the job market dried up, however, so did its business. So the agency took advantage of the international mix--and language abilities--of its own staff, which includes Phebe Arlen, Michael’s Japanese-American wife, who is vice president of operations at the firm.
Arlen ran foreign-language “blooper” ads--dotted with intentional mistakes in the foreign language--hoping to lure Asian executives who would be likely to notice them. One ad showed two Korean girls trying to make sense of a poster printed in Korean that had been hung upside down.
From that effort came several small accounts. But by the end of this year, the agency expects that nearly a third of its $12 million in annual billings will be Asia-related.
At first, the ad firm aimed to help small and mid-size Asian firms with marketing in America. Then it started getting calls from small U.S. companies wanting to advertise products to be sold in the Asian market.
United Frozen Foods, a maker of frozen french fries, recently asked the agency to create an ad for fries it wanted to sell in Japan. Instead of creating the ad here, the agency became affiliated with an office in Japan that has also helped it find other small pieces of business. And the agency has another employee drumming up business in Taiwan.
Taiwan is where the Venice design firm, Bright & Associates, also went three years ago for its first piece of business in the Far East.
Bright now advises the China External Trade Development Council, which is trying to bolster the image of Taiwanese products in America. Two years ago, Bright devised the slogan “It’s very well made in Taiwan,” which is now routinely placed on upper-end Taiwanese products--such as furniture and computers--that are imported here.
“It’s still very, very tough to do business there,” said Keith Bright, president of the design firm. “You have to have a built-in system of contacts and you have to be there all the time.” His company, which employs 16 people, now has four full-time employees in Taiwan.
Just five years ago, Wayne Hunt’s Pasadena design firm, Wayne Hunt Design Inc., didn’t have a single piece of business in Asia. Today, Hunt estimates that more than 70% of his firm’s business is there. It includes projects in Seoul and others near Osaka, Japan.
“That may be where the future of this business is,” said Hunt, whose firm specializes in graphic designs for amusement parks and entertainment centers. “Asia is in much more of a development mode than we are. And they really like American design. They think we have a secret and they want the magic to rub off on them.”
Briefly. . . .
Thrifty Drug Stores is reviewing the creative portion of its $15-million ad account. . . . Lord, Dentsu & Partners/L.A. has split with client Fred Hayman of Beverly Hills. . . . Los Angeles-based Ellis & Ross Advertising & Design has picked up the $500,000 Beverly Hilton Hotel ad account, formerly handled by Dailey & Associates. . . . A group of investors headed by Los Angeles ad executive Robert Young Pelton of Redondo Beach-based Pelton & Associates has purchased the Fielding Travel Guide series for an undisclosed price. . . . Los Angeles-based Western International Media has formed the Multi-Ethnic Group to handle media buying for Latino, Asian and African-American ads. . . . The Seattle Times newspaper has decided it will no longer carry ads for tobacco products.
