Asian Americans face new stereotype in ads

Growing up in the 1970s and ’80s, Jeff Yang, a New York-area marketing consultant, used to engage in “Asian-spotting” while watching TV and movies or looking at advertising. “If you saw an Asian in any role, it was remarkable,” he says. “Even if it was trivial or offensive, you felt that it was somehow better than being invisible.”

The few depictions of the 1960s and ’70s trafficked in gross stereotypes. In a famous early 1970s commercial for Calgon water softener, a laundry proprietor named Mr. Lee confided an “ancient Chinese secret” for cleaning shirts to a Caucasian customer. In an animated spot from 1958, a narrator describes, in broken English, an “ancient Chinese panto­mine” in which a Chinese mother “blings” her baby “slawberry” and “glape”-flavored Jell-O for dessert.

Even into the 1990s, marketers still depicted Asians as either martial arts experts or nerdy submissive types too shy to speak in public, Yang says.

There are still plenty of roles Asian Americans are seldom cast to play, Yang says. There’s no Asian American equivalent of the Old Spice guy, the hunky leading-man type played by an African American actor, Isaiah Mustafa. In fact, Asian American men rarely play romantic roles on TV or in American-made movies.

Verizon Wireless also says it’s a mistake to read any larger meaning into its TV spots featuring Asian American actors. The company cast actors of Asian descent because the commercials were originally intended to run on Korean- and Chinese-language TV programs and not because it was trying to suggest that Asian Americans have superior technical knowledge or talent, said spokeswoman Brenda Raney.

The casting, she said, was simply part of Verizon’s efforts to portray diversity: “We work very hard to make sure our general-market advertising is reflective of society as a whole.” Verizon subsequently decided to run the ads on English-language programs, too, Raney said.

Scholarly research shows that Asian American consumers accept the “model minority” advertising stereotype about themselves. In a study conducted last year, Yoo, the University of Texas researcher, showed panels of Asian Americans two sets of mock ads for mobile phones, the first featuring Caucasian models and the second with Asian models. Then, she repeated the experiment with ads for a “non-tech” product, cologne, alternating ads with Caucasian and Asian models.

Result: Asian American consumers were more favorably disposed toward the tech products when they were endorsed by the Asian models. They also liked the non-tech products more when they were endorsed by Caucasian models.

Yoo theorizes that this is a reflection of the “match up” theory: Asian American panelists have bought into the same cues and stereotypes as other Americans thanks to years of cultural exposure.

That might suggest that marketers will forever consign Asian Americans to wearing lab coats and playing techies. But Jeff Yang is more hopeful. Gradually, he says, Asian Americans are appearing in settings where their ethnic­ity or racial identity is immaterial.

“Over time, we’re starting to see a drifting away of these hard-core exclusive representations and stereo­typical formats,” he says. “I think, in general, the arc of marketing is long, but it bends toward sensitivity.”