Creating a Community for Asians in Advertising

By Carson Kwok from Marketing News Canada

If you Google the terms “Asians in Advertising”, the first eight results are articles on how to advertise to Asians. As an Asian working in advertising myself, the realization feels odd. Are we more valuable as a consumer segment that’s buying than as the professionals doing the selling?

Thankfully, if you scroll further down the search results, you’ll find www.asiansinadvertising.com. Asians in Advertising (AIA) is a grassroots community founded by Bernice Chao and Jessalin Lam to help Asian advertising professionals connect with each other. 

Bernice, Creative Director at R/GA California, bought the URL two years ago but left the website blank. Bernice shelved the original project that she was planning. It didn’t feel like the right time to her and there were underlying cultural hesitations in carving a space for ourselves as Asians. 

This changed at the start of the pandemic. Bernice had time to reflect and came to the realization that throughout her career at some of the top advertising agencies, she really only knew of five or six Asian agency leaders/mentors. Disheartening, but not surprising - the advertising industry isn’t known for its diversity, especially at the senior level in North America. 

This isn’t an issue unique to advertising. A Harvard Business Review article reported that, “Asian-Americans are the least likely group to be promoted to managers in America.” Other studies corroborate and found that Asian Americans represent the highest proportion of entry-level professionals in Silicon Valley, but “white men and women were twice as likely as Asians to become executives and held almost 3x the number of executive jobs.” 

The same trends apply in Canada, with People of Colour in Advertising and Marketing (POCAM) reporting that 78% of BIPOC advertising and marketing professionals felt that they had no BIPOC mentors at work. 

As a creative, Bernice never worked for a female person of colour. During the pandemic, she went searching for them to see what their career path was like. She went to virtual conferences and reached out to LinkedIn strangers. At the same time, junior professionals started reaching out to her to get advice on their own careers. From any level, she knew how important it was for Asian employees to see someone higher up the career ladder that they can identify with. She also knew how hard it was to find that in the advertising industry. 

At a virtual conference, she met Jessalin, Director of Precision Marketing Academy Director at TBWA for Nissan United. Jessalin is also an advocate of DEI and a passionate leader of organizational learning and development. After talking, Jessalin and Bernice decided to join forces as co-founders of Asians in Advertising. In no time at all, the website was live and their first initiative was organized. 

One of the major goals for Asians in Advertising is connecting... well, Asians in advertising. If Asian professionals were not finding mentors in their immediate vicinity, the community had to look for each other elsewhere. And the idea of a Matchmaking Session was born.

With these sessions, Bernice and Jessalin want to provide an opportunity for Asians to make connections and to learn from each other virtually. These sessions are not restricted by geography or by seniority; Asian professionals in all aspects of marketing/advertising can sign up on the website and be paired for an one on one chat with another professional. The support system for Asian professionals would grow exponentially through a global community. 

Tragically, a week after the website went live, eight people lost their lives in the Atlanta shootings, six were Asian women. The Asian community was in mourning and was galvanized to be loud in carving a space for ourselves to bring awareness to the complex issues that come from being Asian. 

AIA is a grassroots movement that tapped into an immense and unspoken need after the Georgia tragedy. The co-founders originally planned for 50 people for the Matchmaking Session purely because of Zoom Meeting caps. But they had over 600 professionals sign up. What began as one session on May 27th, has been extended into a second session on May 28th and potentially a third..

AIA have also evolved as a community resource. The website provides monthly resources for professionals like internship programs and events. During the summer, AIA is organizing a speaker series on Asian Leadership that covers entry-level to moving into the C-Suite. The series hopes to address a concerning trend that the industry is losing Asian talent between junior and C-Suite levels. 

Visit www.asiansinadvertising.com if you are interested in making connections and to be updated for future initiatives.