British Media Corporate Strategy

Britain today is truly a nation of rich cultural diversity, this is something worth celebrating. There are so many Indian faces used in British media, yet it is still hard to believe that South Asian Indians are not perceived as an important target segment. Of the UK's ethnic minority population, which is approximately 6.5% of the whole population, nearly half are of South Asian origin. The largest ethnic minority group are Indians, accounting of 28% - Gidoomal, Mahtani and Porter (2003).

In terms of the media, marketers have established that they should be aware of the growing maturity and sophistication of the Indian consumer market, and should consider the benefits of absorbing the Indian culture into their mainstream advertising strategies.

IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) report stated that 96% of those working in the advertising industry are white; therefore can these very same people aspire truly absorbing adverts for the multi-racial Britain?

One common tactic has been to feature Indian and Black actors in TV and press advertisements. "Use of minority ethnic actors in settings draws strong, resonant attention to the creative execution" Fletcher (2003). A key finding is that whilst there is still a demand for culturally-relevant marketing, many advertisers fail to connect with ethnic audiences through perceived stereotyping and tokenism.

Research Aim or Problem

The aim is to evaluate the use of South Indian Asians in British television advertising, and the attitudes and perceptions of the messages delivered, and if the purpose of using such actors is to target the South Asian Indian audiences, in terms of purchasing behaviour, or if the actors are used to suggest that Britain is a multi-cultural society

During the 1980s, the British Asian youth culture has been perceived as almost invisible (Gillespie (1996). Writers such as Hanif Kureishi (My Beautiful Launderette, The Buddha of Suburbia) and notoriously, Salman Khan, began to emerge as figures of national and international repute. But at the presence of a broad-based Asian youth culture in Britain is now only beginning to be felt, as new forms of cultural expression, particularly in film and music, make themselves heard and seen (Channel 4 2004). In 1994, Birmingham-born Sikh singer Apache Indian became a disc jockey on BBC Radio One, British Asian youth culture achieved a level of public, national visibility which could not have been envisaged.

While consumption activities are undoubtedly important, and increasingly so, in constituting identities, there is no significant empirical evidence to suggest that product markets and television media now shape identities more powerfully than categories of class and ethnicity, religion and race, nation and region.

Thus in order to understand the effectiveness of using Indian faces in British TV advertising, not only in terms