You’ve heard the expression “culture shapes people’s minds?”

Admerasia, the leading Asian American advertising agency that provides integrated marketing solutions for Fortune 500 companies, took this concept to the extreme when it showcased its digital capabilities to its clients via a holiday greeting card. (Watch it here.)

The result is a digital card with the bodies of the Admerasia staff formed into the shape of “Happy 2010,” a holiday greeting from Admerasia to its roster of clients—Citibank, Infiniti, Lowe’s Home Improvement Store, MassMutual and Nissan, to name just a few.

Culture shapes people’s minds indeed. But in conveying this message, the Admerasia staff literally took the meaning to heart—and to shapes that also became a fun team-building effort.
“This digital holiday greeting card is for our clients, although it certainly gave us an excuse to fool around in our respective Asians neighborhoods,” says project leader Aileen Lao.

The staff claims the contorting part was easy. The hard part for them was actually the logistical aspect of the project—mobilizing inflexible bodies from near atrophy (rooted-to-the-desk-and-computer syndrome?), going to the assigned locations while watching their back for New York’s finest, and braving the chilliest of Decembers – that could rattle “Avatar’s” James Cameron out of his director’s chair. The last point is an exaggeration, of course.

The locations were all for real (not blue screen), of course. These are ethnic neighborhoods of the ad agency’s Asian American markets—the Chinese, Filipino, Asian Indian, Korean, Vietnamese and Japanese, all at the Big Apple. Around the States, Asians now number 13 million and growing rapidly, further sustaining the agency’s niche business.

Admerasia is an early adopter of new marketing tools and technology since it was founded in 1993 as a full-service Asian American advertising agency. At the start of the millennium, for instance, it set the pace in digital advertising to the Asian American market, guiding E*TRADE with online advertising campaign and a ground-breaking Chinese micro site for its English-language website. Today, it has developed various digital projects with Citibank and Lowe’s.

Forming strategic partnerships with digital companies like Double Click and YouTube has also played a huge role in its business. Recently, Admerasia set a milestone when it initiated the development of a new online advertising system for targeting Chinese and Koreans in the U.S. through YouTube.

Admerasia continues to innovate for blue-chip clients such as Citibank, Foxwoods, Lowe’s and McDonald’s. While its digital greeting card is nothing like “Avatar,” for Admerasia, it’s the thought—digital, in this case–that counts.

Admerasia is located at 159 West 25th Street 6/F, New York, NY 10001, with tel. no. 212-686-3333 and fax no. 212-686-8998. Visit the admerasia.com for more information. — Dennis Clemente

Admerasia held its annual Christmas party at Trideci in Manhattan on Dec. 15, 2009.

Staff and dear friends had flowing drinks, games (drinking again) and raffles (with money involved, of course).

We all managed to come home in one piece. Nobody embarrassed themselves, if that’s what you want to know.