For generations, Asian Americans have been caught in a constant balancing act of being either too Asian or not American enough. Following decades of being cast as perpetual foreigners, many have felt pressure to abandon their cultures, names, or languages just to fit in, often internalizing shame and self-doubt in the process.
The result? Asian Americans are the least likely of any racial or ethnic group to say they fully belong in the U.S. This sense of exclusion is especially acute among younger generations. According to The Asian American Foundation’s (TAAF) 2025 STAATUS Index, just 20% of Asian Americans ages 16–24 (and 23% overall) feel fully accepted for their racial identity.
In response, TAAF launched the “Asian+American” PSA campaign on July 22, 2025 to encourage Asian Americans everywhere to celebrate the complexity and beauty of their dual identities. Created in partnership with Wieden+Kennedy New York, the national initiative rolled out across events, digital, social, press, and out-of-home platforms across the country and offers this message: we don’t have to choose between being Asian and being American. We are both. Fully, proudly, powerfully.
In 2024, TAAF and Wieden+Kennedy New York partnered to create a PSA initiative to foster pride in being both Asian and American. After scouring social media, conducting 20+ qualitative interviews across first to fifth generation Asian Americans, and pulling from five years of TAAF research, we uncovered one core insight that inspired the entire campaign.
Insight: In our yearning to belong, Asian Americans have had to forfeit so much of themselves.
- Our names: “I would get embarrassed when my teacher called my Chinese name during roll call. So I legally changed my name to an English name just to avoid the embarrassment. Which I regret to this day.” Chinese, 30F
- Our food: “One day after school, I found my son’s curry in the garbage. I asked, ‘what is this?’ He told me the kids at school said it smelled weird. That’s when we realized we needed to stop packing him Indian food to help him fit in.” Indian, 48F
- Our identities: “I didn’t want to be Chinese, I wanted to be white.” Chinese, 23M
Strategy: Belonging requires us to reclaim who we truly are. Not who others say we are.
- “I am able to live out two cultures… I have double the types of food, double the language, I have two homes to come to. I have a different custom than just being an American.” Korean, 24M
Ambition: Ignite a movement that inspires every Asian American to reclaim their true selves.
Creative Platform: Asian+American
The hyphen in “Asian-American” symbolized separation between two identities. By striking through it, we created Asian+American: a declaration that we don’t need to separate our cultures, but that we could blend them into something uniquely ours.
The Asian+American campaign became a love letter to the community, inspiring Asian Americans to embrace their full selves across channels:
- Film: Beyond Together, narrated by Sandra Oh and directed by Sean Wang, challenged the idea that Asian Americans must choose between identities.
- OOH + Photography: Billboards in Asian American hubs including Times Square, downtown LA, San Francisco BART stations and in zip codes with high AAPI populations in the three cities featured portraits by Jingyu Lin capturing Asian Americans embracing their whole selves.
- Social: A digital toolkit with Instagram stickers and the hashtag #AsianPlusAmerican encouraged storytelling. Collaborations with Talent Connect Group brought 100+ reflections from icons across entertainment, comedy, and journalism.
- Partnerships: With Right To Be, we expanded access to bystander intervention trainings, with a goal of 10,000 participants in the first year.
- PR: The campaign was previewed under embargo to select mainstream, industry, and Asian ethnic media.
- Community Input: Before launch, the campaign was previewed at Asian American events including the inaugural Belly Laughs Comedy Festival in Los Angeles.
Our campaign, Asian+American, transformed a symbol of separation into one of empowerment, uniting a community under pride in being both. In doing so, it set a blueprint for how any community can reclaim its identity, turning what was once a point of shame into a source of collective self love.
The response to the campaign’s launch on July 22, 2025 has been overwhelmingly positive, and people across the country are proudly sharing their own Asian+American stories.
- We garnered over $1.8 million in donated media value for our out-of-home creative, with 94 million impressions on the biggest stages in New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Corporate partners continue to offer donated media even two months after our launch!
- The PSA film “Beyond, Together” received over 1.02 million organic views and over 100,000 engagements on TAAF’s social media in the one-month period following July 22, 2025.
- The campaign received 3 million organic creator impressions with engagement from icons including Sandra Oh, Lucy Liu, Jeremy Lin, H.E.R., Chloe Flower, and Apolo Ohno among others.
- Extensive press coverage was secured across major mainstream, broadcast, ad trade, and Asian American-serving ethnic media outlets for an estimated total audience of 376 million, including an exclusive in Forbes, live national interview segments on NBC News and CBS News, and pieces in AdWeek, Ad Age, the World Journal, Northwest Asian Weekly, and Sampan.
- Above all, the impact of the campaign is best reflected in the deeply personal reflections of those sharing their own Asian+American stories, many which are featured at asianplusamerican.org.
Video for TAAF's Asian+American Campaign
