One of the most intriguing marketing challenges for funky, odd, different, interesting, “ethnic” restaurants is the neighborhood where they are plopped.

Such institutions often pop up in low-rent areas where their particular ethnic group is clustered – which is fine for manufacturing a core audience, but not so great for snaring the snobby, WASPy types in more gentrified areas.

As any number of studies have shown, we all might talk a good game about the joys of a Rainbow Coalition, but, in truth, we tend to feel most comfortable in the company of folks just like us.

Except, of course, for the ethnic food stuff, for the ethnic festivals and restaurants and the like, which allow us to dabble in the different, without inviting the odd ducks to move in next door.

Those ethnic restaurants can advertise up a storm, but the one obstacle they can’t easily address is the notion that the neighborhood full of the “other” must be scary – whether or not they know how to cook.

The solution is often to craft a successful brand in the ethnic neighborhood and then, but only then, open up a second eating establishment in a neighborhood where the customers will find you intriguing – and their checks don’t bounce.

Every metro area has that challenge, whether it be for restaurants or anything else. Stray too far from your neighborhood and you begin to feel uneasy, whether justified or not.

Poor Trinity College, a semi-snobby, Ivy-alternative kind of school in Hartford, is currently suffering through a spate of crimes committed against students who strayed a bit too far from the friendly confines of the campus, into the scary neighborhood just outside. It is a problem repeated at many urban campuses.

It is embarrassing to talk about, of course, despite the reality of the popularity of the suburban “gated communities,” where symbolism and reality come together in the form of a surly security guard at the front door.

We are all aware of that subconscious aversion to the different, to the unfamiliar, to the “other.”

It often pops up in unusual ways.

On The Margins

As Harvard University began to mull the fashionable notion of banning smoking on campus, the Harvard Crimson produced an editorial that made creative use of the fear of the other in an argument against going “too far” with the anti-smoking thing.

If the Harvard smokers are banished, the student paper suggested, the ban “will compel many students to continue smoking in alternate locations.”

Well, yes, that seems like an obvious point to make – unless the kids are so shamed by the societal humiliation that they stop, cold turkey. But, the most pointed part of the Crimson argument is yet to come.

“As we all know, Cambridge is not the safest off-campus environment, and enforcing a ban on smoking will inevitably place students’ safety in jeopardy by driving them toward potentially dangerous locales…”

There it is. Fear of the other, the scary outside. This is Pulitzer prize-winning rhetoric – or at least, a gold medal from the tobacco lobbyists. The essay conjures up an image of Harvard kids, desperate for a smoke, elbowing drug dealers and hookers and petty thieves out of the way, on some seedy street corner, where the Ivy best and brightest can smoke in dangerous peace and freedom.

Every business in a “marginal” neighborhood faces this instinct, this reluctance on the part of the careful middle class to venture far from home. That is why, in large part, many bank branches place their outdoor ATMs inside a secured area, with access limited to the chosen few with the proper electronic blessing.

One of the most creative sales tools ever offered up by fast-food restaurants and banks and drug stores is the drive-in window. No matter the battleground on which you travel, no matter the mean streets of Cambridge that you chose to roam, a drive-in allows you the joy of a double cheeseburger, without setting foot on frightening ground.

Much of this, to be sure, reinforces the dreams of urban planners for dense city development, with all of us crammed in together, so that we may revel in our diversity – whether we want to or not.