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If content to advertise on doesn't exist, create it! That's the premise of so many Latino awards shows these days: create content and advertisers will flock to advertise on it. Unilever has been looking for some food-related programming on Spanish language TV, and since they were unsuccessful at finding it, they are creating it themselves:
Food manufacturer Unilever hopes to capitalise on a lack of food programmes on US Spanish-language television by launching a cross-platform marketing initiative including a programme on TV network Univision.
Packaged under the Desafio del Sabor (The Flavour Challenge) brand, the push will combine consumer competitions, storefront events and a nationally televised cook-off on Univision.
Ricardo Martinez, Unilever's director of multicultural marketing, said: "The programme taps into the Latin conviction that they have the best sazon (seasoning) or sabor (flavour)."
Martinez also said Hispanics spend almost twice as much time preparing home-cooked meals as non-Latinos, which could be why Unilever is increasing its Hispanic advertising and promotions budget by 47% this year.
That last piece of data is key. Lack of culinary programming points to a marketplace absence. Somebody better snatch up that spot soon or the advertisers themselves will own the whole thing. God knows that Food Network is raking in the dough, so we're sure the model works.
Via c21 Media
It's fascinating data that speaks for itself:
Nearly four-fifths (79%) of 14- to 34-year-old Hispanics cannot
identify a brand that accurately targets young Latinos, according to a
major new study released at a New York conference—Me2: Understanding
the Young Latino in America—last week.
Four-fifths of Latinos in the most attractive age demo imaginable don't think your marketing is working with them. Why might that be?
“It shows that this is a group that is not being well-served by existing media,” says Sharon Lee, co-president and co-founder of the unusually named Look-Look, a marketing company that conducted the study on behalf of Telemundo’s youth-oriented network, Mun2. “There is a huge opportunity here for anyone who understands their needs and learns how to engage them.”
That's a no-brainer. But why hasn't anyone been able to figure this out yet?
Here I am editing this entry. Latinmo
I'll tell you why. Because Latinos are a highly diverse (read highly segmented), highly complex group of people. Let me give you a real world example: my friend Monica is a first-generation Mexican-American twenty-something living in San Francisco. She is a marketer's dream, as she is extremely trend-conscious, loves gadgets and is willing to spend a little extra to get something newer or better. She has some disposable income that she is willing to part with.
How does a marketer target Monica? Well, they've got to get to know her first. Monica is fully bilingual. She speaks both Spanish and English at the native level. She "feels" more Latina than anything else, but responds mostly to Gen X American humor a la VH-1 specials and SNL. She treasures her heritage but is completely integrated into American life. She is truly a Mexican-American.
What does this mean? It means that Monica represents only one segment of the U.S. Latino market. While there are thousands more potential customers who will respond to the same things Monica responds to, there are thousands more will respond to just the opposite.
So, instead of one huge market, we have maybe ten mini-markets within the Latino market. Unfortunately, no one has been able to recognize this (at least as far as I know) or at least they haven't been successful at manifesting this knowledge.
Monica is not Western Union-ing money back to Mexico. Let that serve as a reminder that much of your Latino audience is completely different from the one you are attempting to market to in Spanish. Oh, she'll respond to an ad in Spanish (or better yet Spanglish), but it better be for something relevant; like high-end purse or a new iPod.
Until marketers realize that "Latino" is a term that we lazily use to define a community -- one that doesn't exist outside of the United States -- that is extremely diverse and comprised of people as different among themselves as they are from you, no one will truly conquer this market. Come out of your boardrooms and get to know your customer. Stop going to Hispanic marketing conferences and start thinking about who you're talking to and how.
Business Week's David Kylie was kind enough to come to Latin-Know for an opinion on what seems to be a new trend in Latino advertising: a higher sophistication in Latino-targeted ads, especially with regard to humor. Bye-bye to the omniscient grandma and hello to real-life humor -- irony, sarcasm, the bizarre -- for the Latino audience. Imagine that! Advertisers are finally realizing that Latinos aren't children, deplore clichés as much as the next guy, and like funny stuff just as much as anyone else.
David does a really good job at delving into the topic and congrats to him for spotting a trend that many a journalist hasn't been savvy enough to pick up on. The article -- which, unfortunately, features a quote from me that I can't say that I actually gave (the second one, someone else must have mentioned George Lopez, because I sure didn't) -- is a very worthwhile read, and required reading for those who still believe that the way to a Latino's heart and pocketbook is through stereotypical advertising clichés. It's official publish date is 3/16/06 but it's already available online for the anxious.
Laughing Out Loud In Spanish
Warm-and-fuzzy Hispanic TV ads are giving way to the crude and funny
Until recently an evening of advertising on Spanish-language television was good for about as many laughs as a trip to the dry cleaner. But as the number of viewers watching Latino networks like Univision tops the likes of CBS some weeks, rates for TV spots are mounting -- and so is pressure to prevent the kind of ad-zapping that bedevils English-language channels. That's helping to spark a creative revolution in Hispanic advertising as clients take more risks to reach a fast-growing market of assimilated consumers with multicultural entertainment tastes. More and more, ads marked by slapstick, frat-house pranks and edgy humor are replacing the relentlessly earnest spots that have run on Spanish-language TV for more than two decades.
Witness the change in ads for that most wholesome of products: milk.
The California Milk Processor Board for the past four years has run TV
ads featuring heartwarming scenes of an extended Latino family,
complete with grandmother baking tres leches cake. The slogan was,
predictably, "familia, amor, y leche"
(family, love, and milk). That tack was in stark contrast with the
long-running "Got Milk?" campaign in English-language media featuring
such slapstick scenes as a man in a body and head cast being fed a
cookie through the mouth-hole by his hospital roommate and then being
left alone to grunt for some milk.
The new Spanish-language
campaign is much closer to the tone of the original. Conceived by Grupo Gallegos, a hot Long Beach (Calif.) shop, it shows mythic tableaus of
people who have extraordinarily strong teeth, bones, and hair. One ad
shows commuters holding on to train straps with their bare teeth. The
slogan: "Toma Leche" (Drink Milk).
It was Grupo Gallegos that suggested moving the Hispanic ads closer to
the jokier English-language ones. "That campaign is ranked as one of
the best 100 campaigns of all time, but the Hispanic work hasn't been
part of that, and that makes no sense to me," says agency President
John Gallegos. It didn't take much to win over Milk Board Chairman
Steve James. "We've seen a flat to declining sales line in Hispanic
markets for some time, and our Spanish ads were only speaking to
customers we already have," says James, who confesses that he had
deferred to his former agency and did not pursue a new strategy in part
because he doesn't speak Spanish.
More dynamic and entertaining fare in Hispanic advertising is a must as
that segment's spending power climbs along with education levels.
Agencies view today's Latino explosion as similar to the baby boomer
phenomenon in the postwar U.S., in which a generation of children who
grew up with different mindsets from their more cautious parents became
a driving force in a dynamic consumer period. Hispanic buying power is
projected to be $926 billion in 2007, up from $580 billion in 2002,
according to the Television Bureau of Advertising.
The four-year-old Grupo Gallegos has been a catalyst for advertisers
rethinking the conventional Hallmark-card style. Two years ago the
agency woke up Hispanic advertising with a TV spot for Fox Sports Net
Inc., depicting a Hispanic housewife returning from shopping and detecting
a bad smell in her house. Free of dialogue, the camera follows her
around the house and finally into her living room, where she finds her
husband so glued to a soccer game that he has been watching from the
nearby toilet with the door open.
"That was a great example of taking a slice of life from a husband and wife, no matter the culture, and pushing the ad into entertainment," says Hispanic marketing consultant Jennifer Woodard, who writes The Latino Marketing Report Web site and blog.
Gallegos recalls his excitement when the ad took on much coveted
viral status: He received a mass e-mail headlined "Why Women Hate
Sports" with a link to the ad. The agency also put Latinos in Fruit of
the Loom apple, grape, and banana suits. And last year, Gallegos won
awards for an Energizer battery ad showing a Hispanic man, with an arm transplanted from a
Japanese man, who couldn't stop taking pictures with his new hand.
Playing with and against stereotypes is at the center of the new genre.
It does not come easily, since "not only are Americans comfortable with
positive stereotyping as a means to be politically correct, but so are
many Hispanics," says consultant Woodard. She points to the work of
popular comedian George Lopez, known for successfully attacking
stereotypes of Mexican Americans through humor.
Not much to say here, other than that the new McDonalds' online viral game is (aside from just weird) available in Spanish as well as in English.
Go to the Sharkbait web site (www.filetofish.com) to try your hand at keeping your delicious Filet-o-Fish sandwich away from ravenous sharks, fiending for that processed fish flavor. If this were a real life situation, I would starve as I wasn't able to keep it away from the relentless sharks for more than 2 seconds. Then, when you're bored of this nonsense, click on the "en español" link and you'll find that it's exactly the same. It's translated (Mexican Spanish, mind you -- I think the campaign was produced by a Texas agency) and the "I'm lovin' it" tagline is "Me encanta".
Via >>> Adrants
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