Latin_KNOW: The Latino Marketing Report

Sharkbait: McDonalds Bizarre Bilingual Viral Game

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

Local Language Flubs: Muni massacres Spanish

I've often talked about the horrible language mistakes and translation tragedies of marketers' lame attempts to target the U.S Latino market in its native language. It's a symptom of marketers' belief that a) Spanish is just not important enough to do right or b) any "native Spanish speaker" necessarily speaks or writes the language well.

Here's a local example (an announcement by our beloved transit system, Muni) that is truly a massacre of the Spanish language, and in my opinion insulting to those it's attempting to target (click for larger image) sent to me by a Spanish-speaking friend:

    

Many of these are laughable, others just pathetic, but to some extent harmless. What's really worrysome here is that this is not an ad, but rather a public announcement. Granted, one can conclude what the messages are here, but what if the flubs were (and they certainly could have been) more serious, going beyond spelling mistakes to actually confusing or misleading the reader?

Not too surprising from an entity like Muni, whose "mistakes" aren't only in how they target Spanish-speakers but in their  mere day-to-day operations. What's also disturbing is a side-by-side comparison of the English sign and the Spanish one (click for larger image):



Apparently Muni believes that using double the words will make it easier for Spanish riders to understand the message, when in reality all it does is confuse. Shame on the poor soul who translated this, and all of the signs in the Muni trains. Just atrocious.

Spotted any language crimes on ads in your city? Snap a photo and we'll publish them here on Latin_Know!

I've often talked about the horrible language mistakes and translation tragedies of marketers' lame attempts to target the U.S Latino market in its native language. It's a symptom of marketers' belief that a) Spanish is just not important enough to do right or b) any "native Spanish speaker" necessarily speaks or writes the language well.

Here's a local example (an announcement by our beloved transit system, Muni) that is truly a massacre of the Spanish language, and in my opinion insulting to those it's attempting to target (click for larger image) sent to me by a Spanish-speaking friend:

    

Many of these are laughable, others just pathetic, but to some extent harmless. What's really worrysome here is that this is not an ad, but rather a public announcement. Granted, one can conclude what the messages are here, but what if the flubs were (and they certainly could have been) more serious, going beyond spelling mistakes to actually confusing or misleading the reader?

Not too surprising from an entity like Muni, whose "mistakes" aren't only in how they target Spanish-speakers but in their  mere day-to-day operations. What's also disturbing is a side-by-side comparison of the English sign and the Spanish one (click for larger image):



Apparently Muni believes that using double the words will make it easier for Spanish riders to understand the message, when in reality all it does is confuse. Shame on the poor soul who translated this, and all of the signs in the Muni trains. Just atrocious.

Spotted any language crimes on ads in your city? Snap a photo and we'll publish them here on Latin_Know!

Premio Lo Nuestro: Can't wait for the ads

Stuart Elliot wrote about Premio Lo Nuestro this week, which is  expected to have really high ratings and really big advertisers, in spite of the fact that no one outside of the Latino community knows what it is.

I'll be "live" (deferred, as I am on the West Coast) blogging Lo Nuestro tonight on VivirLatino, ads and all, starting at 8 pm PST. I just HAVE to see that Wendy's ad. Check it out.

Latino kids pull on the purse strings

Cross posted over at VivirLatino

Why is that television believes children can get down with Spanish while adults cannot? For whatever reason, prime time TV (with rare exceptions like Freddie Prinze's "Freddie") doesn't want to bother with bilingualism, even though Latinos are a perfect demographic: 600 billion in buying power, median age of 26, average household size of 4 members, yadayadayada...

There's a huge rise in the use of Spanish and bilingual dialogues in mainstream children's television programming. We've posted before about Dora La Exploradora, but she's not alone.

But now PBS Kids' has more Latino offerings. ''Dragon Tales'' was revamped last year to highlight Latino issues and include Enrique, an immigrant who is Puerto Rican and Colombian. ''Jay Jay the Jet Plane'' added a new bilingual plane named Lina. PBS Kids Go!, a 24-hour cable station to launch this fall, will include two hours a day of shows in Spanish with English subtitles, said Lesli Rotenberg, a Public Broadcasting System senior vice president.

The Disney Channel will debut ''Handy Manny,'' a preschool cartoon centered on a bilingual Manny Garcia and talking tools, later this year. The Cartoon Network, meanwhile, has ''Mucha Lucha,'' a Mexican wrestling cartoon, while the animated ''Maya & Miguel'' is produced by Scholastic Entertainment and aimed at Spanish-speaking kids just starting school.

At a time when Freddy Prinze's dad was the only "bilingual" character on TV, "Sesame Street" was emerging as the only multi-cultural option for children. The same seems to be happening now. Why?

Census 2000 showed that Latino communities are the nation's fastest growing -- and the biggest five-year Latino age group is infants to preschoolers. (Among non-Hispanics, the biggest group is 40- to 44-year-olds.)

Next time you think about how liberating it is that your kids have more Latino cartoons to watch, think also about whose dollars they are after: yours via your children. Smarter than targeting you outright, no?

Via HappyNews.com

Billboard and Microsoft Launch Latino Music Site

Very good call:

Billboard magazine and Microsoft Corp. are teaming up to target surging growth in the Latin music market with a new Web site devoted to Spanish-language artists, news and awards.

Billboard, a Manhattan-based publication most famous for its music charts, is responding to the popularity of Latin genres like reggaeton and artists such as Shakira and Daddy Yankee, said Scott McKenzie, a Billboard editorial director. The new site -- through MSN -- is Billboard’s first devoted exclusively to one genre.

I hope the actual product will be based on a better-informed study than that last sentence. Shakira and Daddy Yankee don't share a genre -- there is no one "Latin music genre", but rather a Latino music umbrella under which with countless genres live, as different between them as country and western is to gangsta rap. And no, I am not exaggerating.

Contrary to what Web 2.0 thinks of the Latino market (see previous post), Billboard has confidence in Latino spending power.

“The spending power of the Latino market is on many businesses’ minds these days,” Mr. McKenzie said, pointing to increasing demand from advertisers. “From a value point of view, I see numbers in the hundreds of millions if not billions.”

And rightly so. First (or better) one to the market gets the big fish.

Crain's New York Business         READ MORE

Web 2.0: Who's serving the Latino market?

Short answer: nobody.

I live in San Francisco, the heart of internet innovation, and on a daily basis I am barraged with emailed articles and blog posts from friends and colleagues raving about "the next killer app" in this thing dubbed "Web 2.0". And because of my line of work, I am also bombarded with data and news on the "illusive" and lucrative Latino market. It seems everyone is after a piece of the pie, except internet companies.

In researching for a post on another blog, I took a look at the Web 2.0 "innovation map" that Fourio came up with. This Google Maps-based app tracks companies around the world dedicated to some new Web 2.0 concept. While I was happy to see that there were "innovators" in Spanish-speaking countries, I was surprised that all of them (they are only located in, according to this very non-scientific map, Chile and Spain) have chosen to pursue a mainstream English-speaking m arket.

True: go where the money is. False: the Latino market worldwide has no money to spend.

No one has yet been willing to step up to the plate. Spanish-speaking users around the world have cheaply translated knockoffs of portals and search engines at their disposal, but nothing truly theirs. I wonder when the internet world will start to see value in a market that traditional marketers are fighting for tooth and nail.

Since when is technology slower to the game than corporate America?