HispanicBusiness:
Toyota, McDonald’s and Reebok are among heavyweight companies increasing their use of English-language advertising when seeking to reach U.S. Hispanics, especially younger ones born in their parents’ adopted country. These companies are leading a new marketing trend that, according to some experts, has enormous potential.
‘I worked at Univision for 3 years and I quit because I realized that most Latinos don’t watch television in Spanish,’ said Robert Ross, president of AIM TV, which produces 2 programs a week in English for a young Hispanic audience. He said Hispanic young people ‘are very Latino, but they live their life in English.’
In 2004, 65% of Hispanics living in the United States had been born in that country, up sharply from the 1970s and 80s when most Latinos had been born abroad, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics. The Pew Hispanic Center, meanwhile, estimates that by 2020 75% of Hispanics will have been born in the United States. Hispanics make up the biggest minority in the U.S., numbering just over 40 million in an overall population nearing 300 million.
Despite the trend, most Hispanic-aimed advertising still appears in Spanish-language media and above all the two large U.S. Spanish-language television networks: Univision and Telemundo. According to the publication ‘Advertising Age,’ Hispanic television networks - both nationally and locally - received $2.15 billion in advertising revenue in 2005, or 65% of the total. Many large advertisers presume that members of bilingual households watch programs in both languages and also that the audience is homogenous and easily defined.
Additionally, programs like those on AIM TV are few and far between and the audience for them is small relative to those seen on Univision, which, to cite an example, attracted more than 4 million viewers on the week of July 17 for the soap opera ‘La fea mas bella’ (The prettiest ugly girl).
Ross, however, said that 2nd-generation Hispanics don’t like soaps, or ‘telenovelas,’ and that he is convinced that initiatives like his will experience a surge in popularity in the coming years. The growing number of projects along the lines of AIM TV - both television ventures such as NBC Universal-owned Mun2 and CTV as well as English-language publications such as Los Angeles’ Tu Ciudad and Latina Magazine or supplements like the New York Post in English for Hispanics - would seem to confirm that the trend is growing. ‘The 2nd generation is a sub-segment of the market that is attracting more attention all the time,’ said Marcos Baer, the director of Portada, a publication that specializes in the Hispanic market. For Baer, ‘it makes sense to differentiate between the first and second generation,” adding that “the second generation generally has greater purchasing power.’
But Laura Martinez, publisher of Marketing y Medios, which provides insight for advertisers trying to reach the Hispanic market, said that while ‘every one is talking about a new trend, most advertising (geared to Hispanics) keeps going to TV in Spanish.’
McDonald’s, however, says it wants to reach out to second-generation Latinos and will be devoting a growing proportion of its Hispanic-targeted marketing budget to ads in English, even though the overall percentage remains small. ‘Speaking only in Spanish limits us a little,’ Rick Marroquin, McDonald’s director of marketing for the Hispanic market, told EFE. He said that ‘85% of our media advertising budget for the Hispanic market goes to Spanish-language publications or TV.’
Executives with automaker Toyota, which recently filmed a new bilingual commercial, are also looking for the best way to reach out to 2nd-generation Hispanics. Kim McCullough, marketing manager at Toyota, said that ‘Latino youth are multi-cultural’ and move in 2 different cultural and linguistic circles. For that reason, she said the company often opts for bilingual commercials that have a universal message and in which the actors switch effortlessly from one language to the other.
Shoe manufacturer Reebok is another company seeking to appeal to young Hispanics in English, having launched a Web page in that language last year.
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