As businesses discover the wisdom of marketing to Hispanics, the use of Spanish in advertising and customer relations has soared.
By KRIS HUNDLEY
Published October 5, 2003
Priscilla Cortizas, partner in the ad agency Creative on Demand in Coral Gables, has been trying to convince companies of the wisdom of marketing to Hispanics since 1997.
It took the U.S. Census Bureau to get them to listen.
"We've always been here, but obviously the census was a formal statement that we are here as Hispanics, and we have this very large purchasing power," Cortizas said of the figures released in early 2001, showing the nation's nearly 40-million Hispanics make up about 14 percent of the U.S. population. "The census was a huge turning point."
Anybody questioning those numbers got another reality check this spring when the Census Bureau issued an update: Hispanics are the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority group.
Since then, Bank of America has launched a new series of national TV ads in Spanish and put Spanish signs in more of its branches, including about a quarter of those in Hillsborough County. The bank also is developing a binational mortgage for Mexicans living in the United States who want to buy property in Mexico.
Phone giant Verizon is offering billing in Spanish to customers in 15 states, including Florida.
Barnes & Noble is expanding its inventory of Spanish-language books in response to double-digit sales increases in the category.
Walgreens filled its one-millionth prescription with a Spanish label.
And the Latin Grammys were broadcast on CBS in early September with about one-quarter of the ads completely or mostly in Spanish.
"For the last three years, I've been hearing that Hispanic marketing is coming," said George Ferris, executive vice president for Clearwater's FKQ Advertising and Marketing, which does Spanish-language marketing for Badcock Home Furnishing Centers. "It's here."
What started as a trickle a decade ago, with ads by mom-and-pop bodegas, car dealers and a few national chains, has turned into a steady stream of advertising to Hispanics in their native language. And the advertising isn't limited anymore to major metros areas like Miami, New York and Los Angeles, which have the largest Hispanic populations.
At WRMD, "Rumba 680" in Tampa, one of the Tampa Bay area's two Spanish-language radio stations, revenues from national accounts now far outpace those from local advertisers, a turnabout from when the station started 10 years ago.
At rival station WQBN-AM 1300, general manager Marc Vila said he knew Hispanics had arrived when elections triggered a flood of ads from both political parties.
"That's a good barometer," he said.
And not only is Spanish-language advertising more prevalent. It's more sophisticated and attuned to the Latin culture.
A Dr Pepper ad campaign that features contemporary stars paying homage to classic performers recently featured Mexican pop star Paulina Rubio and the recently deceased Cuban singer, Celia Cruz. It ran, in both English and Spanish, on national TV during the Latin Grammys.
"Hispanics represent a very significant segment of the population with incredible consuming power," said Mike Martin, spokesman for Dr Pepper in Plano, Texas, referring to Hispanics' more than $650-billion purchasing power. "Any consumer products company that doesn't address that segment is making a mistake. And obviously many are."
Dubbing English-language ads with Spanish is out. Straight translations of English phrases often are considered too simplistic and off-target. Volkswagen of America decided its "Drivers wanted" motto sounded like an ad for a chauffeur when translated into Spanish.
Cortizas' ad agency in Coral Gables went through 100 variations on VW's message before settling on "Agarra calle," which translates as a free-spirited message to hit the road.
Bank of America went with "opciones, opciones, opciones" on banners in its Tampa branches, a simple translation of the English word options. But its marketers decided translating the bank's tagline, "Higher Standards," wouldn't work. Testing about a half-dozen phrases with Spanish-speaking focus groups resulted in selection of the catch-phrase "Superacion constante."
"It means constantly striving for the best," said Cristina Morales Haltiwanger, the bank's director of multicultural communications. "It represents why they have come to this country and what we hope to give them as an experience. We wanted to make sure our spirit was captured in the phrase."
Bank of America also has more concrete goals for its latest Spanish-language campaign.
Using TV ads to reach about 28-million Spanish speakers in its largest Hispanic markets, including Tampa, the nation's biggest bank says it is specifically targeting Mexicans who have been in the United States for more than five years.
The bank hopes to generate 7,000 mortgage sales with its ads touting "80% menos papeleo" or 80 percent less paperwork. The bank also wants to attract 185,000 new checking accounts with ads boasting "La cuenta de cheques gratuita con mas, mas, y mas... de veras (The free checking account, plus, plus, plus... really).
Haltiwanger, who also oversees the bank's marketing efforts in Vietnamese, Chinese and Korean, said the goal is to have ads look similar across all ethnic groups, with the same colors and music, but with the language tailored for the particular audience.
"I know firsthand how different the Hispanic market in Florida can be from Texas or California," said Haltiwanger, who previously worked in marketing for Ford Motor Co. in Miami. "So we've made a concerted effort to cast a variety of different types of Hispanics in our ads, with a variety of accents. We understand not all Hispanics are Mexican or Cuban."
Bank of America's Hispanic marketing also is being localized. When bank executives in Tampa wanted to promote new Saturday hours this summer, they hired WRMD to do a remote broadcast at the branch at W Hillsborough Avenue and N Himes Avenue. The place was mobbed.
"There were lots of people stopping by and lots of account opening activity," said Wade Griffin, Bank of America's customer market executive for Hillsborough County, which has nearly 200,000 Hispanics. "We're going to do it again in October."
Griffin said the bank is recruiting Spanish-speaking tellers and mortgage officers, even though English-speaking customers sometimes gripe about the bilingual service. At the Hillsborough and Himes branch, all but three of the 25 staffers speak Spanish.
Margarita Lugo, a senior personal banker at the location, said she uses Spanish with 70 percent of her customers.
"They may know English, but they still prefer to speak Spanish when it comes to their money," said Lugo, a native of the Dominican Republic. "They want to understand fully."
Despite the growing appreciation of the need to target Hispanics, most companies admit the percent of total marketing budget going to the segment is still relatively small. A recent study by the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies estimated corporations spent only an average of 3.2 percent of their advertising resources on Hispanics in 2001.
Cortizas of Creative on Demand said the ad industry is still recovering from the downturn in the business after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and Hispanic ad agencies are scrambling for their share of tight budgets.
"I wish it were "Wow, boom,' but we haven't hit that pot of gold just yet," she said.
Cortizas and others think that as U.S. corporations wake up to the potential of the Hispanic market, they'll find it evolving quickly. Some Hispanics will prefer to be addressed in Spanish; others will want English. A recent study found that about 75 percent of Latino adults routinely watch TV in both Spanish and English. And only 9 percent of Hispanics say they speak solely Spanish.
"I think you'll see more bilingual ads because they're more representative of who we are," she said. "We live in two worlds."
One sign of change: VW recently decided to run Spanish-language ads on English-speaking stations in the nation's top urban markets.
That thrills Cortizas, who feels Hispanics are finally getting the recognition they deserve, thanks to both dry demographics like the U.S. Census, as well as pop culture icons like Jennifer Lopez.
Said Cortizas, "Now it's okay to scream out and say we're here."
