When the California Milk Processing Board wanted to translate their highly successful “Got Milk?” advertising campaign into Spanish, they were surprised to find that a literal translation of their slogan would mean: “Are you lactating?” Needless to say, some linguistic modifications were in order before the campaign could be successfully launched, and America’s milk processors and dairy farmers learned a valuable lesson about marketing to the Hispanic population—it’s more than just simple translation.
You can’t merely go to a computer, translate your sales literature into Spanish, and think that this will suffice, says Mark Robinson, president and executive creative director of Memphis advertising agency Thompson and Co. “You have to translate your message culturally, as well as linguistically, in order for it to be meaningful and effective.”
Even when businesses do attempt the first step toward marketing to the Hispanic community, they often fail to follow through, adds Marcela Gomez, owner of Nashville-based Hispanic Marketing Group. “What good does it do to translate a brochure or Web site into Spanish, only to find that when Spanish-speaking people call there’s no one on the staff able to communicate with them?”
“There’s also a misconception that if it’s not in Spanish, then Hispanic people will not use or buy it,” says Yuri Cunza, president of the Nashville Area Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and publisher of a La Noticia, a Spanish-language newspaper in Nashville. “That’s not the case. Translating an ad into Spanish isn’t the only way to market to Hispanics.”
Cunza suggests that businesses hire bilingual personnel and have employees undergo cultural diversity training in order to make Hispanic customers feel more welcome. “Many Hispanics don’t go into mainstream places because they don’t feel comfortable, because they feel different. If employees were more prepared for and sensitive to cultural
differences, it would create a more comfortable, welcoming environment.”
“Remember, the Hispanic population is a crowd that’s equally intelligent to any other population in the United States, and just as capable of making purchase decisions. We just need to be informed, and we need to feel welcomed,” Cunza says.
Diana Holland, president of Nashville- based Hispanic Link Consulting, agrees with Cunza and emphasizes that ads targeting Hispanics must have a higher level of educational content than most mainstream ads because most of the Hispanics in Tennessee are first generation, meaning they weren’t born in the United States.
“It’s as if you’re starting a brand new company,” Gomez says. “Just because you’ve been successful with the general market for twenty years doesn’t mean that Hispanics are going to come knocking on your door overnight just because you printed an ad in a Spanish newspaper.”
Along with the higher informational component regarding the company’s services and products, businesses interested in targeting the Hispanic market must take the time to learn about the culture, says Dominique Pryor-Anderson, president and senior creative director of Memphis’s Vida PR Marketing.
“Hispanics are very social and very loyal when it comes to business,” Holland says. It’s important to first establish relationships on a social or personal level. Not only will that business gain the trust of a single individual, but that person will tell his or her family, who will in turn recommend that business to more and more people.”
The promises of brand loyalty and increased sales are promising for small businesses that are looking to tap into a growing market.
The 2000 Census reported that there were nearly 250,000 Hispanics in Tennessee. However, because a considerable portion of the Hispanic population is composed of undocumented workers, those numbers weren’t entirely accurate. “It’s safe to say that 60% of the Hispanic immigrants in Tennessee didn’t answer the Census,” says the Hispanic Marketing Group’s Gomez. And those Census figures surely aren’t accurate now as families continue to grow and Hispanics immigrants continue to settle in Tennessee.
The lack of official statistics on the actual size of Tennessee’s Hispanic population and long-term market research on the effects of different marketing tactics on the populations’ buying habits make it difficult to empirically prove to U.S. companies that the Hispanic market is worth the investment, says Hispanic Link Consulting’s Holland. “There are no trends to report that ensure businesses that if they do A, B, and C, then D will happen in X amount of time,” Holland says.
Still, some marketing executives, using data from sources such as electric power companies and hospitals, have managed to roughly calculate the growth of the Hispanic population in the past few years.
“From 1990 to 2004, the Hispanic population in Tennessee has increased 600%,” Gomez says. And according to her research, Tennessee “has the fourth fastest-growing Hispanic population in the United States, with Nashville having the largest Hispanic community.”
The potential buying power of the Hispanic population is substantial and businesses must be patient in order to tap into it. “Becoming someone’s friend doesn’t happen overnight, and neither does gaining the trust of the Hispanic community,” Holland says.
The patience element of Hispanic marketing is often the hardest thing for businesses to deal with, Holland admits. The investment of time and money on the front end is considerably larger than what’s necessary for marketing to the general market.
“However, you’ll get twice the number of customers for investing four times as much on the front end,” Holland says. “And more importantly, those new Hispanic customers will stay loyal to your company forever.”
Email to a Friend
Print-Friendly Format