Winner takes all

Many times marketing directors, creative professionals and others who attend my seminars ask me, “Why does the Hispanic community tend to act slowly to my marketing efforts compared to the mainstream audience?” My response is always, “Do you do straight translations of your Anglo campaigns into Spanish?” Unfortunately, 99% of the time the answer is YES.

Simple translations simply don’t work.

Let’s get it right! In some cases, there are creative concepts that when you translate them into Spanish, the message will get across. However, is it going to be impactful enough and make the consumers buy your products or services? Not necessarily. The key is to know how you can emotionally connect with the consumers. How can you tell a story and get consumers to buy into it? This is where a lot of marketing professionals and creative agencies fall short. You can have a strong and creative campaign for the general market but you cannot assume that by simply translating it into Spanish you will achieve the same results. Why? Because the campaign was conceived for a different audience, with different values, language, and culture. This is why translations tend to be half-hearted efforts from corporate America and a big frustration for some creative directors of advertising agencies. Believe me, I used to have these discussion many times in my career. [Read more…]