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.
It has been proven that the most effective way to reach out to the Hispanic community is by the trans-creation of your advertising efforts not translations. I mean, create an ad campaign appealing to the Latino core value. It can still respect the overall strategy of your initial campaign. You just need to make sure that your message is culturally relevant. Then, and only then, will it be memorable and get you a significant boost to your bottom line.
Sometimes marketers tell me, “This doesn’t apply to me because I am trying to reach out to a more acculturated audience, 2nd or 3rd generation of U.S. Hispanics.” That is a very misguided assumption. Some people think that more acculturated Latinos have similar consumption behaviors compared to the general market. The fact is, that U.S. Latinos tend to “adopt and adapt” to customs and habits in the U.S. without shedding traditions and value systems. Latinos are assimilating to prevalent U.S. culture but they are not, and probably never will be fully assimilated. They are living the path of acculturation. It is the process of integrating native and traditional immigrant cultural values with dominant cultural ones. So, you may reach out to them in English but the message still needs to be culturally relevant to them. A great example of this is sports. More acculturated Hispanics tend to follow American sports but in addition to the ones from their native countries such as soccer and boxing. They add rather than replace. So, it is crucial to understand the psychographics of your audience before launching a Hispanic communication effort from your company. Surround yourself with marketing experts that will guide you and coach you to be successful in this niche. After all, you will be acculturating yourself to the marketing culture of the new America by making Hispanics part of your overall marketing effort. As of today, they are the nation’s second-largest consumer market. That’s a lot of buying power that can significantly impact your business future.
