Hispanic Enterprise - June/July 2008 - (Page 26)

FEATURE TARGETING HISPANICS THE EVER-GROWING HISPANIC SEGMENT HAS BECOME KEY TO SAVVY MARKETING EFFORTS By Sara Fernández Cendón f anything can be said of the Hispanic market as a whole today, it is that it’s changing. Just a couple of decades ago this segment was dominated by Spanish-speaking immigrants. Today, a new generation of bilingual and even English-only speakers, many of them born in the U.S., falls under the same general category. The segment as a whole is becoming younger and larger—one in every four babies born in the U.S. today is Hispanic. As consumers, Latinos are best described as active and loyal. And although members of the new generation share many cultural traits with their predecessors, their preferences in many ways are vastly different. Against this backdrop, Elena del Valle, marketing consultant and host of the HispanicMPR weekly audio program, sees an overall U.S. market that is stagnant: ﬂat at best, perhaps even shrinking. So, she asks, shouldn’t companies allocate resources accordingly? The answer is absolutely—at least according to four Lati26 I nas whose marketing businesses focus on reaching Hispanic consumers. These women have put years into convincing clients and investors that the Hispanic market will provide a return on their investment. They’re using data to, as Market Vision’s Bonnie Garcia puts it, “nudge them into the Hispanic space.” But it isn’t always easy, especially in tough economic times. Restless executives might be tempted to question whether marketing in general, and targeting Hispanics in particular, are, in fact, are propositions with a big enough payoff. The most powerful argument is that today, the general market is the Hispanic market. Take for instance a project for which Viva Partnership, Linda Gonzalez’s agency, worked on with Verizon’s generalmarket agencies. The markets in question were predominantly Hispanic, but the campaign originated with Viva was later transcreated for the “general market.” The lesson, as Gonzalez sees it, is that general market efforts should be geared to- ward the Hispanic population. And if marketing in general seems like a burden in a bad economy, Del Valle will tell you that this, in fact, is the time to double your outreach efforts. Here is a snapshot of these marketing experts and their approaches to the everevolving Hispanic market. ALICIA MORGA, Chairman and CEO CONSORTE MEDIA Armed with experience as an investment professional, and realizing her career at that point was not fully engaging her culture, in 2005 Alicia Morga started Consorte Media, a digital marketing company focused on connecting advertisers with Hispanic consumers online. “Consorte was just a matter of putting together all the pieces: my work experience, my interests and myself,” she says. Morga, A Mexican American whose parents are from Durango, understands “Hispanic” as a marketing preference, “an identiﬁcation that tells advertisers HISPANIC ENTERPRISE June/July 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Hispanic Enterprise - June/July 2008

Hispanic Enterprise - June/July 2008 Contents Briefcase: BIZBUZZ: Business Briefs Briefcase: Dynamic Trends Briefcase: Q&A Briefcase: Trendsetters BizLife: BizTech BizLife: Travel Feature: Target: Hispanics Cover Story: A Legend in His Own Time Feature: Top 25 Franchises Success & Motivation: The Talent Scout Education: Success by Degrees Finance & Investing: A Tough Sell Social Events: Emerge Dallas Politics & Government: The Accidental Americans Managing: Deconstructing Networking

Hispanic Enterprise - June/July 2008

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