Hispanics are the fastest growing population in the United States. With ever increasing purchasing power and economic influence, Hispanics have grabbed marketers’ attention. Brands are shifting into a “total market” strategy, recognizing Hispanics’ integral role in brand strategy and marketing communication planning.
While everyone can agree that a focus on Hispanics is well-placed, understanding the best way for a brand to approach these consumers can be challenging. Do you create large, Hispanic-targeted campaigns? Do you develop a ‘total market’ campaign? What role does your English language or general market campaign play?
Understanding how Hispanics interact with your current campaign is the key to answering these questions.
First, Hispanics are just as likely (and often more likely) to engage with English language advertising as the general market. While this is particularly true for highly acculturated and bilingual Hispanics, even first generation and less acculturated Hispanics engage with general market advertising. Hispanic consumers often use advertising as a way to learn about brands and American culture. In general, they are highly engaged with digital and social media, and are often more likely to interact with brands in the online space than general market consumers are.
Second, while Hispanics see a lot of general market advertising, they are most persuaded when they see both English and Spanish language ads. This is true when general market ads are simply translated into Spanish, but the dynamic is stronger when executions are developed with Hispanic cultural nuances in mind.
Given that Hispanics are very likely to engage with your general market campaign, and that Spanish-language ads improve persuasiveness, the optimal approach is a highly integrated campaign with culturally nuanced Spanish executions. Creating a stand-alone Hispanic-targeted campaign is less cost effective and doesn’t fully leverage the engagement you are generating with your general market work. In contrast, a single approach across markets runs the risk of trying to be everything to everyone, losing the powerful cultural references that are possible when designing executions tailored for the Hispanic consumer.
Discovering and leveraging common insights across markets, by means of an integrated campaign with Hispanic-targeted executions, often maximizes ROI.
Two things to consider when designing this type of campaign:
- Ensure that both the general market and Hispanic-targeted executions leverage a consistent message and benefit proposition. Ads work best when messages are tailored to the specific market, but overall communications should focus on the same point of difference.
- Ensure that the creative has a consistent look and feel across different targets. Hispanics should perceive this as a single campaign, with messages in both English and Spanish.
By using a single campaign, with tailored creative that specifically speaks with the Hispanic target, you can capture a greater share of Hispanic purchases and build your brand across the full swath of Hispanic and general market targets.
