latino lingo

All things related to effective Hispanic marketing, Hispanic advertising and Hispanic public relations.

Monday, November 22, 2010

One-size-fits-all multicultural marketing is not the answer

While marketers have come to understand the value and importance of marketing to the rapidly-growing non-Caucasian markets, trying to be all things to all consumers not only waters down the communication but also waters down the results, says the Association of Hispanic Marketing Agencies (AHAA) in an article in the Sacramento Bee.

The article states that AHAA is concerned that advertisers' request for a holistic approach to marketing and advertising to all segments and the need for a single voice is possibly being misinterpreted to minimize the need for targeted and highly specialized communication.

This type of cross-cultural approach lacks insight and understanding critical to the effectiveness of the strategy, says AHAA Chair Jessica Pantanini. "If one-size-fits-all worked, then fashion designers would have it easy. Manufacturing costs would go way down, savings could be passed to the consumer and profitability would increase. It's great in theory, but it just doesn't work in the marketplace."

Rather, she says the growing diversity and pending Census results drives the need for even more insight and understanding of the cultural and ethnic nuances and differences that drive behavior and purchase.

She adds: "Multicultural consumers are blended into the population but they retain their own unique cultural traits, behaviors and innate desires that influence their responses, purchasing and loyalty. To ignore this in the name of cost-cutting and consolidation or leaving it to the agencies to figure it out will impact negatively advertisers' return on investments."

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Friday, November 19, 2010

Hispanic consumers spend more on average during holiday season

During the holiday season, Hispanic consumers spend on average $730.30 compared to non-Hispanics’ $683.08, and they sneak in more purchases for themselves – $141.95 versus $104.46 for non-Hispanics.

The data comes from a BigResearch study on Hispanic holiday spending trends, and is mentioned in the blog "The Lipstick Economy" along with these other differences between Hispanics and non-Hispanics:

1. Hispanics list clothing and accessories as their number one gift this year, versus non-Hispanics who prefer gift cards. Also indexing high among Hispanics are electronics and beauty items.

2. Quality and customer service are more important in determining where they shop, versus discounts or price; even though 67% say the economy will affect their spending plans this year. Discount stores are still the number one shopping destination, followed by department stores.

3. Hispanics are 2x as likely to use their smartphone to research a purchase. The Hispanic population is generally younger and 67.6% own a smartphone compared with 57% non-Hispanics.

4. According to comScore, online Hispanics value opinions, recommendations and reviews of others. They are more likely to search the Internet (43% Hispanic v. 37% non-Hispanic) and comparison shop (39% Hispanic v. 31% non-Hispanic). And they have more positive associations and are more receptive to online advertising.

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Thursday, November 18, 2010

30% of mobile banking users are Hispanic

Mobile banking has grown 129% in two years to 13 million+ mobile subscribers, fueled in large part by the younger Hispanic market, according to the Nielsen Company. Those who use their mobile phone for banking tend to be younger, male and more ethnically diverse. Specifically, 30% or 3.9 million users are Hispanic.

Further, and this is a plus for the Hispanic market, mobile web banking is expected to level the playing field for the banked, unbanked, young, old, rich, poor, downtown, uptown or out-of-town, the study says.

Other findings included:

-- 36 percent are between the ages of 25-34, while only 18 percent
represent that same age group online
-- Males represent 53 percent of this population versus 43 percent online
-- 30 percent are Hispanic while this same user group represents only 11
percent of the online banking population
-- Those who use SMS texting for mobile banking – either from a smart phone
or a standard feature phone – represent the largest group of mobile bankers.

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Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Social Responsibility Weighs Higher in Purchase Decisions for Hispanics and African Americans

About one-third of Hispanic and African American consumers almost always choose brands because they come from companies that support causes they believe in, compared to just one in five Non-Hispanic Whites, according to a Yankelovich MONITOR Multicultural Study 2010 by The Futures Company and VanguardComm.

Hispanic and African-American consumers also expect companies to champion their causes and stand up for issues which affect their communities to a greater degree.
-- 79% percent and 84% of Hispanic and African-American respondents respectively agreed with the statement “companies that make sincere efforts to be part of the Hispanic/African-American community deserve my loyalty.”

-- 62% and 68% of Hispanic and African Americans respectively agreed that very few brands and companies genuinely care about the state of their communities.

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Monday, November 08, 2010

Hispanic buying power expected to grow 50% in next 5 years

... according to the Selig Center Multicultural Economy study from $1 trillion in 2010 to $1.5 trillion in 2015. The report notes that the rate of growth in Hispanic buying power tops all other racial and ethnic groups as well as the rate of growth in overall buying power.

As a whole, the combined buying power of racial minorities (African Americans, Asians and Native Americans) will rise from $1.6 trillion in 2010 to $2.1 trillion in 2015, accounting for 15 percent of the nation’s total buying power

The percentage gains in buying power over the past decade have varied considerably by race and ethnicity: 108 percent for Hispanics; 98 percent for Asians; 69 percent for Native Americans; and 60 percent for African Americans. The study projects that minority markets will continue to grow much faster than the majority market, where buying power increased by 49 percent over the past decade.

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Friday, November 05, 2010

Hispanic vote could have avoided Connecticut embarrasment in governor's race

The Connecticut gubernatorial race is still undecided and neither candidate, Dan Malloy or Tom Foley has yet to concede. While it now appears Mall0y may have won, the results have been confusing from the start.

First, the city of Bridgeport, which is hugely democratic, ran out of ballots after only ordering approximately 21,000 ballots for the nearly 70,000 registered voters in the city. A judge then took the unusual step of ordering the polls in the city opened until 10 PM, two hours past the scheduled closing. The Bridgeport mayor used the city's reverse 9-11 system, which is supposed to be only for emergencies, to let citizens know and encourage them to return to the polls.

On Wednesday, the Secretary of State even took the unusual step of holding a press conference to declare Malloy the "unofficial" winner. Soon after, the AP -- which called the race for Malloy following the election -- retracted its declaration adding to the drama.

As it stands at the time of this posting, either Malloy is up from between 3,000 - 5,400 votes or Foley is up by nearly 8,500.

Regardless, I have to wonder if we'd even been in this mess and if Connecticut would be looking like the Florida of 2000 had either candidate made a serious effort to court the Hispanic vote in the state. Sure, they appeared at some events, they connected with some Hispanic business and civic groups, and the last week or two of the campaign did some interviews in the Spanish-language media. But, neither made any significant expenditures in the market or invested any real resources.

For instance, my contacts at both Univision and Telemundo report not receiving a $1 to buy air time from either campaign, while the English-media airwaves were saturated with political ads.

In addition, neither made any real attempt to hone their messages to address to issues of importance to Hispanic voters in Connecticut. Yes, like everyone else, jobs was and is the biggest issue but how job creation is being addressed in the urban areas, some of which are 40%+ Hispanic, wasn't addressed to the population in any meaningful way.

Again, the Hispanic voter in Connecticut was an after thought and wasn't respected. As was the case when Rob Simmons lost his seat to Rep. Joe Courtney in 2006 by only 83 votes in the 2nd District that includes cities like Willimantic, New London and Norwich that have high Hispanic percentages, and when I blogged about Sen. Joe Lieberman's loss in the primary to Ned Lamont in 2006, I am convinced the Hispanic vote would have made a difference.

Of the state's 425,000 Hispanics about 65% are Puerto Rican. Puerto Rico has historically enjoyed high voting percentages in nearly all its elections. In Connecticut, their and the rates for all Hispanic voters drops considerably as many report they don't feel the politicians have their issues at heart or speak for them. Apathy, unfortunately, has become the norm for Hispanics that are willing to respond if engaged.

Nearly 300,000 of the 425,000 Connecticut Hispanics speak a language other than English at home, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, making the lack of the candidates' exposure and communication of issues in the Spanish-language media significant.

It is being widely reported that the Latino vote in Nevada essentially kept Sen. Harry Reid in office (as well as Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer in California) but no one is reporting how the Latino vote in Connecticut could have prevented this embarrassing situation.

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

World Series features record number of Latino players

World Series MVP Edgar Renteria, a native of Colombia, was one of 17 players from Latin America playing in the World Series -- a record for Major League Baseball. This series beat the previous record of 16 when the Yankees played the Marlins, according to a blog post on Hispanic Trending.

The majority of Latino players are from the Dominican Republic with eight native born players and Puerto Rico follows with three players. Mexico and Colombia each have a native-born player in the Series.