NEW YORK During the 2008 tax season, H&R Block ran a series of TV ads that featured fictitious company reps Horacio and Roberto engaging in bold tactics to illustrate the brand's relevance to Latinos. In one spot, the two young guys enter a hair salon and ask a beautician to do their taxes. Instead, she cuts the tax form into a string of paper dolls. The narrator urges viewers to go to H&R Block, uttering "Estamos contigo" or "We're with you."

General market ads were a bit different. One TV spot, via Campbell Mithun, involved two guys dressed in Germanic Alpine garb discussing how to reap tax deductions for lederhosen accessories. They are thus informed, as the tag says, because they "got people" at H&R Block.

While these two campaigns spoke in different ways to disparate consumers, they both positioned H&R Block as being "a brand on your side" said vp, marketing Kathy Collins." Our communications objective is to share our tax knowledge, our expertise, our people. Be it 'Estamos contigo' or 'You got people,' the message is clear."

Marketers like H&R Block have long understood the need to create advertising that is developed specifically for the Hispanic market. The question is: How far can that advertising veer from what's being sent into the general market without damaging a brand? Most marketers and their agencies agree that the answer is: Not too far.

"You don't want a brand to have a completely different look or feel in Spanish," said Jessica Pantanini, vice chair of Hispanic marketing agency Bromley Communications, San Antonio. "You have to figure out which of your brand drivers will work with Hispanic consumers. Then you'll know which aspects to leverage from the general campaign."

At H&R Block, for example, a primary goal of the general market campaign was to wean consumers off tax software. But research revealed different barriers among Hispanics. One was the misperception that retail branch employees didn't speak Spanish, an idea countered by a pair of Spanish-speaking flamingo dancers in another TV spot. The other was the belief that consumers did not need an expert to do their taxes. "In general, there was a perception among Hispanics that H&R Block is not for us," said Laurence Klinger, svp, cso at Lapiz, Chicago. "We had to show that, yes, the brand is for you and we know you are in a different financial place in your lives."

While the H&R Block example shows how Hispanic-targeted campaigns sometimes need to be tweaked because the humor and cultural references don't translate, at other times, it's the tagline that resists such efforts. That was the case earlier this year when Chase followed up its black-and-white themed branding campaign, dubbed "What Matters" -- a double entendre for which there is no Spanish equivalent -- with an Hispanic effort called "Juntos Se Puede" or "Together we can."



To be sure, adapting ads to the Hispanic market means more than getting out your Spanish dictionaries. A new tagline often arises as the result of specific insights into Hispanic consumers. In Wal-Mart's latest back-to-school campaign, for example, the general market tagline "Save Money. Live Better" became "Save More. Live Better" ("Ahorra Ms. Vive Mejor"). That may seem like a small change, but it was an important distinction.

"To Hispanics, it's not just that Wal-Mart saves you money. It relieves angst because you know you'll find what you need, it has a good return policy, and so forth," explained Alex Lopez Negrete, whose Houston agency created the campaign. "If Wal-Mart is only talking about money to Hispanics, it's leaving something off the table."

For General Mills, which late last year launched its first Hispanic market campaign for Nature Valley granola bars, it wasn't so much that Hispanic consumers experienced the product differently, but rather had a different view of nature itself. "Hispanics don't feel they have to 'get away' to find nature the way Americans traditionally do," said Ingrid Otero-Smart, president and CEO of Casanova Pendrill, Costa Mesa, Calif. The agency shifted the brand's focus from the images of mountains and waterfalls that dominated the general market campaign. New outdoor ads feature a blown-up image of a granola bar wrapper printed with those same images and the headline: "La Naturaleza en tu Bolsillo" -- "Nature in Your Pocket."

Finally, some brands tend to draw on universal themes in their general-market advertising, in which case the development of an Hispanic campaign may be a natural transition. Take State Farm. Its ongoing TV spots feature slice-of-life vignettes to illustrate the importance of insurance under the rubric of "State Farm Is There"-an idea that could have broad appeal beyond the general market. Variations of the line ("I'm there," etc.) in Spanish were used this year in a series of TV spots via Alma DDB, Coral Gables, Fla.

The scenarios, however, are intended to resonate specifically with the Hispanic audience: A couple opens a dance studio for little girls; a young man buys his first apartment; a regional Mexican band looks to make it big in the U.S.

"We all find ourselves at these kinds of 'intersections' in life," said Madeline Perez-Velez, account director at Alma DDB. "With State Farm, it was a matter of leveraging insights with our consumers to find the right situations."