Most any marketer will tell you that the creative work in his or her segment is getting more sophisticated all the time. But when it comes to work that U.S.-based Hispanic agencies are doing these days, the proof isn't just in the product, but where you'll find that product playing.

Increasingly, Hispanic-targeted ads cooked up for domestic viewership are proving good enough to run in Latin American markets.

This trend -- a kind of marketing immigration in reverse -- not only means that the creative divide between the cultures has narrowed, but that the insights needed for agencies to reach American Hispanics are becoming increasingly more refined, resulting in messaging good enough -- authentic enough -- to work in the home market.

It's a shift that, many observers say, has been long in the making. Its roots reach back to the late 1990s, the early days of the Latino population explosion, when Hispanic ad shops began positioning themselves to serve what they correctly perceived as a rapidly expanding marketplace. But the marketing that often resulted is what Luis Miguel Messianu termed "Third World advertising in the First World." Today, he said, "The work has improved significantly." Messianu, who serves as CEO of Alma DDB, Coral Gables, Fla., is referring to domestic product for domestic consumption, though he said, "The reverse [also] applies: A lot of the commercials that we've done for McDonald's are running in Latin America."

This has, of course, meant tremendous opportunities for shops like Alma, but the blurring of cultural boundaries has, most importantly, changed creative content. In Messianu's view, the U.S. Hispanic market is "a microcosm of Latin America, all merged together." Among other things, that means that when U.S.-generated Hispanic messaging in Spanish and English rolls into Spanish-speaking countries, cultural relevance is not what it used to be. "The creative work [in the U.S.] is not as overtly ethnic as it was," he said. "So the lines between the two have become a bit blurred."

While some cultural purists may mourn that development, marketers do not. As creatives become more exposed to international influences and ad work across the board becomes more global in feel, those who make the messaging find they have to focus on cultural commonalities. As Messianu puts it: "We're not as different as we used to be. The Hispanic market is far more mainstream today, and it's influencing and Latinizing the general U.S. market." One outgrowth of that focus is the abandonment of long-held mandates that a traditional Hispanic theme must be conveyed. Gone are the stereotypical abuela (grandmother); a dark-haired male with a bushy moustache; and a Mariachi band in the background.

Take the recent commercial that Alma created for McDonald's, for example. Entitled, "She is Mine," the spot shows a shapely and young Latina in a sun dress walking in slow-mo toward a trio of awestuck young men eating McDonald's burgers and fries. Knowing she's being eyed, she says in a voiceover the boys can't hear: "Sorry, guys. There's only one man I go to McDonald's with." As she walks past, it's evident she's referring to the baby on her back.



The spot is an example of the relevance and originality that Messianu said have become the primary considerations in U.S.-generated Hispanic marketing. While the music in "She is Mine" is vaguely Latin and all the characters dark-haired, the setting could be any global city and the characters a range of ethnicities. And, though originally created for domestic Hispanic and general market audiences in Spanish and in English, the spot ended up playing in Latin American countries, too.

Many of the best creative themes are arising from what Federico Traeger described as "a very nice trade of cultural influences and cultural cues that's very open." Traeger, creative director at Lopez Negrete Communications, Houston, termed this exchange as being "like a NAFTA of ideas, insights and trends."

For instance, a spot for Miller Lite created by Lopez Negrete uses futbol (soccer) as its thematic template, drawing on the sport's mythic popularity in Latin America to serve as a kind of cultural talisman for the marketing. The 30-second spot was developed for Hispanic audiences in the U.S., but the border-transcendent popularity of soccer was such that the commercial was easily adapted into 20-second slots for Mexican TV.

In the commercial, a young couple enters a convenience mart to buy beer while a World Cup game plays in the background. The exultant cries of the announcer cleverly correspond to the young man's weighing of various beer choices in the cooler, culminating in a yell of "Goal! Bravo!" as he makes the winning choice and reaches for a case of Miller Lite.

The Miller Lite spot serves as a powerful example of how advertising has departed from the regimentation of a few years ago, when spots had to have an ethnic feel -- one that was often forced, in Traeger's view. But now, Latino-targeted advertising "doesn't have to look like anything for it to work." The key, he added, "is learning how to apply it with more intelligence and insight."

At Dieste Harmel & Partners in Dallas, what makes that message work either in the U.S. or Latin America is "authenticity, which comes from the situation and the interaction with the product, instead of the location or the look," said Aldo Quevedo, president and chief creative officer.

Inside the agency, Quevedo began widening the agency's broad world view in early April when Melisa Quinoy, a former MTV Networks International executive, came on board as CEO, and in late March with the appointment of Alvaro Cabrera, formerly of Spain's BBDO Contrapunto, to the new post of executive director.

"We're not living in the U.S. anymore. It's a global thing and we're being influenced by every part of the world every day," Quevedo said.