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Leaders of multicultural agencies stress that Hispanic Heritage Month should serve as an opportunity to reevaluate the brand’s long-term relationship with its Hispanic American audience. Instead, the first mistake brands often make is thinking about HHM with a single campaign to check off a box and claim they’ve marketed to Hispanic Americans.
Execs from The Community, Alma DDB and Orci, three multicultural agencies that work with clients like Verizon, McDonald’s and Honda, highlighted how brands need to develop a deep understanding of the Latino experience in America in order to gain credibility in their communities. That means reviewing their budgets and how they’re blending their messages together to resonate with the fastest growing group of Americans, according to the 2020 Census.
“A big part of the conversations we have with brands is to help them see how they can step in, see [Hispanics] the way they see themselves and reflect them [in their marketing] to establish credibility over time,” Luis Montero, CEO of The Community, told Adweek. “They have to acknowledge that it’s not just that separate track, it’s very much part of the bigger conversation.”
The budgets aren’t there
One of the biggest obstacles that multicultural agencies face is budgets that don’t match the ambitions of clients, especially in the past year where marketing to more diverse audiences has become a higher priority for marketers.
“The dollars aren’t always there to walk the talk,” Montero said. “What they do sometimes is try to find the efficiencies.”
Marketers shouldn’t have a pot of money that Hispanics, Asian Americans, African Americans and LGBTQ marketing has to fight over.
Isaac Mizrahi, co-president and COO, Alma
Brands are looking to reshape their own companies internally and diversify their work forces, but that doesn’t always translate to meaningful shifts in marketing budgets.
“Brands want to be more in tune and relevant with multicultural audiences,” Marina Filippelli, CEO of Orci, told Adweek. “Brands continue to act at a high level with a lot of PR, but less so with an actual budget.” Orci has seen budgets drop even as the population rises, with marketers making up that gap with bigger general market media buys that reach a Hispanic audience, but don’t always resonate.
During conversations with clients, Isaac Mizrahi, co-president and COO of Alma, always asks how much of their growth comes from Hispanics, noting that budgets should reflect that growth. In the 2020 Census, there was a 20% increase in people who identified as Hispanic or Latino, and Mizrahi said budgets should mirror that and pointed marketers toward resources from the ANAs and Nielsen in order to understand proper resource allocation. “Marketers shouldn’t have a pot of money that Hispanic, Asian American, African American and LGBTQ marketing has to fight over,” Mizrahi said.
Montero said he has a few clients that are protecting their Hispanic budgets first, and shaving media spend elsewhere when budgets start to tighten. “They’re seeing the value of the business growth of connecting effectively and authentically with that audience.”
Blending your message
Montero stressed that Hispanic Americans should not be treated as a monolith—or as one segment that can be targeted with a single message. While many share similar experiences that have shaped their cultural identity, Montero said his team tailored messages first to build credibility, followed by mass marketing messages to acknowledge and blend in their experiences.
“This speaks more directly to them and is more nuanced to them, both in communication messages and also in situational dynamics,” Montero said. “When you look at how Hispanics are living today, in the English language worlds they navigate, [mass marketing] has got to be in a bigger conversation.”
Brands need to deliver a number of specialized messages to catch people where it resonates most. “I’m a Latina, I speak both languages at home and work. My habits shift all day long,” Filippelli said. “Brands need to stay consistent with messages, but hit people with different nuances” to cut through the clutter and make them pay attention to an ad.
It’s important to blend media sources that include mass marketing, Spanish-speaking media and Hispanic-owned media. As brands have committed to spending with more diversely-owned media outlets this past summer, Mizrahi emphasized that brands shouldn’t abandon networks like Telemundo and Univision, which aren’t minority owned.
“What we need is to enhance Hispanic culture driven media with minority owned channels and outlets, but not at the expense of something that’s proven,” Mizrahi said, adding audiences are going to go where they’re going to go and so brands should follow them.
Questions clients should ask
Each of the three execs explained what clients need to be curious about:
- Filippelli wants brands to zero in on measuring results the right way. “Can we track attribution, awareness or brand perception?” Filippelli tells brands they need think campaigns through end-to-end. That means evaluating infrastructure to ensure if a brand is driving customers somewhere like its call centers or websites, for example, they have Spanish-speaking options.
- Montero simply wants clients to ask “Why are we looking at Hispanics as a separate group?” He added that brands have a picture of what marketing to Hispanics looks like, but don’t take a deeper look into the group to deliver more nuanced and contextual experiences.
- Mizrahi said clients should be asking about how they can mix creative and media to make those decisions together again. He suggested an index for brands to understand the cultural value of the media they are buying against in order to match creative with the right audiences.
