There was an interesting article by Nick Mendoza on hispanicad.com. He argues that many "Hispanic" ad agencies are much more focused on winning awards than in working with their clients. He mentions a few cases about Argentinian Creative Directors who "are untilizing actors from Argentina, South and Central America and most fly to those countries to do so spending unnecessary client funds and worse than that utilizing actors with accents that don‚t coincide with majority of the Hispanic market in the US (sic)"
While Mr. Mendoza certainly demonstrates passion for his ideas (a little too much, perhaps), I believe that he completely misses the most significant point: what is a "Hispanic"? Is there such a person?
In many companies, "Hispanic" advertising is little more than a person or two that work with whatever money is left in the budget after funds are allocated to the "General Market". They use "Hispanic" advertising and "Spanish language" advertising interchangeably, and they seem to believe that spending a couple million on Univision, using a spot directly translated from English, is enough to cover "Hispanics".
Reality, as always, is much more complex. Just to put things in a bit of perspective, there are more than 40 million "Hispanics" in the US. If US "Hispanics" were a country, they would be the second largest Spanish speaking country in the world, ahead of Colombia but behind Mexico. There are 7 states in the US with more than 1mm Hispanics (CA, AZ, TX, IL, FL, NY and NJ), and 21 states with more than 100k. They have a combined buying power of $570bn, which would make them the 17th largest economy in the world, larger than Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium or Austria. They come primarily from Mexico, but also from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and the more than 20 countries that make up Latin America.
So this is not only a large, powerful and spread-out segment, it is also a highly heterogeneous one. Mr. Mendoza seems to be very concerned with accents, when the real issue lies WAY deeper, and both clients and agencies are equally responsible for this. I've been very fastidious in putting "Hispanic" between quotes, because I believe that "Hispanic" is nothing but a short hand that lumps all Spanish speakers together, and ignores the cultural differences that go way beyond accents. I would ask Mr. Mendoza, what is a proper US "Hispanic" accent? Is it how Spanish is spoken in Miami, with its Cuban inflection? Is it how it is spoken in Chicago (Mexican) or New York (Puerto Rican / Dominican)? Is it one of the myriad accents we hear on Univision? If so, which one? Like Maria Elena Salinas? Or is it more like Don Francisco?
In his zeal for lambasting agencies that use talent from outside of the US (with the union implications, his comment on Venezuela, his sarcasm on racking up miles), I believe that Mr. Mendoza fell prey to one of the most insidious problem in the "Hispanic" advertising industry: the sooner we stop using "Hispanic" for marketing purposes, the better we will be.
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2 comments:
Ciertamente la comunidad hispanoparlante en EUA se ha convertido en una fuerza economica muy poderosa. Ciertamente esa palabra tiene solamente una cosa en común dentro de la amplísima diversidad cultural. Creo que el pelao ese también deberá preguntarse que angloparlante es el representativo de estados unidos. ¿El californiano, tejano, bostoniano?
Creo que la gran ventaja de estados unidos, es que, aun y con la minoría racista que existe, la mayoría acepta la diversidad cultural de ese país, por lo que no creo que tenga que preocuparse ninguno de los publicistas por el acento.
Muy buen blog... ¡Felicidades!
A few interesting details about Mr Mendoza and his point of view. He is a director for US Hispanic commercials in the US. But as budgets have gotten bigger and demands for better produced creative has increased, he has worked less and less. Most of the business has headed to countries where it's both more cost-effective to shoot and where the quality of the directors is high. And I don't think that Mr Mendoza would argue with it, since he himself shot many, many times in Argentina.
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