I dont see any big hats. I dont see any mariachis. What makes this spot Hispanic? Thats the kind of question clients ask Norma Orci, co-chairman/chief creative officer at La Agencia de Orci & Asociados, Los Angeles, on a regular basis. More and more, clients are hiring Hispanic agencies to create work aimed at the Hispanic market rather than recycling general-market campaigns. But clients can be skeptical. Its that whole story of explaining cultural differences. We have to go back to square one in many cases and explain why marketing targeted to the specific audience youre trying to reach is going to be more effective, she says.
La Agencia de Orci is a founding member of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies (AHAA), an organization based in McLean, Va., that is happy to answer any and all questions about the burgeoning Hispanic marketplace. The 36-member group wants to help businesses reach the rapidly growing U.S. Hispanic population, a sector that numbers at least 30 million, has a median age of 25, and spends approximately $273 billion annually.
AHAA has set a number of ambitious goals for itselfagoals that Orci feels are excellent and attainable. The association was formed in 1996 to communicate the importance of the Hispanic consumer market to corporate America, says AHAA president-elect Adolfo Aguilar, who is also the former president/chief creative officer of Bromley, Aguilar & Associates, San Antonio. We also are dedicated to accelerating the growth of the Hispanic advertising industry, he adds. Aguilar, who left his agency at the beginning of the year, plans to assume his new capacity in the industry later this month.
Ana Maria Fernandez Haar, president/CEO of IAC Advertising Group, Miami, is the AHAAs current president. She will turn leadership over to Aguilar at the groups semi-annual conference in San Antonio. Aguilar was nominated and elected president at a conference in Miami last year.
Aguilar says that AHAA plans to achieve its goals through committees that work on specific initiatives, including, for instance, a committee that will help improve research methodologies. Our newest initiative is to create an AHAA-funded research study so that we can be better prepared to be an authority on specific market information. When SHOOT or The Wall Street Journal wants to know, for instance, about Hispanic penetration on the Internet, we want to be the authority.
Voter Drive
At its February conference in San Antonio, AHAA will begin work on a pro bono public service multimedia endeavor, the Latino Voter Registration Campaign. Aguilar says that creatives can show up with storyboards or ideas on the back of a napkin. It doesnt matter. Our goal is to double Latino voter registration. AHAA will work with groups dedicated to Hispanic voter registration such as the Southwest Voter Registration Project. Hispanic media heads have already committed to the campaign, and production companies, music houses and editing studios that work with Hispanic outfits will be asked to donate their services.
There have been unsuccessful attempts in the past to form a Hispanic agency association. The efforts never went past the second meeting, says Orci, who heads up La Agencia de Orci with her husband, Hector Orci, the agencys co-chairman. With AHAA it was a different moment in our lives as agency people. Weve grown to an extent that agency heads are no longer wearing so many hats. We can sit back a little and look at the bigger picture and see the context were operating in, she says.
When Eduardo Caballero of Caballero Spanish Media, a New York-based radio representation company, organized and hosted the first agency get-together in Dallas, Aguilar says that our biggest fear was that we would fail miserably. People had said for years that we would never be able to get along, that we were competitors. In actuality what we found was refreshing: Our collective voice was stronger than our individual voices.
Key participants at that initial meeting included Daisy Exposito, president/chief creative officer of The Bravo Group, New York; Paul Casanova, president of Casanova Pendril Publicidad, Irvine, Calif.; Hector Orci; Tony Dieste, president of Dieste & Partners, Dallas; Dolores Kunda, VP/director at Leo Burnett Co.s Hispanic department in Chicago; and Aguilar.
An important change in recent Hispanic advertising is the level of sophistication in account planning, says Aguilar, who adds, The more successful clients are those that embrace Hispanic marketing in its totality and not as an executional event that occurs after general-market planning has taken place. The successful Hispanic agency of today and tomorrow is going to be the one with a well-rounded strategic point of view to complement their strong executional abilities.
Glocal Reach
By taking what a colleague refers to as a glocal or global-and-local approach, Aguilar feels that agencies can successfully reach the various ethnic groups that comprise the Hispanic market. He says, While there are major differences in markets in New York, San Antonio and Los Angeles, there are also universally appealing themes, music and casting that we can use. Also, Latino subcultures are becoming increasingly aware of their fellow Latinos in other parts of the country. For instance, Hispanics in San Antonio embrace salsa in their tejano [an updated style of Tex-Mex music]. We have to be Latino mass-marketers first, underscored with customization in the local market.
Aguilar believes that the biggest change in Hispanic advertising in the last few years is a fundamental one; its dramatically improved. But why? People are better prepared coming into their jobs today. A job today at a Hispanic agency is viewed as having an exciting future rather than as a stopping place to move on to bigger things, he says.
Tony Cruz, a director at Dark Light Pictures, West Hollywood, and a former VP/creative director at J. Walter Thompson Los Angeles Hispanic division and founding partner of West Los Angeles-based ad agency Cruz/ Kravetz:IDEAS (Cruz is no longer with the agency, however, co-founder Carl Kravetz is still the firms president), says, The hardest thing to do is to find and retain talent. He points out that ambitious Hispanic youth are faced with the decision of whether to work in the mainstream or within the Hispanic community. He feels that its important for AHAA to inform young Hispanics of job opportunities in the Hispanic industry and AHAA is doing just that.
We need new blood, says Cruz. I would prefer to have a copywriter born in El Monte or Brooklyn who understands the culture, than have to deal with a copywriter from Buenos Aires, he continues, making the point that the Hispanic market is, after all, a U.S. market, not a Latin American one.
Last year, Cruz directed a pair of :30s for Southwestern Bell via HeadQuarters Advertising, San Francisco. Specifically targeting the Texas Hispanic market, Tug of War promotes additional line service by humorously depicting an extended Hispanic family struggle over a phone line. Grand Opening, another spot in the campaign, features a family opening their own Mexican restaurant.
La Agencia de Orci recently completed three Honda spots for regional Hispanic markets. These original ads, according to Norma Orci, are more successful than the recycled or spin-off commercials that the car manufacturer had used previously. We have demonstrated with hard numbers, says Orci, that a spin-off will not work as well as something that is done from a dedicated strategy. Client demand for spin-offs has diminished.
In Hondas Fortune Cookie, we see a young couple just starting their family. This is very big in the Hispanic community, says Orci. We not only start a lot of families, we look forward to it. This is what life is all about for us. That might not be a hot button for the general market, but it certainly is for young Hispanics, she says. Fortune Cookie, Musical Chairs, and Starry Night were directed by Pavel Cantu of Moving Image, West Hollywood.
La Agencia de Orci also created three national spots for Honda, The Coupe Mission, an animated ad directed by Peter Chung of Acme Filmworks, Hollywood, with Leta Warner of Ace Entertainment, Los Angeles, directing the live-action portion; and Its Your Style, and Through a Childs Eyes, both directed by Warner. These spots were created specifically for the Hispanic market, an approach Honda has taken with its national advertising for 10 years.
Hispanic spots air on networks like Telemundo and Univision. Aguilar appreciates Telemundos attempts to appeal to a younger audience since it was acquired by Sony in 1997. I give Sony and Telemundo a lot of credit for taking risks and doing things differently, he says. According to Aguilar, the model for this change was Hispanic radio, which has been subsegmenting formats, targeting programming to specific markets, such as young Latinos.
Just when you thought that Spanish-language radio was for grandma, KXTN in San Antonio becomes the number one rated station in the market. Aguilar laughs, pointing out that the Spanish music-only station has succeeded in a market universally regarded as very acculturated. Try explaining that one.
And, as Orci points out, The fact that advertising is in another language doesnt make it less American. It all adds to corporate Americas profits and good business.y
