When Tony Dieste and Warren Harmel founded Dieste Harmel & Partners, Dallas, in 1995, the new partners set some goals for their venture, an ad agency that creates work for the U.S. Hispanic market. "We felt that as a whole, our industry was not respected as much as we wanted it to be by the general advertising community," explains Dieste. "The only way to get that [respect] is to focus on the work, and to have that work win Cannes Lions, Clios and the other big awards. We wanted to have work that was talked about and revered."
By now, Dieste Harmel & Partners has arrived, and then some. The agency—while largely independent—maintains a strategic alliance with holding company the Omnicom Group. And with $180 million in annual billings, Dieste Harmel & Partners creates U.S. Hispanic market advertising for clients including Pepsi, Frito-Lay, Hyundai, Anheuser-Busch, Gatorade and Quaker Oats. Aldo Quevedo, the shop’s executive creative director, presides over a creative staff of 25, and the agency produced roughly 300 TV spots and 250 radio ads last year. "We’ve been cranking," notes Dieste.
Despite their success, Dieste and Quevedo admit that they have faced certain preconceptions from potential clients who want to aim their ad message at the U.S. Hispanic market. "In America, most clients spend their day dealing with the world of general market advertising … so [when it comes to] dealing with the ethnic marketplace, there are a lot of unknowns," Dieste says. "There is a big role for us to create good advertising, but also to educate [our clients], bring them along and demystify this market."
Quevedo adds, "Some major clients will think, ‘Yeah, this is a Latino agency—they don’t really know anything, they’re not serious.’ This agency is trying to break through that way of thinking in the industry in general."
A-list Work
Breaking through the creative misconceptions comes down to the quality of the work, something Dieste Harmel & Partners has concentrated on since the beginning. An example is a ’98 HBO spot, which is about a man who appears to be starring in a Kung-Fu film. After finishing off his last attacker, a woman gets out of a car and starts speaking to him in Chinese. Not understanding her, the guy pulls out a remote control, hits the SAP button, and suddenly the woman is speaking in Spanish. "We were trying to communicate that you can be missing [a lot because of a language barrier]," Quevedo says.
More recent works include last month’s "Dipping," directed by Charles Wittenmeier of Form, Los Angles, for Frito-Lay, and Sierra Mist’s "Mascot," directed by Kinka Usher of House of Usher, Santa Monica. In the latter, an overheated amusement park worker refuses to let his heavy pink bunny costume get in the way of obtaining a Sierra Mist.
Another creative highlight from the agency is the Luis character, who has appeared in several ads for Bud Light. The ads, which include "Ice Sculpture," "Sandwich" and "Chair"—all directed Wittenmeier when he was with now defunct Propaganda Films—as well as "Centerfold" and "Vacuum," feature the hapless Luis, who constantly finds himself in embarrassing situations while pursuing a Bud Light.
In "Centerfold," directed by Mike Wang through now defunct Cognito Films, Luis spills some of his Bud Light on a scantily clad model in his magazine, and is caught licking the beer off the pages. (The spot was short-listed at the 2001 Cannes International Advertising Festival.) In "Sandwich," Luis is caught in a compromising situation with his dog while trying to fish his beer out from underneath the sofa. And "Vacuum," helmed by Wittenmeier through Form, features Luis committing what looks like unnatural acts with his vacuum cleaner—in reality, he’s just trying to get his Bud Light out of the nozzle.
The "Luis" spots have obvious crossover appeal. While that’s a nice benefit, it’s not Dieste Harmel & Partners’ main goal, according to Quevedo. "Every piece of work we present to the client has to have a strong Latino insight," he says.
"Sometimes insights are universal—it’s an added bonus," Dieste adds. "With those kinds of spots, you bring a new level of creativity to the general market, but we have found a lot of value in being focused, so we will continue to do that."
Staying focused has helped the agency move to the forefront of a growing creativity in U.S. Hispanic ads. "If you were tuning in to Univision or Telemundo five years ago and tuning in now, you would see that the overall quality of what Hispanic agencies are putting out has gone up in terms of concept and production value quality," Dieste relates. "To my knowledge, we’re the only Hispanic agency out there that has worked with Kinka Usher, Joe Pytka, David Kellogg, Charles Wittenmeier, Andrews Jenkins—the list goes on."
Dieste Harmel & Partners is set to break some new spots for Gatorade—shot by Zack Snyder of bicoastal/ international Believe Media—next month, and the shop will also be unveiling more Bud Light work soon. There won’t be any more adventures with Luis, but Quevedo promises that the ads will "still be outrageous. They’re going to be very good."
Dieste maintains that while continued growth for his company is important, it’s far more important "to be acknowledged for the quality of the work. In the next couple of years, [the best thing] directors, producers and clients can say about us is that we are at the level of the Deutsches, the BBDOs and the Chiat/Days of the world in terms of the quality of the work, but we just happen to be a Hispanic agency," he relates. "Then I think we will have achieved the goal [we] set from the beginning."
