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Archive for July, 2009

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

U.S. Superstores Creating Hispanic Specialty Chains

Superstores are making headlines this month for breaking new ground in the Hispanic market during the recession.  Supermarkets Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club are both planning to open new Hispanic specialty superstores.

Wal-Mart opened its first “Supermercado De Wal-Mart” in Houston in April on a trial run; another is on the way in Phoenix in August. Sam’s Club will officially open its first Hispanic superstore “Más Club” in Houston, also in August.

So why change the old model?  For Wal-Mart, it was a question of seeing the approach that worked best with Hispanics abroad.  VP of Business Development Jose Antonio Fernandez said stores in Latin America and Mexico have taught them Hispanic customers’ expectations.   “It was just a matter of time for us to start connecting the dots, and say, ‘OK, so this is happening in Mexico, and this is happening in the U.S. How can we leverage both of our companies and offer shopping that is going to be better for these customers?”

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Posted in Brand, Buying power, Hispanic, HispanicPR, Latino, Spanish, culture | 10 Comments »

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Hispanic Culture’s Lasting Influence

We’re seeing a need to shift the ways we think about how Hispanic immigrants adapt to American culture.  Many of us are familiar with the term “assimilation,” the process of replacing one’s old culture with a new one.

In the days before satellites and the Internet, assimilation seemed more necessary for the survival of immigrants in America.  Immigrant families joined into the mainstream, adopted American values of success, watched American TV shows and celebrated July 4th with hot dogs and burgers.  There was a more widespread belief then that to succeed here, one needed to shed their previous culture.

But given how easy it is now to travel back and forth to one’s home country, communicate via e-mail and cell phone, stay in touch with local media on the Internet and satellite TV, or work in businesses that transcend national borders, assimilation seems less necessary for success.

A more popular phrase to describe the immigrant experience is acculturation, the gradual blending or merging of cultures.  It seems more appropriate for our age: we are Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, and even Irish-Americans for whom both sides of our hyphenate are equally important.

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Posted in Acculturation, Assimilation, Hispanic, HispanicPR, Latino, Population, culture, public relations | 14 Comments »

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Lost in Translation: Reaching Hispanic Audiences Through Mobile Communications

(Originally published in the July, 2009 issue of PRSA‘s Public Relations Tactics.)

In 2007, researchers at the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia predicted that Hispanic buying power will reach $1.2 trillion by 2012 — nearly 10 percent of consumption in the United States.

Regardless, as David Henry,  APR, notes,  not enough companies include Hispanic outreach as a core part of their plans.  Henry is founder and president of the New York-based TeleNoticias, an electronic publicity and broadcast PR company with a focus on the Hispanic market. Here, he talks to Tactics about the mistakes that marketers make in trying to reach Hispanic audiences, the need to build a Hispanic audience through mobile communications and the importance of targeting Spanish-language media outlets.  — John Elsasser

Despite the surveys showing the size and buying power of the U.S. Hispanic population, do marketers continue to overlook this demographic?

Some marketers have strong outreach in the Hispanic market, but many still either overlook or underfund Hispanic marketing efforts.  Yet money spent on the Hispanic market often generates better in-market results than comparative dollars in the mainstream market. The companies that give the market proper attention are seeing huge ROI, not only from public relations but in overall response from Hispanic consumers.

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Posted in Hispanic, HispanicPR, Latino, Spanish, communications, culture, language, mobile, public relations | 11 Comments »

Friday, July 17th, 2009

Beyond Translation: Appealing To Culture

A recent Nielsen Consumer Insight study compared the success of different types of ads in the Hispanic market. Nielsen focused on Hispanic bilinguals, those who reported using Spanish and English “equally”, on the “likeability” of different television ads they saw.  First, they compared likeability for Spanish and English language ads for the same product.  Spanish-language ads rated 62% on likeability, while English scored 41%.  The subjects also had 8% higher brand recall of Spanish ads.

Then Nielsen examined different kinds of Spanish ads.  One type they looked at were “translated” spots, where the execution was the same as it had been in English, but dubbed or translated.  Translated ads scored higher brand recall than English ads, as you’d expect.

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Posted in Hispanic, HispanicPR, Latino, Spanish, bicultural, communications, culture, language, translation | 8 Comments »

Monday, July 13th, 2009

Hispanic Optimism And Consumer Confidence

Some recent studies have found Hispanic consumers to be more hopeful than consumers in the general market, and that hope has been reflected in their spending.

A survey done by Univision in June showed Hispanics to be more optimistic than non-Hispanics about their finances and the economy’s prospects in the coming year.  It also found Hispanics’ average consumer confidence rating 11% higher than that of non-Hispanics.  Consumer confidence levels have remained the same for Hispanics since 2005, while non-Hispanic consumer confidence overall has declined.

The reasons for this confidence aren’t absolutely clear.  However, Univision found that fewer Hispanics use credit cards, more often paying bills in cash, so there’s less issues of debt.  Also, it’s recently been reported that, among Hispanics and non-Hispanics at similar incomes, Hispanics put less of their money into 401(k) plans, so the credit crisis hasn’t hit them in the same way.  Likewise, Hispanics have been found almost twice as likely as non-Hispanics to be renting their homes, so mortgage foreclosures haven’t hit them as hard.

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Posted in Brand, Hispanic, HispanicPR, Latino, culture, public relations | 6 Comments »