By Aimee Deeken

One of the fastest-growing Hispanic markets in the U.S. enjoys a bevy of targeted media

Though advertisers and media giants seeking Florida’s Hispanic audience have long established themselves in Miami, they might be wise to set their sites on Orlando, one of the fastest-growing Hispanic markets in the country.

In fact, the number of Hispanic residents across its nine counties soared 255 percent in the past five years, from 133,000 to 478,000, according to market intelligence firm Geoscape International.

The Orlando/Daytona Beach/Melbourne DMA is No. 20 in both general- and Hispanic-market rankings. Hispanics make up approximately 14.4 percent of the 3.32 million population, according to BIA Financial Network, but their representation is greater in two counties: Orlando’s Orange County is 23.5 percent Hispanic; Osceola is 38 percent, according to 2005 U.S. Census data.
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Has any one out there tried buying social media for the Hispanic market? Well, first of all, there are very few players in the market today speaking only to Hispanic. Most of them are pretty hokey at best. The general market sites cannot discriminate between its total user universe from the Hispanic users. They do not ask any qualifying questions which allow for segmentation. This causes CPM to levels to rise so much that they do not make strategic sense. I mean, after all, isn’t the claim that internet supposed to me efficient?

Myspace.com has the most attractive sampling of Hispanics, but there is little to nothing you can do to target them. You can do so my choosing topics of Hispanic interests like music etc, or make assumptions by geographic location but nothing that you can truly rely on to deliver the results. I don’t know, but if I were myspace.com I would be working 24/7 to find away to filter audiences. Other players like hi5 have been playing in the global market and have made inroads in countries of Hispanic origin. They are looking to fill this void in the Hispanic market but yet, they still cannot explain abnormally large number of Latino subscribers, in
Miami of all places. Naturally, this is something I found curious during a meeting with that vendor where I proceeded to probe the numbers.
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It is alarming that Hispanic online marketing is still perceived by many as the next frontier. Much like the early U.S. settlers, Hispanic marketers have endured the great cultural divide dueling with general market for the flexibility to develop creative, media budgets and strategies that speak to our market…the online arena is no exception.

Conflicting market research further muddles the waters making advertisers and agencies even more skeptical about the online medium. This has created a vicious circle that has stunted the growth of Hispanic internet and limited it to the creation of a Spanish webpage. Hispanic consumers perceive many of these pages to be useless because advertisers have prioritized the messaging based on what they think Hispanics want to hear. What they don’t realize is that Hispanics are very curious in nature and want to know EVERYTHING there is to know before they make a purchase. As part of the American Dream, they feel it is their obligation to be informed consumers and often compare the content of both sites only to realize that English is much more complete. This further skews the numbers in favor of English online content and develops a level of mistrust for the Spanish content. We are in a sense creating mistrust between our consumers, the Spanish language and our brands…not by lying, but by omission.
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Diego Naranjo / Miami Ad Guy

Diego’s cross-discipline experience combined with his expertise in the U.S. Hispanic market make him an invaluable tool as Clients require more integrated thinking. From awareness building to retail, both online and offline, Diego understands the full spectrum of marketing allowing him to offer Clients “big picture thinking”.

His passion for branding started as child with the Disney brand, which later grew into an internship at the Disney Consumer Products LatAm office in Miami. He eventually made his career “dream come true” working as an Advertising Manager at Disney’s Yellow Shoes Creative Group at WDW in Orlando, FL developing guest visitation strategies for top markets. He assisted in the conceptualization and execution of the company’s CRM program and helped establish the need for a Hispanic market equivalent. He also has had extensive media training and served as WDW’s resident Hispanic expert and Representative for Press Events, often hosting top Hispanic media and talent.

Since his days as a Disney employee, Diego has gone on to manage the General Motors brand for the Hispanic market at Accentmarketing, and acted as Brand Steward. During that time, he successfully launched the first Hispanic CRM Program at GM, assisted in the Hispanic sales recovery of September 11 and has integrated with a complex network of GM agencies. During his work on the Cadillac and HUMMER brands, Diego solidified his experience with the acculturated Hispanic consumer.

Diego also brings packaged goods experience on brands such as: RAID, Ziploc, Windex, Glade, Clean & Clear and Kraft from Zubi Advertising.

At Latin3, Diego is a Director on the Marketing Strategy & Services team working with clients to develop online marketing strategies that help attract, engage and retain Hispanic consumers for key Clients that include Cisco Systems, Target Stores, Discovery Networks, General Mills, Visa International, Cingular (the new AT&T) and Microsoft.

Additionally, Diego holds a BA from Florida International University.

The Hispanic purchase process language barrier
Many Clients ask me, “is it important for the full buyer experience to be in Spanish”? Sometimes I just shrug my shoulders and nod slightly…but most times I can’t help myself and say YES, of course! Most of them are very intelligent marketers, why would this part of the process be any different? This is part of any operational readiness plan.

Some industries are regulated much heavier than others. For instance, in the financial sector, there are laws protecting consumers that state if a bank solicits a consumer in a specific language, they must service that consumer in that same language. This prohibits banks from preying on consumers by baiting them in Spanish and confusing them when it comes time to collect on the debt. Unfortunately, it also prevents many banks from wanting to do business with the Hispanic market. Many don’t want to get into the legal mumbo-jumbo that many don’t understand. Many also assume that Hispanics do not have money or that they keep it in their mattresses or send it to family in Mexico. But then there’s WaMu and BofA who have figured it out and that is why they are reaping the benefits of having waiting areas filled with Hispanics.
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Those of us that manage business units or retail operations in Texas have to agree that Spanish language marketing efforts need to be evaluated on a city by city basis. This is a basic best practice when approaching this state. San Antonio is different from Houston which is different Dallas which is a polar opposite to Austin. And then there’s that mad Mexican money that crosses the border to buy Hummers in El Paso.

From my days of managing General Motors’ Hispanic marketing efforts in the US and leveraging specific brands efforts in TX; I recall the endless dealer meetings where the white folks argued with the brown folks about what was “the right thing to do” (as far as marketing). Many dealer owners said that Spanish language marketing would not reach their target market. I also heard often, that people who responded to Spanish language marketing or advertising were, most likely looking for a used car. When we were planning direct mail campaigns for GM and other brands, we would launch them in Spanish and English so that no one could get offended…but there was always someone upset with us. With the unreliable amount of direct mail lists in our market, you can never assume. So what is the right answer?
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