“How Do You Say ‘Got Milk’ en Español?”
Cynthia Gorney writes in the Sunday New York Times Magazine about Grupo Gallegos, one of many advertising agencies tapping into the dramatically expanding purchasing power of the Hispanic population in the United States:
“…then Gallegos is interested less in selling you products, since you are likely not Hispanic, than in pointing out the exploding spending power of the demographic that is. The estimate worked up by the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies for 2007 is $928 billion. Those are dollars spent inside this country by Hispanic consumers, American-born citizens as well as green-card residents and the undocumented, on things they want or need: batteries, iPods, laundry soap, lawn chairs, motor oil, Bulova watches, new-home loans, Volvos, takeout pizza, cellphones, power saws, swimming pools, deodorant, airline tickets and plasma TV’s. It’s $200 billion more than was spent two years ago. Propelled by continuous immigration and larger family size, the dual factors that are making the Hispanic population multiply faster than any other in the United States, the spending figure is expected to top a trillion dollars within the next three years.”
The article will undoubtedly send political strategists scrambling to figure out how to apply the lessons of Gallegos and his industry colleagues to the elections of 2008. The problem with doing election-specific research is that the Hispanic electorate and the Hispanic population don’t look much alike, especially in terms of the number of generations they have been in the United States. But there are many things that political media consultants can learn from Gallegos. Here is one of my favorites:
More than half come from or have origins in Mexico, but the array of homelands is extensive; when Grupo Gallegos got the Fruit of the Loom account a few years ago, Favio Ucedo, the Argentine chief creative director, decided to Hispanicize the four fruit guys, all of whom hover around in the ads offering underwear advice, via some mother-country humor that in Spanish constituted a collective private joke. He made Apple Guy and Leaf Guy Mexicans, hiring Mexican actors and giving them script lines that indicated they were the group leaders. Red Grape Guy became a Caribbean, dark-skinned and the best dancer, with the lilting half-swallowed Spanish of Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic. There had to be a South American, Ucedo decided, so he tipped his hat to his countrymen’s unfortunate reputation elsewhere in Latin America and made Green Grape Guy an ego-inflated, overbearing Argentine, a caricature Ucedo knew Mexicans especially would relish.
By recognizing the importance of country of origin, Grupo Gallegos created an ad with an effective cultural resonance for, at the very least, Mexicans. As I’ve pointed out on this blog before, many political ads haven’t that depth of understanding.
