As I read that while sitting on a local train (I had missed the express train by a few minutes, much to my chagrin), it struck me as clever copy and even placement (I think that Conill handles their creative while MV42 does their media). The creative ties in nicely to the placement and to the product benefit (although the more strict grammarians among us would have requested the copy read “ir en el expreso” as the correct way to phrase it). It works nicely, in any language. Here’s a bad picture of the ad.

Continental Airlines Hispanic OOH

What was more interesting to me, however, was the tagline. I had never read the Continental Airlines tagline in Spanish before. It’s “Trabajar con Empeño. Viajar con Pasión.” The English-language tagline for Continental is “Work Hard. Fly Right.” which supposedly came from their CEO during an speech to employees and it was adopted as the tagline for the company.

In English, the tagline never said much to me. It felt obvious that it was a non-consumer statement being slapped on ads. I don’t feel it communicates much to a consumer. However, in Spanish, the adaptation of the tagline works much better. It loosely translates to “(To) Work with Determination. (To) Fly with Passion.” First of all, the choice of words really resonates with me and I think with consumers in general.

The word “empeño” is particularly interesting here. It’s a great word in Spanish and it means so much. It encapsulates the concept of striving, working hard, determination, insistence, and making an effort. To me that is a much richer concept than plain “work hard.” Then there’s the word “pasión” that is so relevant to Hispanics, but also so much more human, warm, and emotional for consumers in general that the English-language “fly right” (what does that mean, anyway?), at least in my opinion.

So, kudos to Continental Airlines. If I was your target, you got me. And by the way, how about working on that English-language tagline a bit?

As I was getting closer to the office, I spotted another example of Hispanic-targeted OOH. This one was a Bud Light billboard for its Bud Light Lime flavor. What was interesting about it is that Lime was adapted to “limón” in Spanish. It’s not that “limón” is incorrect. Au contraire, it shows  deep undersanding of the target consumer.

In the countries from where most US Hispanics hail, the small green citrus fruit is called “limón” and the larger more-elongated yellow citrus fruit is called “lima.” Go figure. Still, kudos to Bud Light for picking up on that.

While I can speak to the marketing budget slashing issue, that’s been done to death. There is ample evidence that the marketers with the stomach to power through a downturn and maintain (or increase) their marketing investments in times like these are the ones who profit handsomely when the business environment improves.

The other issue that gets my goat is the myopic shifting of multicultural business to a general market agency. I believe that generally to be a misguided decision that will backfire.

When making such moves, the marketers generally cite the savings that they will realize by combining multicultural and general market activities in the same agency. Some openly acknowledge that the quality of the work will suffer but still opt for the short-term savings in order to relieve the pressure put on them by their finance folks. Some others have been led to believe that the quality will be the same as it was with the multicultural agency (in some cases better!) and so to the marketer it seems like a no-brainer. What folly!

For the uninitiated, this is generally what happens:

• Step One: The client finance people issue an edict requiring marketers to reduce their expenses in agency compensation (some clients do that in parallel with overall budget cuts, while others do so as a “share-of-budget” exercise, keeping budgets flat year-over-year but reducing the percentage that is dedicated to compensating agencies.)
• Step Two: Marketers contact their agencies to let them know what will be required. Some contact all agencies, others start off with their “lead” (read: general market) agencies, where the bulk of the agency fee expenditures occur.
• Step Three: General market agencies, facing the prospect of revenue reductions, opt instead for manageable margin reductions and thus offer to take on the multicultural work for the same agency fee as in the previous year (or perhaps a bit more). It goes something like “Hey, instead of cutting our fee, how about we keep it flat to last year and instead we take on the multicultural work for no additional fee (or a very small fee)? That way, you save all those fees you’re now paying the multicultural shops.”

Now the client looks at the option of streamlining his or her life by working with one agency, having one scope discussion, paying one fee, having one meeting, etc. And on top of that, they save a bunch of money! It sounds like a dream. But it is more like a nightmare. Here are a couple of thoughts for marketers contemplating such a move.

1. Ask yourself how the general agency can do the multicultural work for no incremental fee (or a very small one). The work that was being done still needs to be done. If the work can just be absorbed by the general agency, that’s a tell-tale sign that either they have been overcharging or they will put a junior person with the appropriate last name or skin color on the multicultural portion of the business and call it a day (after all, the objective is a lower price tag, not good multicultural marketing). Maybe both.
2. Ask the general agency to provide proof of the quality of the work they say they’ll deliver. Have they done multicultural work before? Are they a leader in their space? Is that their specialty? Would they know good multicultural work if they saw it? Don’t discount the importance of quality work in trying economic times. Remember that alienating a multicultural audience will cost you dearly and for the long term.
3. Don’t cut the multicultural agencies out of the conversation. Share the issues openly with all stakeholders and get everyone working together to arrive at a workable solution that achieves your cost reduction goals without gutting any one area in your marketing plan. If you have to reduce overall compensation costs by X%, see how the whole team can share the burden. (Perhaps efficiencies can be achieved by consolidations in production or by sharing resources, instead of reducing intellectual capital).

All this notwithstanding, should you choose to follow the silly notion of moving business from agency to agency, do the right thing and offer the option to everyone. That is, if you’re considering moving your multicultural work to the general market agency, also entertain the option of bringing your general market work to the multicultural shop.

It wouldn’t surprise me to see the multicultural agency, experienced in working with constrained budgets and compensation, being the best option for the overall account. They can provide the same assurances of quality on the general market work as the general agencies do on the multicultural work, and they will certainly do it for less.

Even before the US economy took its swan dive into the commode, corporate sites targeting Hispanics were few and far between. Never mind the research supporting the need for companies to have Hispanic market sites up and running, even with full transactional capabilities. Never mind the research finding that Hispanics are going online in droves and finding precious little content tailored to them. Many clients still resisted and remained general market, English-only, on the Web. This was the case even for marketers with support for Hispanic advertising. Imagine that, investing in advertising to the Hispanic market, while alienating the same consumers online.

Today’s economic realities make things even tougher. As marketing budgets get cut left and right (enough has been written about the folly of cutting marketing investment in recessionary times, so I won’t go into it here), multicultural marketing budgets commonly find themselves in the crosshairs of short-term-thinking clients. Keeping the Hispanic website becomes a line item that is often too easy to cut as companies reduce headcount in internal support staff (who’ll manage the Hispanic site now?) and overall marketing communications targeting this population (would they prioritize the website over running a few more television spots?).

Especially in these tough times, clients need to reconsider any thought of cutting the support for their Hispanic-targeted corporate website. Here are a few reasons why, some of which I alluded to above:

1. Hispanics are online. According to comScore, there were 20 million Hispanics online last month. Brands should be there too. Marketers should not alienate Hispanic consumers on the Web by providing only a general market site.
2. Hispanics who are online tend to be better-educated and have higher incomes and better credit, making the Web a bit of a filter for the cream of the crop of Hispanic consumers. Talk about efficiency!
3. There is a dearth of Hispanic-targeted content online, making any marketer’s content stand out much more than in the general market, where there’s plenty of me-too content to go around.
4. Hispanic consumers often go online to learn about the products and services they seek, even if they end up completing the transaction in offline channels. Lacking a website, where will these consumers go to get the information they need to make a purchase decision?
5. Analyzing server logs from their Hispanic-targeted sites can provide companies valuable insights into consumer behavior. Product preference, information needs, purchase behavior, and more can be gleaned from “watching” consumers on the site.
6. Marketers who cut their Hispanic sites may find their Hispanic consumers more easily swayed by the competition, which by maintaining a robust online presence for Hispanics, sent the clear message that the group is important to them.

In summary, I would strongly advise clients to not only forget about cutting Hispanic-targeted websites, but to increase the support (e.g., funding, resources) behind them. It’s an investment that will pay off handsomely in more business from this very attractive population.

• 30% of Hispanic adults with cell phones use mobile data services versus 21% for the general market (143 index).
• Messaging is most popular. 82% of Hispanic mobile data users use messaging services (IM, SMS, MMS) versus 71% for the general market (116 index).
• Ringtones are popular too. 42% of Hispanic mobile data users download ringtones versus 40% for the general market (105 index).
• Music shows a huge difference. 30% of Hispanic mobile data users download or stream music on their phones versus 13% for the general market (230 index). For Spanish-dominants, the number climbs to 35%.

Sprint Mobile Phone

Every category measured showed earlier adoption by Hispanic consumers. Only the “play games” category was tied (at 42% for both Hispanic and general market mobile data users).

This suggests that mobile marketing is continuing to grow in importance, and as with the Internet, it’s doing so disproportionately in the Hispanic market.

Now let’s be realistic. The percentages are great, but still only 4.7 million Hispanics use mobile data services versus 26.8 million general market consumers (Forrester’s base was 27 million Hispanic adults). That’s still a pretty small user base, all things considered. Still, for some categories like cell phones (duh) and others, these might be the right consumers.

That means looking at the existence of response centers (calls and emails) that are Spanish-enabled, putting in place databases that can handle ethnicity and language flags, ensuring that metrics are in place to measure Hispanic efforts separately and fairly, etc. Pay attention even to things like ensuring that stores to which you’ll drive Hispanic traffic are properly staffed with bilingual employees. You get the point.

From the May 2006 article in Target Marketing magazine by Gustavo Grüber, former Chair of the DMA’s Directo Council, comes the following advice to not lose sight of the back-end processes when implementing direct marketing programs for the Hispanic market. Below is my adaptation of the list of process and procedures that Gustavo suggests:

• Train data entry staff and set up database fields properly to deal with compound names (like first name “María de Jesús” and last name “de la Cruz”) appropriately and not end up with bad data (like first name “María” and last name “Jesús”).
• Set up bilingual response centers that can respond to calls or other inbound contacts (e.g., email) in the same language that they were sent and that we promised to consumers. Also, prepare for longer call times (Hispanics tend to be chatty and to seek trust by “getting to know” the rep on the phone, lengthening calls) and emails.
• Accommodate longer pay cycles that are more appropriate for a large section of the Hispanic population that are not as in tune with the importance of timely payments and credit ratings as the general market consumer. Also offer COD or other cash-based payment options for those who prefer to pay cash (or don’t have a credit card).
• Design Spanish-language or bilingual bills for Hispanic consumers. Many Hispanic households are multigenerational, and the person ordering the product may prefer Spanish while the person paying for it may prefer English. Bilingual billing solves this. At the very least, Spanish-language billing closes the loop of the full in-language experience for the consumer.
• Adjust metrics accordingly to account for differences in the Hispanic market. Responses may be lower than general market benchmarks but conversions may be higher (or vice versa). In some cases, the front-end ROI calculations may show lackluster results, but longer-term calculations like lifetime value may be superior.
• Be patient and persistent with Hispanic market programs. Hispanics are for the most part newer to direct marketing programs, so they may take a while to adjust. That newness may also drive a lot of testing and refining of programs because there are few benchmarks or historical learning to leverage.

The full article, if you’re interested, is available here.