Is Total Market Dead. It may have been the answer to What's Hispanic About That?

Total Qué?

Hispanic Marketing seems to finally have evolved beyond this obnoxious question.

How many times did I hear that question in my 20+ years in Hispanic Marketing, either as a creative director, copywriter, or director of creative and strategic integration? Frankly, way too many.  I can’t begin to tell you how many great ideas ended up on the “cutting floor” because this question came up, no matter how good the creative was, no matter how strategically “on target” it was… what’s Hispanic about it?  Arghh! Like my General Market counterparts were ever confronted with the question “what’s General Market about that (great) idea?”

But now that the “master” of advertising, Sir Martin Sorrell, has identified the 5 most creative U.S. Hispanic ideas that don’t seem to be “particularly Hispanic” as “…just another sign of how integrated Hispanics have become… in to the mainstream” it’s ok to present ideas that are not plastered with the Guacamole factor.  Now agency creative teams are given, or should be given, free reign to develop ideas that are solidly based on a distinctly Hispanic Strategy, but don’t necessarily need to target the “Hispanic Community” in the execution.  This is very likely to raise the creative bar for Hispanic agencies as well as for General Market agencies, who are increasingly competing in the Hispanic space, as a whole because the ideas that came from Hispanic agencies had been so contrived by the ominous question “What’s Hispanic about that?”

Now, as a Hispanic Marketing Consultant, I believe this is a sign of how the Hispanic Marketing industry has evolved, and NOT a sign of how the Hispanic Market or consumer has evolved. Undoubtedly, Hispanic Consumer respond better to TV spots that feature family or “latino” music in them, but it has never meant that that is all they respond to.  Good creative that hits consumers in the heart, does not mean that a Piñata has to be featured in it.

Too bad this is coming to light at a moment when tv spots are on the decline because of the onslaught of digital marketing channels and techniques, which I’m all for, but I just wish it had happened a long time ago, when TV was the King of the hill.

Finally, I’d like to say that YES, Hispanic Marketing has to have a distinct Hispanic Cultural angle to be more efficient than a mere adaptation or translation of a General Market execution.  But that angle can live in the strategy and not necessarily in the execution.  Of course, there is nothing wrong if it lives on both, as long as the creative kicks ass, like the one that has just been pointed out by Don Martin Sorrell.

I’m Lalo Wakefield, a freelance Hispanic Marketing consultant helping general market agencies enter the Hispanic Marketing arena and Hispanic Agencies entering the Digital arena.  I would love to hear your comments, thoughts or needs to see if I can be of any help.