Campaign takes aim at brands for "Latino coating"
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Courtesy of the Hispanic Marketing Council.
Advertisers and brands risk losing out when they use a superficial "Latino coating" approach to reaching Hispanic audiences, some industry leaders say.
Why it matters: Latino spending power is roughly $3 trillion a year. Yet brands like the NFL with its botched "ñ" campaign and others often miss the mark when trying to reach the Hispanic buyers who increasingly make up a larger part of the market.
State of play: On average, brands spend less than 4% of their advertising budgets on Latino outreach, per the Hispanic Marketing Council, which recently launched the "Stop Latino Coating" campaign.
- The term refers to the way marketers will add coat ads with some Latino elements "without genuine understanding or respect for Latino culture or communities."
Flashback: It hasn't always been this bad, says Jose Villa, president of Sensis, the largest 100% minority-owned marketing agency in the U.S.
- Villa says brands in the 1990s and early 2000s made real, concerted efforts to reach the growing Latino audience.
But around 2015, brands shifted to a "total market approach," meaning they spent less on multicultural marketing and more on general marketing.
- Villa refers to it as the "United Colors of Benetton approach" — placing one person from every race into one ad — instead of centering ads around Hispanic people. He says this still happens today.
Zoom in: Isabella Sánchez, vice president of media integration for Zubi and the chair of the Hispanic Marketing Council, says marketers are aware of how significant Latino buying power is, but they're "taking a bunch of shortcuts" instead of trying to reach the audience.
- "They'll do things like simply translate creative work, or not really use insights that are necessary to reach the Hispanic market, or they'll rely on stereotypes," Sánchez.
- "The consequences of that are simply they're not going to grow and their competitors will outperform them. "
- One example: Pharma. Sánchez says pharmaceutical companies are behind in tailoring their messaging to Hispanic consumers despite the fact that Latinos have high rates of diabetes and other health ailments.
Yes, but: Companies like Pepsi, Molson Coors, Kellogs and Nestle have all been recognized for putting Hispanics at the center of their advertising efforts, says Sánchez.
What we're watching: Villa says brands have actually invested less in marketing to Latinos since the 2020 racial reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd.
- That's because previous marketing efforts tailored to Latinos became DEI initiatives with budgets spent on HR matters and social responsibility instead of on straight marketing, says Villa.
- "I think the market just kind of started being taken for granted and just kind of ignored," Villa says. "If you adjust for inflation and the amount of spending that was allocated to the Hispanic market, we haven't grown commensurate with the market's growth."
- With the constant attacks on DEI, it's unclear how brands will proceed with reaching Latino audiences.
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