Spanish Spoken Here, There and Everywhere

This post is part of a series written by zcomm interns. Be sure to check back each week for their take on the latest in the public relations industry. This week, Claire discusses the importance of knowing your target audience.

If you’ve been living under a rock, you may be surprised to learn that America’s Hispanic population has grown to more than 50 million people, meaning nearly 17% of the country is Latino.

What’s more, Latino buying power this year is estimated at $1.2 trillion.

And if you’re not specifically targeting these consumers, chances are your brand is not relevant to them…a study on advertising effectiveness showed that 38% of Hispanics surveyed found English language ads less effective than Spanish ads in terms of recall and 70% less effective than Spanish ads in terms of persuasion.

But creating a Spanish-language campaign is only the beginning.

Researching your Hispanic audience to gain understanding and insight into their culture and lifestyle is key.

I’ll illustrate the importance of getting to know the unique needs of your Hispanic target audience with two examples, one about lifestyle and another about media consumption habits – – –

While in college, I attended a presentation by a Hispanic Marketing specialist that discussed the vitality of going beyond English-to-Spanish translation in your Hispanic campaigns.

To highlight this point, she told us the story of a client that came to her agency confused as to why their product was not seeing increased sales among Latinos, even though they had created new commercials in Spanish and placed them on Univision and in key TV stations in Hispanic-heavy markets.

Initially, the presenter’s firm wasn’t sure either. After conducting some research, however, they realized that the problem was a scene at the end of the commercial where the family dog jumped on the bed, the Latino owners petted him and he rested at the foot of the bed.

…Nothing out of the ordinary here, right? Wrong. While many aspects of the English commercial translated over, one cultural difference was a major turn-off for Hispanic consumers and affected their purchasing decision: allowing a dog on the family’s bed.

This example illustrates the importance of going beyond just translating your message from English to Spanish, and really delving into the culture and lifestyle of your Hispanic audience.

When customizing your communication to Latinos, it is also important to consider the way that they use and engage with media.

Here at zcomm, we deal primarily with broadcast and new media, so the staff understands the listening/viewing habits of many different segments of our population. While working on a radio promotion for one of our clients, I learned that, while Hispanics consume every type of media, radio is the most effective way to target this population.

Did you know that Latinos listen to the radio, on average, for 26-30 hours each week? To put it in perspective, that’s more than 13% more listening than the general population.

TV is another heavily-consumed media – with the growth in our Hispanic population, Univision has become the #5 television network in the US.

I could go on and on with these examples, but I think you get the gist, and since studies show that people only read about 28% of the text on a webpage (this percentage decreases as the amount of text increases!), I’ll stop here…I know my audience 😉

And the Rockets Red Flare…Glare… oh, whatever

Typically speaking, we tend to lose the meaning of the holidays we celebrate. While each July 4^th, Americans have the day off to remember what is truly important, it usually equates to a day off from work.

Consider how many people know all the lyrics to the Star-Spangled banner, understand the lyrics, know who Francis Scott Key was, or understand that the beautiful display of fireworks could be seen as an homage to gunfire– albeit a colorful one?

So as we return from our July 4^th holidays, you might be thinking, why is this year special? Well, have you checked the news lately? Unlike past years, there was no shutdown of all things civic. Congress remained open, major trials took place, the country showed allegiance to our Independence Day.  If ever there was a time to celebrate and revere our Founding Fathers’ fight for freedom, the Declaration of Independence and our Bill of Rights, it is now.

Let’s start with Congress. Whatever the reason and whatever your affiliation, Republican, Democrat, Whig (some people just can’t let go), it is nice to see Congress not take their week off to celebrate our founding but rather use the week to keep America’s ideals intact. You know, freedom from the government’s really low credit rating. As PR professionals, we have all had to cancel vacation time to take care of things like an unplanned launch or crisis, so really, staying to solve the debt issue just seems like the right thing to do. We have a budget issue. You have a deadline. Sorry, but the trips to Disney will just have to wait. And, they did. There is a certain amount of civic pride glowing inside us all right now.

Unfortunately, our Founding Fathers didn’t distinguish between the rights of the just and the rights of the just awful.  And, sometimes our rights protect the wrong. If anyone is to breathe a sigh of relief for Freedom this July 4^th, it is Casey Anthony. While her rights may set her free on the streets, not sure if that would be in her best interest given the hordes of people angry with the verdict, including, but not limited to, Nancy Grace. Anthony may want to consider asking to be put in jail anyway since it’s very doubtful she will be able to do anything of value with her life as the new face of un-convicted murder or as some may say ’not guilty, doesn’t mean innocent.’ But she, for one, should have a renewed interest in the July 4^th celebration of freedom. Not sure OJ does anymore.

Whatever your celebration and sense of civic pride, we hope you had a nice holiday and watched some colorful gunfire simulations in the sky.

TWO AND A HALF MEN

Who knew Charlie Sheen was the “half” in Two and a Half Men? Half man and half wingnut. The sitcom star is on a roll with winning lines including “I have Adonis DNA and Tiger Blood.” “Yeah, I am on a drug. It's called Charlie Sheen! It's not available, because if you try it once, you will die.” “People can’t process me with a normal brain.” And the ever-popular, "I'm underpaid.”  

However, with the amount of publicity he has drummed up, including several morning shows and coverage from Perez to People, maybe he is underpaid. TV hasn’t had this much fight since Shannen Doherty took on Beverly Hills. Charlie, if you could try for controversial instead of insane you may just get this PR stuff right. 

In the PR biz you book TV or radio interviews so your celebrity spokesperson can deliver message points to millions of viewers and listeners.  In Charlie’s case, his message is loud and clear – he is crazy!

It’s evidently not enough that CBS fired the guy and closed up shop for the popular show this season, but now the celebrity partyer has gone above and beyond. He would like a raise!  Yup, you heard right.  Charlie now wants $3 million an episode…and he’s demanding CBS gives a public apology.  And this is after he trashed-talked show producer Chuck Lorrie, CBS, AA…you name it. He believes that CBS is taking away his money and that’s where he draws the line. When asked if he was angry, his answer was “no, just passionate.”

This is almost better than the Tiger Woods controversy and definitely better than the Academy Awards.

Speaking of PR types, Charlie’s longtime publicist just resigned. Can anyone blame him?  I think we are past the point of salvaging this guy.  Best bet now is to just keep playing out the crazy man routine and own it!

Usually when there’s a celebrity PR crisis, the celeb in the crosshairs manages to humbly apologize and go into rehab.  But not Charlie!  He’ll continue to do back-to-back interviews where you can almost see the steam coming out of his ears (I bet there’s a lack of gray matter in between to hold it in).

How will this end?  He sure is funny on the TV show and, according to him, has several movie offers on the table.  But, here’s my guess:  Charlie is destined to find himself the subject of SNL skits, South Park plots and Family Guy jokes- but the damage will be short-lived.  Because crazy as he is, the man sure can make a funny sitcom.