Targeting Hispanics

It’s taken a while for many to realize but it seems that the word is out: the U.S. Hispanic population cannot be ignored.
According the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2010, there were an estimated 50.3 million Hispanics in the United States, making people of Hispanic origin the nation’s largest ethnic or race minority. Hispanics account for over half the U.S. growth in the past decade. They are not going anywhere. In fact, it is estimated that by 2050, Hispanics will make up 30 percent of the U.S. population.
Although it seems to have taken some businesses and marketers longer to figure out than others, there seems to be an extraordinary push to attract Hispanic consumers. This past week, NBC Universal announced a new initiative aimed at connecting marketers with Hispanic consumers.
Why, do you ask? It’s all about the bottom line, of course.
“The buying power of Hispanics will rise from $1 trillion in 2010 to $1.5 trillion in 2015, accounting for nearly 11% of the nation’s total buying power,” Lauren Zalaznick, Chairman of NBC Universal Entertainment & Digital Networks and Integrated Media, said in a statement.
L’Oreal recently started a more focused effort to attract Hispanic consumers by teaming up with Telemundo, a network known for broadcasting telenovelas. It has created an online club for fans called “Club de Noveleras.” The online site for the club has photos, videos, articles, and an interactive community; it also has a loyalty program consumers can use to accumulate points and redeem them for various telenovela and L’Oreal-related merchandise.
Just last year, fast-food company Wendy’s International hired the Miami-based Bravo Group to create Hispanic-targeted advertisement campaigns. Other companies are also following suit. Visit http://www.adweek.com/aw/custom-reports/marketing-to-hispanics/index.jsp to see various advertising directed to the Hispanic consumer.
A recent survey of 1100 employed adult Hispanic consumers conducted on behalf of management consulting firm Garcia Trujillo LLC, found that more than 66 percent of Latinos in America would be more inclined to buy products and services from companies and 64.7 percent would be even more loyal to companies that demonstrate a strong and visible commitment to the Hispanic community.
This is not surprising. In fact, it’s common sense. Consumers of any ethnicity/culture would be more prone to buy products from a company that at least pretends to care about them by creating advertisements that speak to their community. Duhhhhh. It’s about time.
What I’m curious about though is will many of these advertisements appear in main stream media or will they be limited to stations like Telemundo and geo-ethnic newspapers and magazines that cater to Hispanics only? I doubt it but what do you think?