A complete recipe

Editor’s note: Diego Bonardi is vice president of Millward Brown’s multicultural practice.

The ad certainly seems Hispanic. Slickly produced, it features Latino-looking characters dancing to salsa rhythms and members of a large family speaking animatedly in Spanish as they enjoy the fiesta - all the right cultural touches. But the ad was a failure. Despite an enormous budget to place it in every prime-time Hispanic TV program, it had no impact on the company’s sales, nor did it help the company’s position among U.S. Hispanics.

What happened? The creators of the ad didn’t follow one of the basic tenets of advertising: creating a strong and engaging ad does not mean just focusing on cultural or ethnic nuances.

After measuring the effectiveness of hundreds of U.S. Hispanic-targeted and non-targeted advertising on more than 20,000 Hispanic respondents nationwide, what emerged from our research was this simple but powerful reminder to marketers: Hispanic-targeted ads that work best are not just culturally relevant, or the ones that exhibit in-culture elements, but those that are memorable for their target and strongly integrate the brand and the intended message.

So why was the original ad un fracaso? The ad’s creators forgot that producing convincing Hispanic advertising is much more than just making a “Hispanic version,” more than merely translating English ad copy to Spanish, filling the spot with Latino actors, or lifting an ad from the company’s Latin American offices. Even the tried and true practice of hiring a Hispanic celebrity won’t be effective unless the ad is built upon an interesting and involving creative idea first - and then combines the brand and its message within the context of the cultural environment of Hispanics in the United States.

How have the ads that work done this? Using the information garnered from several case studies, and from a thorough analysis of Millward Brown’s database, we’ve established some guidelines for ads that will have a better chance of performing successfully in the U.S. Hispanic market.

  • First, develop a Hispanic marketing strategy. You will need to do some homework before even thinking of advertising. Establish an integral plan and identify your opportunities. Research should tell you how, to what extent, and why U.S. Hispanics consume or purchase your product/brand, the purchase drivers, vacant brand positioning, etc. By proceeding this way (i.e., doing the right research in order to have a clear strategy/positioning toward the Hispanic target) you will exponentially increase the likelihood of successful advertising and hence the ROI on your Hispanic marketing initiatives.
  • You have to have the right insights in order to deliver good advertising. Balance the appeal to Hispanic emotions, with the key rational message, the role of the brand and the quality of the creative idea itself. All these components are important pieces of the puzzle.
  • We need targeted benchmarks/norms when copytesting Spanish-language ads. We did some data mining among Millward Brown’s copytesting database and learned that U.S. Hispanic respondents tend to react more positively to rating questions (top box/pleasing the interviewers) compared to general-market respondents, especially when evaluating Spanish-language TV ads. Therefore, there is a need to use a separate set of Hispanic norms when copytesting the creative idea of a Spanish-language TV ad. Otherwise the interpretation of the results on a Spanish-language ad, if compared to general-market ad norms, would be misleading by overestimating the real performance (i.e., Spanish-language ads will generally outperform the general-market norms).
  • Make use of but do not abuse Hispanic cultural references in the creative. Because Hispanic cultural drivers (i.e., family, friendship, Hispanic celebrities, Latin music, etc.) are all common knowledge to advertisers, the differentiation point is the creative idea that sustains the use of those elements. To illustrate this point, around 80 percent of the ads in our Hispanic copytesting database contain one or more of the above-mentioned cultural drivers, but less than half of these ads tested are strongly memorable for the Hispanic target. We copytested ads that were very family-oriented with a Hispanic cast or with a Hispanic celebrity and they did not break through.
  • Communicate and repeat only one or two key benefits. Too many messages will just slip through the net. Also, make sure the benefits that are communicated are relevant for your target audience (e.g., “saving time when preparing dinner” may not perceived as a benefit by Hispanics, who find cooking a way to show they care about their families). Some of the ads that we have copytested are just too ambitious with the number of messages they intend to convey to the Hispanic target. Some advertisers want to communicate many key benefits all in one ad for the sake of cost efficiency (i.e., a change in the brand name, a new product benefit, three new flavors/fragrances, an enhanced emotional bonding, a line extension, etc.). For the Hispanic target and general market consumers alike, this is too much information and too confusing.
  • Make the brand integral to the story of the ad. The brand should be the centerpiece of the creative, not a secondary actor behind the cultural values. When copytesting Hispanic ads, we ask respondents to describe the story behind the ad they have just seen. In order to diagnose how well the brand is integrated, it is important to see how and how often the respondents include the brand name in their descriptions of the ad. There are also some brands that have successfully built branding through long-term investment/consistency (e.g., Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger character). Developing these brand cues can benefit multiple ads, and branding is solved with a strategic approach rather than a case-by-case one. Branding devices can be things such as a character, music, campaign format, slogan or anything in the creative that consumers learn to link uniquely to a specific brand throughout time.
  • Tell a simple story. No matter what language you use, make the copy and the key message direct and easy to understand. Elements should be related, not independent images. Especially for the less acculturated U.S. Hispanics - a relatively less educated audience - there is a need to avoid metaphors as much as possible and to get straight to the point. One of the ads we copytested wanted to communicate traditional Hispanic values by showing only animal interaction in the creative. The Hispanic audience did not understand the intended connection/link between the animals and the “traditional Hispanic values.”
  • Educate the U.S. Hispanic audience. Many Hispanics, especially those who have recently arrived in the United States, lack information in Spanish or are not familiar with certain products, such as as financial services or frozen foods. Marketers of these types of products should consider demonstrating and describing their product details to this audience when necessary.

We copytested a Spanish-adapted version of a household product’s general market advertising campaign. The ad did not test well because the Hispanic respondents seemed to misunderstand the benefits of this product. The advertiser conducted additional research and realized that the audience did not understand how to use the product. As a result, the advertiser developed a campaign that included an educational advertising approach. The new campaign tested much better and was successfully aired. This learning applies for product categories when the Hispanic market may be in a different stage/product life cycle than the general market.

Don’t forget the marketing

In summary, if you want to do more than just follow a trend (and see a much better return on your investment), don’t forget the advertising and marketing elements when you decide to create Hispanic-targeted marketing communications programs.