7 key growth Drivers that will propel 2014 Hispanic Marketing

By Marcos Baer

1. Total Market? Yes but with culturally “fluent” Messaging

One thing is clear by now, the “Total Market approach” has been adopted by the majority of Corporate America as the appropriate approach to target the U.S. consumer. The latest example of this is T2 or Total Toyota. The automaker just announced that its longtime ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi will take the lead over three other Publicis Groupe agencies that currently handle multicultural marketing duties—Conill Advertising (Hispanic), Burrell Communications (African-American) and Zenith (Broadcast and out-of-home media buying), along with InterTrend Communications (Asian-American marketing). The new unit will be called T2 (Total Toyota). It is crucial though that the Total Market approach includes  culturally appropriate messaging that deeply resonates with a brands different constituencies. Carlos Saveedra, director of Multicultural Marketing at Pepsi, and a speaker at last year’s ANA Multicultural Marketing Conference uses the term Cultural Fluency:”Cultural Fluency means to market at intersection of interests (e.g. Fashion, Sports etc), rather than to one group in particular.” “It is about being inclusive about the entire texture of multicultural consumers.” Pepsi transitioned from having a multicultural team to have multicultural marketing objectives be included in each brand’s goals.  “Brand managers are accountable to connect with the multicultural consumer. They need to know the multicultural consumer as well as general market consumers.” Saavedra said and added that Hispanic focused executions are not necessarily wrong. But he said that by taking a cross cultural approach, Pepsi discovered that the NFL is very attractive to Hispanics. Before Pepsi obtained this insight, Hispanic campaigns only revolved around soccer.
Brand Managers are now accountable to connect with the Hispanic consumer.

2. The 2014 Soccer World Cup and the Conversation around it

Advertising related to the 2014 Soccer World Cup can increase ad-sales of major Hispanic media properties by up to 40% compared to a non-World Cup year, say executives of Hispanic media properties interviewed by Portada. World Cup right holders (English and Spanish-language TV, online and Radio) are working hard to monetize these rights. But the World Cup offers also other media properties plenty of opportunities (see for example special digital and print editions around World Cup matches and or non directly soccer oriented content such as culture and history content around World Cup host country Brazil.)
“World Cup is big, but I think what can be as important is the conversation around the World Cup – teams, players, host cities, stadiums, etc… We are really pushing to make sure that the brands we manage have a strong presence in these conversations and that these brands become fibers within organic conversation,” Yousef Kattan Fernández President/CEO at Dallas based TruMedia, tells Portada.

3. Focus on the scalability of digital channels

To Marla Skiko, SVP, Digital Innovation at SMG Multicultural, “the greatest challenge facing Hispanic media is to power the growth of digital media.  As those of us in the Hispanic media space are keenly aware, Hispanic consumers are at the forefront of technology and digital consumption.  We need to see growth in scale across channels from video to social to mobile.”
The greatest challenge facing Hispanic media is to power the growth of digital media.

Programmatic digital advertising buys are an important tool to solve the scalability issue in digital marketing and advertising. A few months ago Skiko told us that the use of programmatic audience buying technologies can be very efficient, particularly when it comes to target segments of the Hispanic demographic.” Several players including Batanga, Alcance Media, Pulpo Media and in the video space Videology, Adap.tv., Yume and others are trying to capitalize on the catch up potential the Hispanic market has versus the general market in this regard.

Programmatic Trading can also help solve another important marketing challenge: How to scale native advertising. While the concept of native advertising, or branded content programs that take advantage of the interactivity of the digital medium (see The New York Times recent implementation),  has been the darling of the industry for the past two years, it has yet to truly take off due to its inability to scale. That is poised to change as native will start to be offered programmatically through new technologies that help publishers display sponsored content at scale. For the ‘right ad at the right time’ to finally become the ‘right content at the right time’, content marketing will need to become seamlessly integrated and distributed through advanced targeting technology via ad exchanges and RTB platforms.

Challenge: Finding ways for brands to stand out…

“One of the greatest challenges marketers face  in 2014 is finding ways to help their brand stand out,”  TruMedia’s Kattan Fernández tells Portada.  “There are so many advertisers saying similar things in similar places. Messaging is important but understanding where your brand fits contextually is as important.  Finding creative media touch points, whether those be digital, social, mobile, offline are key to creating some sort of awareness and developing that engagement with viewers, listeners or online patrollers,” Kattan adds. He notes that “digital and social continues to be a big focus for our agency and growing those 1 to 1 consumer relationships where we can. ”
Understanding where your brand fits contextually is crucial

…it’s all about Content Marketing! (Driver 4)

Finding the right context and context through digital and social media will continue to be key. In other words, it’s all about Content Marketing. Content Marketing strategies which successfully integrate paid, owned and earned media are crucial for brand marketers.

Content marketing can particularly benefit brands who invest in creating culturally relevant content and scale it across screens and devices.

SMG’s Skiko says that “because Latinos are super users of technology and digital media, we expect to focus squarely on the digital space as we look to grow our clients’ business in 2014.” According to Skiko, “there is a strong opportunity to create engaging, socially powered experiences that are grounded in Hispanic consumer insights.  Another opportunity to make that connection is for marketers to develop content tailored to the Hispanic audience.  Content marketing is a growing arena and can particularly benefit brands who invest in creating culturally relevant content and scaling it across screens and devices. We see a strong opportunity to create engaging, socially powered experiences that are grounded in Hispanic consumer insights.”

…and here is where Data comes in (again). (Driver 5)

Customer Insights and Data represent another major driver for Hispanic marketing in the year that just started.  “I think the opportunity is about data. Not only to have it but actually to know how to find insights through it,” says Gonzalo del Fa, president of Group M Multicultural and Portada Editorial Board Member. (Big) Data can not only be used to substantially increase advertising effectiveness but also for content marketing purposes. For brands and agencies the issue is not so much about producing enough content but about creating enough usable content. That is where Data and dynamic content recommendation engines come in. They enable marketers and media to present the right content to the right visitor at the right time without the visitor having to discover it themselves. Machine learning does that discovery for them. The future of content marketing is all about data-driven content origination and curation that are optimized for organic SEO , highly relevant and targeted.

6. Mobile

In 2013 mobile marketing expenditures took off, although perhaps not as much in the Hispanic market. Experts interviewed by Portada note that 2014 will be a very important year for Latam and USH in the mobile industry. Gaston Bercun, Founder & Co-CEO at mobile ad network Hunt Mobile Ads, says  that “a lot of what is going on in the US and Europe will start to be seen in the Latin markets.”  Bercun adds that “we will start to see important growth of investment of brands in their mobile and mobile advertising strategies and this will push the market to a new level. Programmatic and new devices will also help in the process of increasing the smart phone and tablet penetration.” Major platforms like Google, YouTube and Facebook, provide advertisers
access to mobile and don’t need to recreate any mobile platform creative or invest in it. As Sylwia Makarewicz-Liszka, Mobile and Digital Planner at Starcom Media Vest, said during Portada’s 7th Annual Hispanic Advertising and Media Conference last September “not having mobile assets should not be an excuse for not making a mobile campaign.”

7. Digital Video continues to expand

Related to the trend of digital expansion and content marketing is the almost explosive growth of digital video in the Hispanic market.  2014 will be the year of video in content marketing and Hispanic advertising. Platforms like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, are allowing or will soon allow video ads in consumer content feeds. With videos becoming cheaper to produce even small businesses can produce high quality videos. SMG’s Skiko notes that the increased focus on the Hispanic opportunity by mainstream digital publishers is a win for marketers.  Key players such as Google, Facebook and Twitter are ramping up their Hispanic capabilities with dedicated resources and a focus on content creation and improved targeting.  This should help develop more and richer audiovisual media including digital video.

Source: www.portada-online.com