Orange County’s advertising shops have been preaching for years that the Hispanic population,and its spending potential,can’t be ignored. Now they can tell their clients “Yo te lo dije”,I told you so.
The 2000 U.S. Census Bureau figures released a few weeks ago have given teeth to their story and armed them with a bigger weapon for hunting new business: concrete growth figures.
In the U.S., the Hispanic population jumped about 57% in the past 10 years, with areas like Minneapolis and Atlanta,nontraditional Hispanic markets,showing unprecedented growth. Orange County, which already counted a sizable Hispanic population, saw a 55% gain in Hispanics in the past decade. “This Hispanic gold rush is even bigger than we thought,” said Francisco Valle, chairman and chief executive of Irvine-based Hispanic ad shop SCDRG Inc.
Sonia Gutierrez-Carstensen, president of Adelante Hispanic Advertising, a division of DGWB in Santa Ana, had an executive at client KFC Corp. say “Holy smokes!” when she flashed the national census data.
But she corrected him: “It’s ‘Ay carumba!’ now.”
Ad shops hope that the census numbers will get companies to join the chorus of a song they’ve been singing about Hispanic advertising for many years. So far, however, it hasn’t been that easy.
Ad execs say companies raise the bar each time they discuss potential programs, always wanting another statistic to back why they should invest in Spanish-language advertising. Plus, Hispanic marketing often becomes the sacrificial lamb when money-crunched companies are looking for ways to trim back in tough times.
KFC doesn’t fit that mold. The company has been fairly aggressive with local and regional Hispanic advertising. But Carstensen said it has been reluctant to delve into national Spanish television ads, despite a few years of prodding.
Census an ‘Eye Opener’
Will the new census numbers change that? Not exactly. But Carstensen said it was definitely an “eye opener.”
“There is some heightened curiosity to investigate further,” said Carstensen, who spent three days compiling a binder of new census figures for clients. “If anything, the data lit a match under companies’ you-know-what to say, ‘Hey what are we missing out on?’ ”
While Hispanics make up about 13% of the U.S. population, companies reportedly spend about 1% to 2% of their ad budgets targeting the population.
The census numbers are not expected to affect current budgets, which actually may be cut back in the third and fourth quarters due to the slowing economy, said Paul Casanova, president of Irvine-based Casanova Pendrill Publicidad Inc., OC’s second-largest Hispanic ad shop. But, he says, the data will give marketing executives a new “tool” when negotiating 2002’s budgets with upper management, who haven’t paid much attention to Hispanic programs in the past.
“I do think the census numbers are going to help us in saying, ‘Before you cut this program remember, next year, when you’re developing plans, we’re going to come back to you with these numbers.’ ”
Firms Calling
The news already has prompted some companies to abandon their perch on the fence and ring OC ad shops to explore options.
Two undisclosed packaged-goods companies saw the figures and contacted Newport Beach-based Mendoza Dillon & Asociados Inc., OC’s largest Hispanic ad shop, which is revising its presentation materials to include the latest census numbers. President and chief operating officer Ingrid Otero-Smart said one business asked the OC shop to analyze which of its brands should be targeted to Hispanics. The other company is weighing whether it should shift all of its ad dollars to Hispanic programs to get a bigger bang for its bucks, she said.
“These new (census) numbers should definitely help in supporting our claim that marketing dollars need to be reallocated accordingly,” Otero-Smart said. “They confirm that Hispanic marketing cannot continue to be seen as a niche.”
Other agencies report much of the same.
Al Punto Advertising Inc. of Tustin was invited to several business pitches involving companies in the fields of insurance, entertainment, health services and packaged foods that are looking to launch Hispanic marketing programs.
“They come to us as if this is big news,” said Eduardo Bottger, president and creative director at al Punto. “We don’t have to sell it to them.”
That’s a definite attitude switch from years past when, Bottger said, skeptics thought he and other ad guys tweaked population numbers to make their pitches sound better. Now, he said, top CEOs are hearing about Hispanic growth and census numbers from their regular news sources.
“It’s kind of like how nobody believed the world was round,” Bottger said. “All of a sudden everybody is taking this as the truth.”
Based on Census Bureau figures, Hispanics are projected to be the majority in Orange County by 2015, which struck a chord with several local players looking to pitch to large communities of Hispanics in north and central county. Two undisclosed OC media outlets,one considered an “icon” in the area,are considering the market, according to Adelante’s Carstensen, who was contacted to develop Spanish-language plans.
But it’s not all roses for ad shops.
Carstensen said some clients “will continue to raise the bar,” requesting more and more statistical information before they will “maybe” take a look at a Hispanic program. Plus, she said, marketing execs are often slow to respond, particularly when it comes to reallocating dollars.
“Clients always have some issue to fall back on,” Carstensen said, adding that data on Spanish-language use and dependence,to be released next year,will help round out the picture.
And there’s another small beef among ad executives. Many contend that the census figures,even though they show heady Hispanic growth,continue to underestimate the population by as much as 10%.
Casanova, however, was quick to look on the bright side.
“It’s a far cry from where we were,” he said. n
