There’s no shortage of controversy when it comes to immigrants and U.S. immigration policy.
Don’t expect any of the noise to slow down Grupo Gallegos as it builds a new approach for marketing to a Latino-American population that’s “upwardly mobile, bilingual and extremely digitally savvy.”
Looking at the “changing demography of country, it’s obvious to many people now we ain’t in Kansas anymore Toto,” said Andrew Delbridge, the Huntington Beach-based advertising agency’s chief strategy and engagement officer.
“Previously the Hispanic market has been looked at as the icing of the cake, so (the clients’ approach was), ‘Most of my business has been coming from the general market, and there is this Hispanic market, so if I carve out a little bit of my budget I can reach them and get some incremental sales.’ But if you look at the demography of the nation and majority of growth for the next five years, Hispanics are the cake, they no longer are the icing, and that really shifts the priorities that marketers have to look at.”
John Gallegos, who founded the Huntington Beach-based agency 12 years ago, has repositioned it as more than a “Hispanic shop.” He considers it a “growth agency” because his team is pitching to “an audience that has an ability to be a sizable part of [clients’] growth and really drive their growth, based on the sheer size of population.
“We shifted the conversation from being (an) exclusively Hispanic or multicultural or diversity conversation, and what we’re doing is something that we are calling the ‘New Americanism.’ ”
The approach is showing results—Grupo Gallegos added three major clients since last summer.
Toshiba America Information Systems Inc., an Irvine-based subsidiary of Toshiba America, named Grupo Gallegos its advertising agency of record for Latin America in June.
Retailer jcpenney came on board under the leadership of former Apple retail chief Ron Johnson, and it remains as a client after his departure in April. The agency also won a Wonderful Pistachios account, a brand from marketer Roll Global LLC in Los Angeles.
John Gallegos projects the agency will finish the year with $20 million in revenue, up $4 million from last year. The 33% rate of growth over the past two years places it at No. 141 on the Business Journal’s list of fastest-growing companies in Orange County (see list, starting on page 50).
The agency’s staffing supports its “New Americanism” market outlook—Delbridge came from general market agency McKinney, while Managing Director Joe Da Silva spent 22 years at BBH London, a U.K.-based creative shop. The rest of the 95-person team includes a “good mix of international professionals from U.S mainstream and U.S. Hispanic” markets.
Workplace, Clients
The Gallegos team works out of a 12,000-square-foot space, a block away from Huntington Beach Pier. Its workplace features a basketball court, surfboard storage room, and plenty of space to collaborate in groups.
Grupo’s other clients include Comcast Corp., Clorox Co.; the California Milk Processor Board and its Got Milk? campaign; Ashland Inc.’s Valvoline; Foster Farms; and G6 Hospitality LLC’s Motel 6 brand.
The agency handles Latino-market duties for most of its clients, some of which are already noting most of their growth coming from that market segment.
For example, milk is competing with other beverages in the general market population, but remains popular among Latinos.
“You really need to shift the conversation to, … ‘We really need to figure out how the Hispanic market can drive growth for my business,’ ” Gallegos said. “It doesn’t mean don’t do non-Hispanic work, but it means (figuring out) how can Hispanics potentially be a driver of the growth versus being a component of it. So all of a sudden you start looking at that audience like a leader audience, and therefore you need to do work like (the) work we are doing for [Toma Leche, the Spanish version of Got Milk? campaign] that transcends language—it’s not just about something in Spanish.”
The agency is working with Comcast, which is seeing significant variances in how Latino households watch TV. There are differences in language preferences and degrees of assimilation—sometimes in the same home.
“We are looking at how to tackle that household,” he said “It’s not about leading with just a Spanish message or English or both. A key to all of that is to shift the conversation, so we are saying, from a New Americanism standpoint, it’s not exclusively about your country of origin, about the languages or about the differences, but about how those differences make up the new collective and Americanism.
“We are asking clients to look at the marketplace differently, and look at the opportunity that [the Hispanic market] has, and all of a sudden it’s a much bigger conversation.”
Wonderful Pistachios
The agency is providing strategic direction for the Wonderful Pistachios brand, helping them decide whether and how they should enter the Latino market.
“A lot of clients see the Hispanic marketplace; they say, ‘We see a big population, what should we do about it?’ And that really begs not marketing communications or advertising conversation, but [the question of whether you] should you enter the market? Is there a customer?” Gallegos said. “Clients really appreciate that level of candor.”
Gallegos met with jcpenney, for example, and discovered that executives felt the retailer had “lost touch with who Middle America was.”
“We are going back to saying who is and who should be your customer if you want to grow, and how important is” the Hispanic customer to the future of your business, he said. “And for that, we need an understanding of (the) Hispanic consumer, but we also need an understanding of the general U.S. consumer population. Because we are not about turning jcpenney into a Hispanic brand; that’s not what we are about.
“The art of that then becomes, ‘Can you do work that not only inspires Hispanics but inspires the entire marketplace.’ ”
