TransCity

In Europe many advertisers and ethnic media interact in local European languages when targeting second-generation Turkish, Moroccan, Asian or other ethnic consumers. On the contrary, in the U.S. many advertisers and ethnic media are used to address consumers in specific community languages such as Spanish, Cantonese, Russian or Hindi.

But this trend is changing, according to Teresa Bouza of Agencia EFE. We have already seen that the new MTV TR3S channel will use a mix of the Spanish and English language as well as a mix of English- and Spanish-language music to target the Latino youth in the U.S. Now Toyota, McDonald’s and Reebok are among heavyweight companies increasing their use of English-language advertising when seeking to reach U.S. Hispanics, especially younger ones born in their parents’ adopted country. These companies are leading a new marketing trend that, according to some experts, has enormous potential.

“I worked at Univision for three years and I quit because I realized that most Latinos don’t watch television in Spanish,” said Robert Ross, president of AIM TV, which produces two programs a week in English for a young Hispanic audience. He said Hispanic young people “are very Latino, but they live their life in English.”

McDonald’s says it wants to reach out to second-generation Latinos and will be devoting a growing proportion of its Hispanic-targeted marketing budget to ads in English, even though the overall percentage remains small. “Speaking only in Spanish limits us a little,” Rick Marroquin, McDonald’s director of marketing for the Hispanic market, told EFE. He said that “85 percent of our media advertising budget for the Hispanic market goes to Spanish-language publications or TV.”

Executives with automaker Toyota, which recently filmed a new bilingual commercial, are also looking for the best way to reach out to second-generation Hispanics. Kim McCullough, marketing manager at Toyota, said that “Latino youth are multi-cultural” and move in two different cultural and linguistic circles. For that reason, she said the company often opts for bilingual commercials that have a universal message and in which the actors switch effortlessly from one language to the other. Shoe manufacturer Reebok is another company seeking to appeal to young Hispanics in English, having launched a Website in that language last year. The website is heavily focussed on popular music styles like reggaeton, currently hot among the Latino youth.

In 2004, 65 percent of Hispanics living in the United States had been born in that country, up sharply from the 1970s and 80s when most Latinos had been born abroad, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics. The Pew Hispanic Center, meanwhile, estimates that by 2020 75 percent of Hispanics will have been born in the United States.

Hispanics make up the biggest minority in the United States, numbering just over 40 million in an overall population nearing 300 million.

Main source: Teresa Bouza of Agencia EFE