Pepsi Adds a Latin Flavor : A commercial it will air on tonight’s Grammys is entirely in Spanish, breaking ground for a prime-time broadcast

During tonight’s Grammy Awards presentation, Linda Ronstadt will sing a song in Spanish. That might not be so unusual, but what happens after the song’s ended sure will be: CBS will air a Pepsi advertisement filmed entirely in Spanish.

The commercial, which was filmed in Chile and stars 20-year-old Puerto Rican singer Chayanne, marks a network first--the first Spanish-language commercial on prime-time television without the use of subtitles or dubbing.

In the commercial, a power outage blacks out a concert that stars Chayanne, a former member of the group Los Chicos. But when the singer opens a can of Pepsi and points it toward the lights, they magically turn on again. And when he points the Pepsi at the speakers, the music begins again.

The 30-second commercial--which industry sources estimate cost Pepsi more than $300,000 to place on TV and another $300,000-plus to film--will be seen by an estimated 50 million viewers in the United States.

“The Grammy Awards is the biggest musical event of the year,” said Tod MacKenzie, a Pepsi spokesman. “We have always used music to communicate, and we have always looked at the Grammys as an opportunity for innovative ads.”

Indeed, beginning with the first Michael Jackson spots that aired in 1984, Pepsi and its New York ad agency BBDO Worldwide have quickly turned the Grammy Awards into an advertising showcase that almost rivals the Super Bowl. Besides Pepsi’s Latino ad--which was created by the New York Latino ad firm Publicidad Siboney--Pepsi also plans to air a teaser commercial for its upcoming Madonna campaign and several ads featuring singer Robert Palmer.

But it is the Latino ad that may raise the most eyebrows--both inside and outside the advertising industry. While several Latino marketing experts generally applaud Pepsi’s move, they offer diverse views about just who Pepsi is trying to reach.

“This is extraordinarily rare,” said Roger Sennott, general manager of Market Development Inc., a San Diego research firm that specializes in the Latino market. “We’ve never even thought about something like this around here. But I suppose the trick is to present the ad as a spot that just happens to have Hispanic music--not as an ad geared toward an Hispanic audience.”

The ad must have some cross-cultural appeal, like the hit song and film “La Bamba,” said Jim Loretta, vice president of marketing at Miami-based Strategy Research Corp., which also specializes in the Latino market. But at the same time, Loretta said, Pepsi is clearly targeting Latinos. “The thinking there has to be that if they hit the hot buttons of young, Latino consumers, the kids will put 50 cents in the Pepsi machine instead of the Coke machine.”

Indeed, Pepsi says it is trying to target young Latinos with the ad. But it hopes to pull in others, too. At the same time, Pepsi executives are keeping their fingers crossed that the ad doesn’t offend any viewers. When Ronstadt sang only in Spanish in a concert last August in Boston, some audience members booed and even demanded their money back. (The concert, however, was well received in Southern California and the Southwest.)

“We’re not advocating a wholesale change in the language that advertisers use to reach American consumers,” said MacKenzie, who pointed out that Pepsi’s Michael Jackson ads in English are even airing in the Soviet Union. “Music is music no matter what language it’s in.”

For now, Coke says it has no plans to air ads in Spanish on network television. And it isn’t much impressed with Pepsi’s latest bid. “I suppose it makes for good headlines,” said spokesman Ira Gleser, “but I don’t know where they’re going with it.”

Locally, the Vons grocery chain beat Pepsi to the punch by more than a year. In August, 1987, Vons ran a Latino ad--with subtitles--on mainstream TV in the San Diego and Los Angeles markets. The ad featured shots of Vons produce commonly used to make salsa. “We originally shot it for Spanish TV,” said Bonnie Baruch, senior vice president at Vons’ Los Angeles ad firm, J. Walter Thompson. “Once we saw it, however, we figured we could reshoot it and direct it toward an Anglo audience.”

Just how effective--or ineffective--was that commercial? Vons isn’t saying; but the company did say it hasn’t run any ads like it since.