Push Is on to Attract Latinos : Advertisers Find a Market Under Their Noses

When Cox Cable San Diego initiated a campaign earlier this year to net more cable television viewers, the company attacked on a new front--it pitched cable TV to the county’s fast-growing Latino community.

Cox Cable executives handed the marketing assignment to Brenda Lovitt, the chief customer recruiter, who greeted the task with trepidation. The cause of Lovitt’s concern: she’s an Anglo.

“I don’t speak Spanish. I don’t understand the culture,” Lovitt said. “How can I put myself in the position of a Spanish-speaking customer?”

Some Outside Help

So Lovitt and Cox turned to Cohen Advertising Group, a 3-year-old San Diego-based agency that specializes in advertising directed to Latino consumers. Since March, Cohen has developed two Cox Cable campaigns, for both TV and radio. A third campaign, expected to air soon, will also feature a direct-mail effort.

Cohen, whose other clients include Skippy, Farmer’s Market, Del Taco and Seagrams, decided to use the Spanish catchword conectate for the Cox campaign, which means literally to connect or hook up, perfect for a cable TV company, Lovitt said.

“But even better, conectate also has another meaning--to join or to become part of,” Lovitt said, adding that the word has become a centerpiece of Cox’s Latino marketing strategy. “We used it to send a message to the Hispanic viewer that says you’re missing out unless you become part of the Cox Cable family. It was really clever.”

Cox’s experience with Cohen illustrate’s corporate America’s increasing desire to sell goods and services to an ever-increasing Latino market and has spurred the start-up of agencies that focus primarily, if not exclusively, on creating Spanish-language advertising.

The growing attention paid to the Latino market can be observed in several regions across the nation, but such activity is most apparent in Southwestern cities with high concentrations of Latinos.

San Diego County, with a Latino population of 473,800, or 17.7% of the overall 2.6 million, is a prime example. Companies are drawn not only to San Diego’s substantial Latino population but also to the potential of reaching 1.5 million more Latinos just south of the border in Tijuana.

“We were never familiar with the Hispanic market, so we never really tried to penetrate it,” said Lovitt of Cox Cable. “Besides, in the past we were busy just trying to penetrate the general or Anglo market. Since we’ve successfully done that, we started looking at other markets where we could expand. The Hispanic market was staring us in the face.”

Although Cox Cable has been serving San Diego viewers for 25 years, the company only began advertising in Spanish five months ago.

Eatery Interested, Too

Even Rubio’s Restaurants, operator of the San Diego-based Mexican eateries, had until recently overlooked the Latino market.

“It’s ironic,” said Ralph Rubio, president of the restaurant chain. “We serve Mexican food, but our success has been built on our ability to draw the college-educated Anglo customer. But we want Hispanics to come to our restaurants, too.

“Just like every other businessman out there, I’ve been seeing statistics about the growing U.S. Hispanic population,” Rubio said. “You just can’t ignore those numbers anymore.” Rubio, who has teamed with Cohen, is in the midst of preparing an advertising campaign directed at Latinos.

As impressive as the size of the county’s Latino population is the rate of its growth. From 1970 to 1980, the county’s Latino population grew 126.5%, according to a study just completed by the Strategy Research Corp., Miami-based marketing and research firm that has conducted nearly 30 market studies of the Hispanic market. The study was commissioned by a coalition of local Latino radio and television stations and agencies.

During the last nine years, the number of Latinos has increased by 72.2%. But even more important is the Latino buying power--total spendable dollars generated by Latinos in San Diego is projected to be $2.8 billion in 1989.

Although Southern California has always had a sizable Latino population, companies have until recently failed to penetrate or recognize that market, said Patricia Cohen, president of Cohen Advertising Group.

Why-Bother Attitude

“Most companies said, ‘Why bother advertising in Spanish?’ ” Cohen said. “They believed that eventually the Hispanic immigrant would become assimilated, become an American. They believed, then, that they could be reached with regular English campaigns.”

But Cohen cites recent market studies that show that nearly half of all Latinos in the United States never become assimilated. “They never really have to learn English . . . . It’s becoming increasingly apparent that a large group can be reached by Latino advertising, whereas an English campaign targeted at the same group would be ineffective,” Cohen said.

Companies’ reluctance to enter an unfamiliar market left the Latino market untapped, said Gerry Stefanko, president and CEO of San Diego-based Stefanko & Hetz Advertising and Design. A year ago, Stefanko established Salsa Advertising & Marketing, a division of Stefanko & Hetz, to exclusively handle Latino campaigns. Allie’s Restaurants and XEWT-TV, the Tijuana-based television station, are among Salsa’s clients.

“There’s the stereotype of the sleepy Mexican who has no money to spend,” Stefanko said. “Such false perceptions have prevented American companies from truly recognizing how lucrative the Hispanic market can be.”

Cohen has encountered such ignorance as well.

“I’ve run into the American marketer who is used to sitting in his office and occasionally makes a trip into Tijuana,” Cohen said. “He sees people and the way they live, and because they look different or look like they don’t have money, he decides it’s a waste of time to advertise to them.

“What he doesn’t recognize is that there are different class levels, that there are many Mexicans who come across the border because they prefer American products,” Cohen said.

General agencies, as well as companies’ in-house marketing units, will testify that advertising to Latinos takes more than being bilingual; an agency must be bicultural.

Learning the Hard Way

Companies that have rushed ill-prepared into the Latino market have learned that lesson the hard way. One embarrassing example: Braniff airlines attempted to pitch their English campaign about “the luxury of riding on leather,” which was translated into “sientese en cuero.”

“The translation in Spanish meant something like ‘ride around naked in our wonderful airplane,’ ” Cohen said with a chuckle.

“Marketing to the Hispanic community is not as simple as taking the Anglo message and running it in Spanish,” said Dick Brooks, general manager of Phillips-Ramsey, one of San Diego’s largest advertising agencies. Although Phillips-Ramsey runs Latino advertising for a handful of its clients, it often consults with specialized agencies for help.

“I don’t feel that we have the expertise on staff to market to the Hispanic community for all of our clients,” Brooks said. “When we believe it’s appropriate, we’ll turn to outside resources.”

When Rubio opened his sixth and most recent Rubio’s Deli-Mex restaurant in Chula Vista, he noticed that many of the patrons were Latino. Before advertising to lure more Latinos, Rubio says, it is critical to know which Latino subgroup to address.

“A big agency is likely to treat Hispanics as the same,” Rubio said. “But, in reality, you could have an assimilated Mexican who’s been educated here, speaks English and holds a middle-management job. Or you can have a blue-collar worker who’s been here for five or six years and speaks English at work, but speaks Spanish at home. Or you could have a Mexican who’s been here just six months and doesn’t speak any English. There are subtle differences among them. And you might have to create your advertising accordingly.”

Looking for Help

Family Bargain Center, the off-price San Diego-based clothing retailer, has always had a large Latino customer base. But, until last May, the clothing chain, which now has 54 stores in California and Arizona (seven in San Diego County), lacked an effective, unified advertising campaign. Each district manager created his own advertising.

“Considering that advertising was not their area of expertise, the district managers did a good job,” said Andrew Rosenberg, who was hired a year ago as the advertising director to unify the chain’s marketing campaign. “Each district manager was doing his own thing. Our effort, you could say, was roughshod.”

Rosenberg immediately set out to hire an agency familiar with Latino advertising. He chose Salsa Advertising & Marketing.

So, how’s business been since hiring Salsa?

“The bottom line is, sales have gone up.” (The closely held company declined to release sales figures.)

Lovitt, the senior product manager for Cox Cable, reports similar success with Cohen Advertising Group.

“What we found out was that the local Hispanic viewer knew very little about cable,” Lovitt said. “They didn’t understand that we offered a variety of programs. So, before we did anything, we had to teach them from the ground up that we offered a wide range of entertainment at their fingertips.”

The first Cox campaign created by Cohen--primarily an “awareness” commercial that featured the word conectate --ran for about six weeks and ended June 10. Lovitt declared the campaign a hit.

“As soon as we started running the campaign, we started getting phone calls,” Lovitt said. “I’ve never seen our customer service reps so busy.” Cox netted 800 new Latino customers because of the ads.

And, according to Cohen, opportunities to capitalize on the Latino market should come in waves.