Billboard in Spanish Is a Good Sign for Everyone : Language is a major unifying force. Learning how to market to the growing Hispanic community teaches all of us how to market to the rest of the world.

In many neighborhoods in the Valley you can see billboards for big companies that get some people really riled.

They get upset because the ads are in Spanish.

Well, my advice is: Chill out, America. We all benefit from the Hispanic marketing phenomenon.

How could this be? If we allow another language in our midst, will we not lose the glue that holds the country together, i.e. English?

Of course not.

Don’t condemn that billboard in Spanish. It’s a good sign.

Hispanic marketing has become an industry unto itself that employs thousands in ad agencies, research companies, public relations firms, promotion houses, radio stations, TV stations, newspapers and magazines.

Even with all this activity, there’s no need to feel unwarranted attention is being given to a small group. The Hispanic population of the United States is approximately 9.4% of the total, yet less than 1% of corporate America’s ad and research budgets go to this segment.

Hispanic marketing promotes economic activity by stimulating consumption and educates uninformed Hispanic consumers. It also presents positive role models and helps provide a beacon to bring Hispanics out of the black market fringe and into the mainstream economy.

America as a whole stands to gain in the bargain. In my experience with corporate marketers, several have cut their teeth on the Hispanic market--learning cross-cultural skills and unlearning their inbred American cultural centrism--and moved on to positions of significance in the international marketing divisions of their firms.

In other words, learning how to market to Hispanics, the sheer mechanics of the process, is teaching corporate America how to market to the world. The experts agree that one of the chief engines of our ultimate economic recovery will be exports, and we are learning right here at home how to compete in the world markets.

Will America fall apart because our population becomes bilingual? I don’t think so. Remember, the greatest peril the republic ever faced, the Civil War, was fought between forces speaking a common language.

Yes, language is a unifying force, and the shared Spanish language is the common thread in the new waves of immigrants from Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba and Colombia. But I must point out that extremely conservative Cuban exiles have a lot more in common with right-wing fundamentalists in Glendale than they do with Mexican-origin farm workers in Oxnard.

So lighten up, America. Freedom of speech means not only saying whatever you want, but in whatever language you choose.

And remember, we all benefit from the Hispanic marketing phenomenon.