Fast-Food Firms Learn Lessons of El Mercado

When Carl’s Jr. wanted to translate its messy, drippy, “in-your-face” television ads into Spanish, the burger chain turned to Anita Santiago for advice.

“I took one look at the concept and told them I would never, ever do it,” said Santiago, whose Santa Monica-based agency specializes in Spanish-language advertising. “For starters, humor doesn’t always translate very well.”

The sassy punch line would be reduced to gibberish if translated into Spanish, she warned, and crude humor aimed at hip, young males would confuse mothers in Latino households who typically decide where their families eat.

Carl’s Jr. executives dropped the idea and hired Santiago’s agency to produce a string of Spanish-language commercials featuring Latino actors performing traditional dances. Cash registers in predominantly Latino neighborhoods began ringing up double-digit sales increases almost as soon as the campaign began last year.

Using mariachi and merengue to sell burgers is part of the ongoing evolution of marketing--especially for family restaurants, prompted by the growing awareness that it takes more than proficiency in Spanish to pitch goods and services to Latinos.

“It’s more than just language,” said Carl’s Jr. vice president Robert Wisely. “It’s also about dealing with ethnicity, with cultural issues. Spanish is the language, but the culture is an amalgam of Mexico, South America, Latin America.”

Carl’s Jr. isn’t the only restaurant chain talking to potential customers en Espanol.

Yoshinoya Beef Bowl is experimenting with direct mail. Wienerschnitzel is pitching corn dogs on the radio. And Denny’s recently ran its first Spanish-language television advertisement in Los Angeles.

Restaurants aren’t alone in courting the nation’s burgeoning Latino population. Led by Procter & Gamble, AT&T; and Sears, spending on Spanish-language advertising rose by 11% during 1995, moving above $1 billion for the first time.

Advertising budgets directed at Latinos still represent just a fraction of the estimated $150 billion spent to sell everything from burgers to telephone service in the overall market. But passing the $1-billion mark “establishes a new context” for Spanish-language advertising, according to Santa Barbara-based Hispanic Business magazine.

Although the average Latino household’s income is only 73% of the overall average, the nation’s 26.6 million Latinos remain an attractive target.

A survey conducted by Univision, the nation’s largest Spanish-language television network, shows Latinos routinely spend more, on average, than non-Latinos for certain goods and services, such as children’s clothing, footwear and telephone service.

Restaurateurs are especially interested in Latinos because they like to dine out. And surveys show Latino families pay attention to restaurant companies that reach out in Spanish.

“Time after time, when a chain starts to use Spanish-language advertising, sales go up,” said Robert Sandelman, a Brea-based restaurant industry consultant. “And when they go dark--when the advertising stops--sales go back down.

According to his research:

* Latinos, who are younger on average than the general population, are a prime target for fast-food and lower-cost sit-down restaurants that generate the bulk of their sales from younger diners.

* Because their families tend to be larger--and because Latino parents view eating out as a family affair--Latinos’ average fast-food checks tend to be higher than others.

* Non-Latinos tend to use fast-food restaurants on weekdays--a quick bite at lunch or to grab dinner on the way home from work. But Latinos frequent such restaurants at breakfast and on weekends--typically slower periods for fast-food chains.

* The gap is slowly narrowing, but Latinos are more likely than non-Latinos to eschew drive-through windows and take the time to eat inside--good news for fast-food chains with dining rooms.

McDonald’s spent $12 million--more than any other restaurant chain--on Spanish-language advertising in 1995.

“This isn’t rocket science,” said Tito Zamolloa, a Los Angeles-based marketing supervisor for McDonald’s. “You first have to be culturally sensitive and use a lot of common sense. You don’t want to be like the company that advertised in Detroit, a predominantly black market, using country music in its ads.

“You want to be culturally appropriate.”

*

Society may debate whether immigrants should be immersed in English or taught in bilingual classrooms, but restaurant operators listen only to market forces.

And they hear that Spanish-language advertising works. If they don’t speak to potential customers in Spanish, their competitors will.

More than 90% of recent Latino immigrants speak Spanish at home; 41% speak English poorly or not at all, according to a survey by Univision, the Miami-based network.

Latinos who didn’t finish grade school almost always speak Spanish at home--but so do 66% of college-educated Latinos. And Spanish remains the chosen language at home for a majority of Latinos at all economic levels.

Chains can’t afford to ignore the Latino market--particularly in Southern California, where both the top-ranked evening television news show and the region’s most popular radio station are broadcast in Spanish.

“Laws and regulations are not going to stop people from buying things,” Santiago said. “And while there are people out there worrying about the politics, people are still shopping.”

Fast-food chains in neighborhoods now predominantly Latino need to reach out to their Spanish-speaking neighbors, said Mandi Dossin, a partner with Irvine-based DGWB Advertising, which has produced advertising for El Pollo Loco, KFC and Wienerschnitzel.

“The environment around many restaurant locations is changing,” Dossin said. “You absolutely have to do something to invite those people in. Either you respond . . . or you go the way of the dinosaur.”

Diners munching on Happy Stars and Western Cheeseburgers at a Carl’s Jr. restaurant in Santa Ana said they appreciate the burger chain’s added effort.

“The commercials make people think that they mean something to the restaurant,” said Karina Raynaga, a 20-year-old Santa Ana resident who has seen Carl’s Jr. commercials on English- and Spanish-language TV. “You want to eat here because it seems like they care enough about you to speak your language.”

“You see dancers of all ages, and that makes you think of Carl’s as a place for all the family,” said Gabriela Amezquita, 26, of Santa Ana.

But besides speaking the right language, cultural differences must be recognized. And slogans--occasionally even the company name--sometimes get lost in translation.

Wienerschnitzel--in Germany it means breaded veal cutlet rather than hot dog--had to grapple with the fact that its name is a mouthful. When the chain expanded into Mexico a few years ago, its franchisee cut the name to Wieners.

The Mexican franchisee “felt the name was so long and complicated [in Spanish] that it needed to be shorter so people could pronounce it,” said Wienerschnitzel marketing director Tom Amberger.

So when the Newport Beach-based chain added radio ads in Los Angeles earlier this year, disc jockeys were told to read the name slowly--and identify Wienerschnitzel as “the place with the big red W” on its sign.

Boston Market realized that the Mercado Boston name means little to Latinos who aren’t familiar with the East Coast city or the restaurant’s very American fare that’s heavy on meat loaf and potatoes. And the chain’s tag line--The Freshest Thing Going--simply didn’t make sense in Spanish.

So television ads--running in Miami and San Diego--dwell heavily on the chain’s menu items, and the “fresh” tag line was changed to: Esto Si Es Comida (This is a real meal).

Rick Hermida, an account executive with the New York-based agency that crafted Boston Market’s initial ads, regularly advises newcomers to Spanish-language advertising that “happy Hispanic families sitting around the table is a tired cliche for people who haven’t done their research.”

And just as “Californians speak differently than New Yorkers . . . it’s lo mismo--the same--in Spanish,” said Irvine-based public relations consultant Melinda Morgan. “Different translations are needed for different countries, from Cuba . . . to Mexico.”

Ad executives still gossip about the restaurant chain that invited Latino customers in for dessert, using “nieve,” which signals “ice cream” to some Mexican Americans and “cocaine” to many Cuban Americans. Morgan notes that Budweiser’s “King of Beers” translates as “Queen of Beers” because “cerveza” (beer) has a feminine ending.

Denny’s, which is pumping $1 million into its new ad campaign running in Miami, Houston and Los Angeles, almost ended up shooting two different commercials.

“We spent a lot of time talking about whether we needed to shoot two spots--one for the Cuban, South American influence in Florida and another for the Mexican influence in Southern California,” said Jon Jameson, marketing vice president for the chain. “This has been something of a learning laboratory for us.”

*

Spanish-language advertising remains inexpensive largely because Latino media outlets lack the clout to boost advertising rates.

Carl’s Jr. President Tom Thompson recently told shareholders that Latino consumers are a priority, in large part because he can reach them for just one-seventh the cost of a general market campaign.

But low costs alone aren’t the only reason chains are polishing their Spanish-language advertising. Jameson said that Spartanburg, S.C.-based Denny’s views itself as a “natural” choice for Latino families.

“We are a value leader on pricing and that’s what Hispanics want,” Jameson said. “We’re also a family restaurant, and unlike the fast-fooders, we offer sit-down service, which will play very well in this category.”

“Quite honestly, our approach to the Hispanic market in the past has been fragmented. We’d never put the creative effort or the financial support behind the campaigns,” he said.

Denny’s, like Carl’s Jr., views the current Spanish-language advertisements as necessary first steps toward better understanding the growing Latino market.

“What I find fascinating is . . . second-generation Latinos who speak Spanish and English,” Wisely said. “I wonder what they’ll think of our distinct effort to talk to them in Spanish at the same time they’re seeing the kind of ads we’re doing for the gringos.”

Advertising executives point to a commercial from market leader McDonald’s as an example of where Latino advertising may be heading. The TV ad that ran on Spanish-language stations showed a baby who is speaking his first word--papa--to his proud father. For Spanish-speakers, that can mean two things: Daddy or French fry.

The chain’s upper management took a chance and played a translated version on English-language stations, Zamolloa said.

“It’s one of the few times we had a creative approach in Spanish that got translated into English,” Zamolloa said. “And it turned out to be very successful.”