Chevron’s Spanish Ad Draws Complaints

A Spanish-language commercial from Chevron Corp. that ran briefly on general-market television channels drew a small but vocal response from consumers angered by the use of a language other than English on general-market stations.

“The fact is that we received a small number of positive and negative responses,” said Chevron spokeswoman Bonnie Chaikind. “But the overall response was very, very small in relation to the total customer base of Chevron.”

The ad, which ran for a week in late May, wasn’t pulled because of viewer objections, Chaikind said. “When we dropped it into the [advertising] rotation, it was only planned to run for one week.”

That the ad prompted some angry responses “isn’t surprising,” said Bob Howells, chief executive of Irvine-based ad agency Mendoza, Dillon & Asociados. “I’d have to assume Chevron got more responses than they’d anticipated.”

The commercial created by San Francisco-based Bravo Group came amid a growing debate on the best way for advertisers to reach Latinos. Nike and Ford are among those experimenting with Spanish-language ads on English-language TV stations.