Ad Campaigns Reach Out to Latinos With Mucho Gusto

These days, the Carl’s Jr. Happy Star can dance the merengue and the tango and play the bongos. Soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful” is sporting a new tropical-looking set, with two Latino actors who are heating up the story line with a love triangle and a fashion empire of their own. And Sparkletts water uses a common Mexican expression to get to the point.

The Latino-flavored spots and television plots are the latest sign of stepped-up marketing to the nation’s fastest-growing minority group. But though the Latino market may finally have the attention of corporate boardrooms and television studios, the strategies still are developed largely in the offices of people like Anita Santiago, Martin Llorens and Dennis Rodriguez, who have dedicated their marketing, advertising and public relations careers to targeting a culture they know and feel inside and out.

“I remember when I used to say that I worked for the Hispanic market, and it might as well have been the Pygmy market,” said Rodriguez, co-founder of Alternative & Innovative Marketing in Escondido. “Latinos, what Latinos? But now it’s gotten to the point where we’re afraid to pick up the phone because we have so much business.” With Latino buying power in the U.S. estimated at $560 billion, and the population swelling dramatically, those who get paid to attract the time and spending of Latinos no longer treat the market as a niche. The question for corporate America is how to reach them.

Case in point: Got milk?

When Santiago, president and creative director of Anita Santiago Advertising in Santa Monica, was approached by the California Milk Processors Board in 1994 to help translate its popular and successful milk campaign, she had to explain to the board that a simple translation wasn’t going to cut it. Literally, the ads would have asked Spanish-speaking viewers, “Tienen leche?”--that is, “Are you lactating?”

Santiago, a mother herself, instead went with warm family scenes in which the mother cooks favorite recipes, such as flan, with milk. The spot asks, “Have you given them enough milk today?”

“This business is not just about translating words,” Santiago said. “It’s about the feelings, the values and the customs of a group of people who are different from the general market. To reach them, you have to understand that from all sides.”

Fast-forward to 2001, and the shift Santiago sees is dramatic. Carl’s Jr. hired her six years ago to develop its Spanish-language campaign, fully aware that the California-based hamburger chain’s “messy eaters” ads that appeal to young men would not do well in Latino households.

Santiago’s play on the Spanish expression “Con mucho gusto” has become a popular slogan. It means “With much pleasure” but is used in the commercials to also highlight the hearty taste of the burgers.

The drippy burger commercials “might be insulting or repulsive,” said Cheryl Garcia, manager of special concept marketing for the chain. “Latinos tend to be more family-oriented. They have different values. Our Spanish campaign has a lot of music and dance, which is such a big part of the Latino community. It’s been a hit.”

The high-energy and colorful spots have used mariachi, merengue, salsa and hip-hop sounds to highlight vocalists who can deliver the catch phrase, “Con mucho gusto,” with plenty of gusto.

But to strike gold, Llorens added, requires more than speaking Spanish and being Latino. The Latino culture in the U.S. is made up of many segments, and what works in Los Angeles might not necessarily click in Miami, said Llorens, who has worked in both markets.

“If you embrace Latinos and respect their culture, if you give them a message and orient it toward their feelings and culture, you will have a very loyal customer,” said Llorens, account supervisor at La Agencia de Orci in Los Angeles, which was hired to promote CBS’ efforts to attract Latino viewership to the soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful.”

The key, said Santiago, is to touch Latinos emotionally by using a language that evokes familiar images. In a 1999 essay for the advertising industry, she wrote: “The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart. It is the language we think in, dream in, pray and sing in. It is our native tongue, central to our identity. It is literally how we understand the world and the products marketed to us in that world. Translation isn’t enough . . . Like poetry, there is a feeling beneath the words.”

It is a lesson that lives in the heart of Rodriguez, a native Mexican. He used a popular Mexican expression, “Aguas,” which means “Be careful,” to help Sparkletts sell water (agua) to Spanish-speaking consumers. The slogan, “Aguas con el agua” cautions consumers to be picky about the water they drink. This campaign, Rodriguez recognizes, would not work with Puerto Ricans or Cubans living on the East Coast.

“I live in the U.S. but I really live in Mexico because that’s what I watch on television and what I read,” Rodriguez said. Last month, CBS became the first network to use Secondary Audio Program, which provides dubbed Spanish translations, for a daytime drama at the same time it integrated two new Latino characters into the main plots of the 15-year-old soap “The Bold and the Beautiful.” Antonio Dominguez, the new cutting-edge fashion designer played by Paulo Benedeti, and Sofia Alonso, a fashion model played by Sandra Vidal, are wildly popular with the show’s fans, and network executives are hoping more Latinos will watch the show because of them.

“We were frustrated that we weren’t reaching the Spanish-speaking Americans in our country,” said executive producer and head writer Bradley Bell. “We’re successful in many international markets and 45 languages, but not with the Spanish speakers who live here who already have so many choices in programming in their own language.”

Already, the soap has seen a significant increase in Spanish-speaking viewership in Miami and New York, according to Llorens, who was citing preliminary reports from the Nielsen Hispanic Station Index.

To promote the additions to the cast and the SAP technology, network executives turned to La Agencia de Orci, where Llorens heads the project.

“We needed an outside company that had the expertise in the market and could guide us culturally,” said Lucy Johnson, senior vice president for CBS. “These are core characters who are now part of the show. Whatever the background of the characters, their ethnicity is not what the plot is based on. But our biggest hope is that it will click with the Hispanic audience because their culture is represented in the actors, the set and the story elements.”

The push to market, advertise and promote in Spanish also has sparked the need for Spanish-speaking talent to star in campaigns. In her latest MTV-style Carl’s Jr. commercials, Santiago showcases local musicians and singers who are not household names but have the talent to reach that level.

The most recently taped commercials, which will introduce a new super burger, separately feature Karina Nuvo, a Cuban American rhythm and blues vocalist, and Satelite, an independent alternative Latino rock band--artists Santiago’s agency found during extensive talent searches around the state. Nuvo and Satelite worked their musical styles into the jingles written by Santiago’s agency.

“We try to match up the right attitude with the right burger,” Santiago said. “With Satelite, their sound is very contemporary and their look was right. They’re young, healthy and energetic. The hamburger and the music they make is what sells. For that spot, we want rockers. The concept for Karina’s spot is more seductive, more sultry, which goes with her style.”

And around burgers. Not just the ones the band ate take after take, but the ones embedded in the wallpaper.

“This is an unusual experience,” said Satelite singer and band leader Jamie Perlman, whose breathy delivery of the spot’s slogan has impressed everyone on the set. “I’m sure U2 or R.E.M. would say we’re a sellout, but I’m proud of it. The money is good but the exposure is better. It’s funny to be on the set and be singing, and you look around and there’s all these burgers.”