Strategies for Activating the Hispanic Audience

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Your 30 page excerpt contains the background of this AdRate study, an overview of our metrics, and the data behind one of our key takeaways. Members receive the full 67 page presentation & appendix, and can view a replay of the webinar.

As America’s cultural landscape continues to shift, brands and creative agencies need to adapt. Our machine-learning based AdRate methodology reveals culturally-insightful and data-driven insights to help marketers navigate the Hispanic audience.

In an advertising world that continues to wise up to the power and influence of the Hispanic consumer, “something” is no longer better than nothing. Brands are innovating in how they approach culturally-targeted marketing, with Verizon’s Spanish-language ad run on ABC during the Oscars – without subtitles – as a case in point. A crowded landscape demands perfect execution; if marketers want to win or even break through with these consumers, they need strong guardrails to stay on track. Incorporating facial tracking to capture implicit emotion and machine learning to identify performance drivers, our AdRate agenda, benchmarking intiatives and custom engagements can help your brand stay ahead of the cultural curve.

In this initiative, we provide answers to three questions marketers need to answer to ensure their brands can activate Hispanic consumers, specifically:

Should my ad be in Spanish or English? Obviously speaking to consumers in their dominant language is a winning bet. But some Hispanic Americans may be cynical when “American” brands talk to them in Spanish, and others might not understand the language at all.
What other cultural strategies should my ad use? Whether an ad is in Spanish or English, its content can employ various strategies to maximize in-culture appeal. It may not be enough to merely “represent” culture without explicit messages of inclusion or deeper cultural insights.
Can my ad’s cultural cues “stretch” across segments? After satisfying the previous questions, the appeal of an ad may be concentrated in one sub-segment of Hispanic consumers. Winning in the Hispanic market requires stretching that appeal across different levels of language dominance and acculturation.
To learn more about these findings, the study’s methodology, or our AdRate products & agenda, please reach out to Ryan Woods: 240-380-3075.

To help our members navigate these questions, we conducted a field experiment on a representative sample of 800 Hispanic consumers. We designed this AdRate study to parse out the specific effects of language and in-culture insights on ad performance.

Takeaways and action steps from our research include:

Spanish-language ads can break through to English-dominant viewers if the language helps other culturally-relevant features activate emotional responses
Viewers focus on different features when watching ads in Spanish and English, which can distract from the overall pitch if an ad isn’t grounded with cultural cues
When Spanish-dominant consumers watch Spanish-language ads, a culturally-informed humor can best break through
The most successful English-language ads are the ones which employ in-culture insights to connect with Hispanics through cultural attributes and group traits
Hispanic consumers with different life experiences can interpret cultural cues differently, making it important for ads to feature both in-culture insights and the product itself

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4550 Montgomery Avenue
Bethesda, Maryland, 20814