Sometimes you do things that you know will be painful, but you do them anyway. This was the case for me on April 16 when I went to a luncheon presentation hosted by the Ad Club of West Michigan. The topic for the day was "The Hispanic Market: Solid Creative Requires Solid Research." It sounded somewhat interesting when I saw the promotional materials for this and I thought that maybe it would be a good opportunity to connect with folks in the Latino community. Wow, was I ever wrong.

The presenter was Craig Harper, Executive Vice President of Simmons Marketing Research based out of Memphis, Tennessee. You guessed it, he was a middle aged white guy, who by his own admission, had not spent much time working in the Hispanic community and spoke absolutely no Spanish. Seems like reason enough to have him speak on how best to target Hispanics when designing an ad campaign.

Craig started the session off by doing a "Reader's Digest" version on the history of Hispanic migration to the US. He says the first wave came in 1959 right after the Cuban revolution. Funny, I always thought that the use of Mexican labor in the early part of the 20th Century and then again during the Bracero program in 1942 were the first real waves of Hispanic immigration.

Next, the speaker stated that it is important to understand how widespread Hispanic culture has become in the US, even amongst the White population. The indicators he cited are the popularity of Latino music, Latino food, and the fact that many gringos celebrate both Cinco de Mayo and the Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead). While these indicators may be true at some level, their popularity is in part due to the business community's ability to use these aspects of Hispanic culture to make a buck. Next time you are at the Mexican festival in Grand Rapids, notice the Mexican flags on the Miller Lite beer tent.

On the next page of the Power Point, the presenter finally got to the point of his presentation. The text that filled the screen said, "Hispanic purchasing power will be over $1 Trillion by 2012." Now we are getting somewhere. This explains why the room at the Ad Club luncheon was filled with primarily gringos representing a variety of advertising firms and the local Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Harper then went on to say that it is important for those in the ad business to understand that more and more Hispanics, particularly second generation Hispanics, are consuming English language media. The exception to this rule is radio where the majority of Hispanics prefer to listen to Spanish language radio. The increased consumption of English language media has meant greater acculturation. Acculturation, Craig said, has meant a shift from convenience for Hispanic shoppers (small neighborhood stores) to those who are willing to travel to shop (malls and big box stores). He also stated that another reflection of acculturation was that Hispanics are shifting from shopping based on need to shopping based on enjoyment. Yeah! Great will be the day when large numbers of Hispanic consumers trample each other at 5am the day after Thanksgiving in order to get their hands on the latest hyped toy for their kids.

Next, came the really fun part where he showed what he called "successful ad campaigns" that targeted the Hispanic population. The first example was a TV ad from Honda. The ad begins with a kid on skates, to an adolescent on a skateboard to an older teen on a bike to a family getting into a car. The whole time the commercial is running you can hear a musical score in the background, music by the insurgent Mexican group Control Machete. Control Machete, for those who know Mexican bands, has a very distinct sound with off beat saxophone, a mix of percussion and Hip Hop-like vocals. Their music is defiantly anti-establishment and counter-cultural, but there it was being used as background music to sell Hondas.

The presenter provided other corporate ad examples from the All State insurance company, Heineken, and Verizon. The most insidious ad example that was presented was a magazine ad run by the US Army targeting Hispanics. Craig told the crowd that it featured the mother of an enlistee, since family is very important to Hispanics. Hell, here I thought all this time that family was important to all cultures. Craig said that this ad proved to be effective because "Hispanics are 16% more likely to serve in the Army." Interesting, because according to the National Network Opposing the Militarizing of Youth's YANO Project, Hispanics, like Blacks, are disproportionately targeted by military recruiters in urban school districts. In addition, Hispanics are entering the US military primarily out of economic necessity, since job opportunities are limited after High School and because Hispanic youth who were not born in the US and have parents who are undocumented cannot apply for college tuition assistance.

After the presentation, Craig agreed to take questions from the audience. Most everyone seemed to be interested in more ideas on how to reach this growing consumer market, but silly me had to ask something else. I said, "It seemed like all the Hispanics used in the ad campaigns were all light-skinned and middle class. Since many people from Mexico are Indigenous or have Indigenous blood and many people from the Caribbean are of African descent, how do you appeal to people who don't look white and economically well off?" Oh, shit. The room kind of went quiet, and then Craig danced around the question by saying that of course there is tremendous diversity within the Hispanic population. "Just because people speak English in the US they are not the same as people who speak English in Canada, Eh." At this point, he said he was on a tight schedule to catch a plane and the presentation was over.

The bad news then is that the Hispanic community will become an increasingly more intense target of the advertising community. The good news is that there are a lot of small, neighborhood Hispanic businesses that are doing great without the help of corporate advertising predators. You can find small Salvadoran restaurants featuring pupusarias around town and ice cream vendors pushing carts in the summer yelling paletas! (popsicle) The Hispanic community and any other community for that matter, doesn't need the kind of advertising that Mr. Craig and the Ad Council practice. In fact, the advertising community should do what comedian Bill Hicks once suggested - kill themselves. We'll all be better off.