Comfort zone

By Gonzalo López Martí – LMMIAMI.COM

• A few weeks back we elaborated on the revitalized currency & sway “influencers” hold in the current state of marketing.
• Especially when we are talking about resident influencers who really & factually work for the companies they endorse on social & traditional media.
• Namely Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, the Silicon Valley bucaneers.
• Yeah, for some reason California is a hotbed of influencers.
• A peculiar laboratory of idiosyncratic human behavior applied to business.
• Northern and Southern California too.
• Have you read the leaked Sony Pictures emails?
• Well, you shouldn’t.
• It’s illegal.
• But if you disregard my advice and still read them, you’ll have a blast.
• It is Hollywood’s dirty laundry at its finest.
• They should do a movie about the little incident.
• Moguls, big shot producers, talent handlers and assorted backstabbers tearing one another apart over outlandish minutiae.
• They are not normal those people.
• Still, they know a thing or two about human behavior.
• Hollywood plays the “influencer” game in a strange yet masterful way.
• Take the movie American hustle, for instance.
• In said movie, Christian Bale’s part is that of an overweight, balding, unattractive, slightly ethnic scam artist from the Bronx.
• Thing is, Christian Bale is British, handsome, fit as a professional triathlete and dons a full head of long & healthy hair.
• Why on earth was Mr. Bale cast for the role then?
• There are dozens of overweight, balding, unattractive actors from the Bronx that could’ve played the part beautifully.
• I mean, during the movie Mr. Bale’s Noo Yoak accent never really clicks.
• Plus it is obvious from beginning to end that he is wearing cumbersome makeup, a wig and some sort prosthesis resembling a paunch.
• Hollywood does this all the time.
• ALL. THE. TIME.
• Which, if you ask me, is a subtle form of racial discrimination (but we’ll leave this for another column).
• Why?
• Besides ego and power trips, duh, Hollywood does it because it needs actors who “carry” movies.
• Hollywood operates under the logic that audiences are a bunch of groupies who want to see familiar faces, even if said faces are totally miscast, right?
• Maybe not.
• Maybe audiences want something else.
• Maybe audiences want actors to work hard for their money.
• To earn it.
• Maybe audiences want Hollywood stars to go out of their way, of their comfort zone, and bow to the ticket-paying, pop corn-popping masses.
• Maybe the masses want demigods like Christian Bale to experience in the flesh, even if it’s in a Hollywood soundstage, what it feels like to be a nobody.
• Which somehow brings us to the Hispanic market and our perennial, futile debates.
• Should we do our campaigns in Spanish?
• Should we do it them in English?
• Should we do them in espanglish?
• Is it OK to run Spanish-speaking campaigns in general market media outlets?
• How about the other way round?
• You wanna know the answer to all of the above?
• YES.
• YES TO ALL.
• Don’t sweat the little details.
• There’s no such thing as a perfect ad campaign.
• Just do it.
• We Hispanics will respond because we’ll feel grateful that you, a big American company, are going out of your way to talk to us and show your respect to our community.
• This will happen on a subconscious level, of course.
• It won’t necessarily be verbalized during focus groups.
• It doesn’t really matter either whether you do it in English, Spanish or espanglish.
• What matters is that you try, that you acknowledge our existence, that you spend money and make an effort to reach out to us.
• What matters is that you are venturing out of your comfort zone.
• We will forgive your accent, we will forgive you if you make some faux pas, we will even forgive you if it all looks a bit fake, overacted, pathetic, like Christian Bale’s performance in American Hustle.
• We are not that persnickety.
• We will reward your effort.
• It’s like calling you mom & dad every other day.
• What you say or how you say it is beside the point, really.
• What matters is that you remembered, that you took the time.