Multicultural Intelligence: Eight Make-or-Break Rules for Marketing to Race, Ethnicity, and Sexual Orientation (Updated 2018)

By David Morse / New America Dimensions

Chapter Two:  Hispanic Americans – There have been Hispanics living in the present-day United States since the Spanish started roaming around Florida looking for the Fountain of Youth. But it was the 1980 Census that led some white Americans to wonder whether the country was “browning.” The Census made headlines when it proclaimed that there were 14.6 million Hispanics living in the U.S., an increase of over 50 percent from 1970. By 1990, the number, largely driven by immigration, had increased to 22.4 million. Headlines were made again, big time, when the 2000 Census showed that there were 35.3 million, meaning that Hispanics had surpassed African Americans as the largest minority in the country. In 2018, that number was more than 60 million, over 18 percent of the U.S. population. The number of Hispanics in the U.S. is expected to grow to 106 million by 2050, at which time Hispanics will make up nearly 30 percent of the population.

As a country, we are becoming more Hispanic. More specifically, we are becoming more Mexican. Nearly three-quarters of the Hispanic growth from 1970 to 2000 came from Mexicans alone, whose population in the United States increased fivefold, from 4.6 million to 23.4 million. Mexicans now make up nearly two-thirds of the U.S. Hispanic population. Despite doubling in numbers since 1970, Puerto Ricans and Cubans have lost share, now comprising only about 9 percent and 4 percent of Hispanics respectively. And despite substantial immigration from other Latin American countries, particularly El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, and Peru, the “Other” slice of the Hispanic pie has shrunk, too, the result of the remarkable influx of Mexicans.

And Hispanics, particularly Mexicans, are showing up in unconventional places, especially the Southeast. This trend has been going on for some time. Between 2000 and 2014, the 10 states with the fastest-growing Latino populations were, in order: South Dakota, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas, North Dakota, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia. In fact, North Dakota’s Hispanic population nearly doubled to 18,000 from 2007 to 2014.

The average annual percentage change in the U.S. Hispanic population peaked in the late 1990s, at 4.8 percent.  The 2014 growth rate was only 2.2 percent, and that’s due to a slowdown in immigration and a declining birth rate among Hispanic women. But despite slowing growth rates, Hispanics still accounted for more than half of total U.S. population growth between 2000 and 2014.  With Mr. Trump in the White House, having been elected on a “Build a Wall” and crack down on “illegal immigrants” platform, the future is, as of this writing, not clear.

A question we often ask Hispanics during focus groups is, “What part of your culture are you most proud of?” The music is a common response, as much a reference to traditional Latin American music like salsa, merengue, bachata, and norteña, as to a love of dancing. Food comes up a lot, be it carne asada for Mexicans, arroz con pollo for Cubans, mofongos for Puerto Ricans, mangú for Dominicans, or arepas for Colombians and Venezuelans. But usually, the number one answer is “our values.”
When asked what their values are, myriad responses relate to the centrality of family in Hispanic life and Hispanic identity. Some will talk about the idea of respeto (respect). Hispanics are taught from an early age to respect other people, especially their elders, whether parents, grandparents, or teachers. Others will talk about discipline and how their fathers taught them with an iron hand, but always with love. Still others will talk about educación, which often has little to do with anything scholastic and everything to do with having a proper upbringing. Educación is about being polite, well behaved, and sensitive to the needs of others. When Hispanic values are discussed, los gringos are often brought up as a point of contrast, as a group of people who at best, have different values; at worst, inferior values.

For Hispanics, family is central, a fact that can’t be ignored in the realm of marketing. It is typical for an immigrant Hispanic mother to spend her entire day preparing fresh meals for her family. She’ll go shopping in the morning once her kids have been packed off to school and her husband to work, and she’ll buy everything she needs for that day.

She makes several stops: she’ll go to a carnicería (a butcher shop) for fresh meat, a panadería (a bakery) for fresh bread, and a local market for fresh produce. And though this behavior disappears, usually by the second generation, the underlying value, the idea that family is supreme gets passed on from one generation to the next.
Because of the importance of family and the persistence of traditional gender roles, advertising images that center on the family tend to be the most durable. Throughout Latin America, the mother is regarded as sacred, ever compassionate and nurturing. A woman learns from an early age that her role is to sacrifice everything for her family, a concept that has been called marianismo, the female counterpart of the much maligned word machismo. And though machismo has taken on a negative connotation today, it occupies a hallowed space in the ethos of Latinos: the long-suffering and hardworking father, who cries on the inside in the face of a hostile world, and only lets his sadness show in song, such as in the corridos of Mexico.

Our research shows that the focus of recent arrivals remains on Latin America and a nostalgia for the past. They are more interested in its sports, its popular culture, and its politics than they are in life in the United States. A majority plans to return home one day, a fact that is evidenced by the billions of dollars sent to Latin American countries every year in remittances. But things often don’t work out as planned. Their kids are born in the United States, and are raised on hip-hop and reruns of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. They grow up eating Lucky Charms cereal, Chuck E. Cheese pizza, and Baskin-Robbins ice cream. Their friends live here. Many feel like foreigners in the countries of their parents.

For their part, the parents feel more and more comfortable in their adopted country and Latin America seems increasingly remote. When they do go back, they find that things have changed, and that they are not quite as they left them. At some point they realize that they themselves have also changed. They’ve gotten used to the comfort, conveniences, safety, and stability of life in the United States. Besides, they would never dream of leaving their kids and grandkids behind.

Our qualitative research has shown that U.S.-born Hispanics do watch Spanish-language TV because it offers them the opportunity to see Hispanic culture portrayed on the air, with all its passion and steaminess. It’s not that they don’t speak English. It’s just that when they watch English-language television, they often don’t see themselves. Still, as I write this book’s second edition, one cannot help but wonder if moving forward a couple of years, if television, be it in English or Spanish, will even be the preferred platform for reaching most Hispanics.   In 2016, Pew Research reported that the digital divide in Internet use between Latinos and whites had reached its narrowest point, as less acculturated Hispanics made big strides in going online.  Today, Latinos are among the most likely to own a smartphone and to access the internet from a mobile device.  According to a 2014 study commissioned by Facebook and conducted by Ipsos MediaCT, 79 percent of Hispanics access the internet on a mobile device and Hispanics spend 27% more time online on a smartphone than other groups; 74% of US Hispanics use a mobile phone while simultaneously watching TV, versus 66% of non-Hispanics who are multiscreening between the two devices.

Additionally, social media may have special meaning for U.S. Hispanics as a way to stay in touch with family members in the U.S. and in Latin America.   The same study showed that Facebook is the number one go-to platform for U.S. Hispanics in terms of communication, and 71% use Facebook to connect with loved ones every day. Nearly half (48%) of US Hispanics’ Facebook friends are family members, compared to 36% for the total population, the research found.  

Another advantage of social media is that Hispanics can engage in whatever language they choose.  A 2014 survey of bicultural US Hispanics by the marketing consultancy firm Latinum Network found that 33% identified English as their language of choice when posting on social media, while 27% used Spanish and 40% used the two equally. However, context was everything.  According to Latinum, “Wanting to make sure their family will see it and read it? Spanish. Want to share something with classmates or coworkers? English.”  Latinum also noted that content is also king — if they’re posting a Spanish-language article or video, the related post is usually in Spanish, too; if the majority of their friends are bilingual, posts can be a mix of both, and Spanglish is very common in social media.  

Meanwhile the market continues to evolve.   With the last Recession, and no doubt in response to anti-immigrant sentiment, net migration from Mexico from 2009 to 2014 was negative 140,000, meaning more people returned to Mexico than arrived.  Barring any reversal of that trend, which is highly unlikely during the Trump Administration, that means that an increasing percentage of the Latino population will be U.S. born, and those already here will become increasingly acculturated.  
Today’s generation of young Latinos embrace American culture and its idioms like never before, and, partly because of their sheer numbers, youth are re-defining what it means to be Latino today. Many in the anti-immigration movement continue to incorrectly characterize all Hispanics as rejecters of English who resist the impulse to become American. The majority of second-and third-generation Latinos, rather than resisting U.S. media and language, unequivocally embrace it. But they also do so by exhibiting their own unique cultural imprint, experiences, and identities. These attitudes and behaviors confound the myth that a majority of Latinos’ media consumption habits are defined by a single-language preference. Although they may participate in the popular culture of two different languages, there is a clear preference for English — and Spanglish.

Political analyst and journalist Michael Barone concluded that it took white ethnic immigrants about 100 years to fully assimilate into the American mainstream. So if we date the age of the new Hispanic immigration to have started around 1975, and if the past is any measure of the future, we can expect Hispanic marketing to be around until at least 2075. By that time, our grandkids will be horrified by the inundation of America by another ethnic group, as scholars study the assimilation of early 21st century Hispanics into the mainstream. And for certain, the multicultural marketing pundits will declare that the new immigrants are different, that they are special, and that they are nothing like the earlier immigrants, including Hispanics, who came to America in search of their dreams. And they will be partly right.

 

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