Unphotoshopping America.

By Gonzalo López Martí @LopezMartiMiami

• There’s this notion in our industry: Hispanic consumers have a higher degree of naiveté, credulity, unsophistication or good nature (take your pick).
• Our guard is lower.
• Proof would be the old cliché of the US Hispanic market about how the live audiences on Don Francisco’s eternal TV franchise Sábado gigante are more than happy to sing along the various commercial jingles of the show’s sponsors, the lyrics of which they know from memory.
• Many a marketer out there claims this is solid evidence of said naiveté.
• They even use it a sales pitch.
• Sure enough, the opposite would be true in the case of general market, white, Anglo or mainstream audiences (take your pick), who allegedly wouldn’t be caught dead singing a jingle on live TV.
• Whites have moved on.
• Whites couldn’t be bothered.
• They are just too jaded, mistrustful and cynical about advertising and marketing in general.
• Their bullshitometer is set to a lower threshold of tolerance.
• Really?
• I believe the theory is flawed.
• We Hispanics are extremely mistrustful of the system and the powers that be.
• Way more so than gringos.
• We are immigrants for God’s fxxxxxg sake!
• We rarely visit a doctor, we shy away from banks, we keep our savings in hidden holes behind the drywall.
• Ok, let’s assume for a moment that there is a grain of truth in the “Hispanics naiveté” conventional wisdom when it comes strictly to marketing.
• As the aforementioned reasoning goes, the more educated or culturally articulate you are, the more blasé you’d become about commercial messages.
• An indifference sometimes on par with annoyance and sheer hostility.
• The theory somehow implies a trend: at this pace the masses will eventually reach a level of cynicism and or detachment that will render them unable to “suspend their disbelief”.
• “Suspension of disbelief” (google it) is a fascinating function of the human mind: it allows us to confront a work of fiction (e.g; a movie) and forget for a certain period of time the clear and obvious fact that we are witnessing a staged lie, a scripted figment of someone’s imagination, a performance by professional actors or, increasingly, by computer generated imagery.
• Granted, the theory is plausible.
• In my humble opinion, however, the different shades of jade are not ethnic or cultural.
• They are generational.
• In her memoir Bossypants, TV showrunner and actress Tina Fey claims that nobody who was born after 1980 believes anything they see, read or hear on mass media.
• They just know everything is filtered, edited, curated, photoshopped and airbrushed.
• They’ve been exposed to a permanent storm of marketing since the cradle.
• They just take it for granted, they know it beforehand: pop culture in pretty much all of its manifestations is phony, manufactured, artificial.
• Marketing permeates everything.
• For instance: when a celeb attends the late night circuit or appears on a magazine cover it’s simply because he or she is plugging a soon-to-be released movie, a new fragrance or a line of underwear at a department store near you.
• Everything he or she says or does is scripted and brokered by publicists and handlers.
• Ditto IRL (in real life).
• The pressure to be perfect and the mandate of marketability are so pervasive that today it’s just not a choice anymore: it’s a full-fledged imperative to shape one’s public persona by bending the course of our destiny, genetic or otherwise.
• Enter surgery, dietary supplements, pharmaceutical products, personal trainers, boot camp, Zumba and funky forms of yoga.
• To some people this is disturbing.
• To others, like yours truly, it is neither bad nor is it good.
• It just is.
• A sign of the times.
• Still, some social forces out there are trying to push back.
• Our very own Hispanic congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) is sponsoring a bill -known as the Truth in Advertising Act- which would eventually demand all published photography or footage to disclaim whether it was digitally manipulated or not.
• The Eating Disorders Coalition and the Brave Girls Alliance have vocally supported it.
• Certainly a laudable goal.
• Possibly a waste of time.
• As we pointed out above, everything is photoshopped, airbrushed, digitally and even surgically enhanced.
• It’s a given.
• It’s here to stay.
• Forever.
• But wait, is it really?
• What if there’s a backlash brewing.
• What if the cult of perfection is running its course?
• What if the obsession with success is overstaying its welcome?
• This might be the reason why Kim Kardashian and her flabby rear end reign supreme in our crazy culture, while Gwyneth Paltrow has become the butt of so many jokes.
• Kim has let it all hang out: her weight problems, her long time battle with her nemesis (cellulite), her manizing (the female version of womanizing, grainy sex tapes included), her trashy family feuds, her horribly framed Instagram selfies before and after putting make up on, her absolute lack of talent or drive to do anything productive or inspiring in life.
• Kim sells reality, warts and all, and she’s built an empire around it.
• Maybe that’s why Vice magazine’s gritty gonzo journalism is making a killing and Vanity Fair is gasping for advertisers.
• Maybe that’s why Jason Segel and Jonah Hill are Hollywood’s latest leading men.
• Maybe that’s why photographer Terry Richardson’s hard-lit unretouched extreme close-ups of celebrities are all the rage.
• Maybe that’s why Pope Francis is a star.
• It might even explain the staying power of reality TV and the barrage of so-called “unscripted” formats out there.
• When everything is so obviously fake and manufactured, the rawness of reality becomes a hot commodity, a highly sought after breath of fresh air.
• So.
• What can we marketers do if this backlash proves to be true?
• For starters, we must reinvent reality before it leaves us all out of our jobs.
• The phony flawlessness we tend to trade in will eventually become boring, obvious, dull, declassé.
• Soon, society will even “demand” imperfection.
• Three words: Honey Boo Boo
• In the search for honesty, consumers will become very tolerant of failure, even attracted to it.
• Of course, they’ll reserve the prerogative to be the arbiters of success and perfection.
• It will be a maddeningly moving target.
• We marketers will be forced to strategize and execute at breakneck speed.
• Think less, do more.
• We’ll be cajoled to come out of our cubicles, our conference rooms, our ivory towers
• We’ll be compelled to widely open up our processes and the ways we go to market.
• To let it all hang out.
• Let’s celebrate.
• My dear fellow Hispanic marketers, we are in a privileged position to lead the charge and ride the wave.
• Why?
• Because we speak with our hearts and shoot from the hip.
• Because we are more authentic, spontaneous, visceral, raw and real.
• All attributes that’ll become huge assets in the next culture.
• This scenario will be a perfect fit for us.