Faura’s ‘The Whole Enchilada’ Hispanic Ad Book.

The Whole Enchilada is a practical guide to selling to the US Hispanic market. It is a no nonsense and real description of the Hispanic population in the United States. As a primer it gives the reader practical advice on what to do in order to gain Hispanic customers.

About the Author

Juan Faura is the president of Cultura, a Hispanic marketing agency based in Dallas and the former Director of Global Strategy at Cheskin Research. He has over 13 years of marketing experience, has served as a consultant on the US Hispanic market to Fortune 100 companies and is a recognized expert on the US Hispanic youth culture. He has published numerous articles on marketing to US Hispanics and has been a featured speaker at numerous conferences on marketing to Hispanics. He was also a mechanic, a paint and body man, a construction worker and a delivery driver for a bakery.

Excerpts

Introduction

As anyone who came from Mexico prior to 1990 can tell you, the number of “American” brands and products available in Mexico was once a tiny fraction of what it is today. Immigrants coming into the US marketplace were presented with new brands and products across all categories.

This meant that, for most Hispanics coming from Mexico, almost every single category, from packaged goods to automotive, was underdeveloped. Companies needed to first inform and educate the consumer about their product or brand, since there was no equity in either for these consumers. As anyone who has been to Mexico in the past year can tell you, that has all changed dramatically. From packaged goods to fast food to automotive, the Mexican marketplace is now a virtual mirror to what we experience here in the US. Wal-Mart, Costco and Target dot the Mexican retail landscape. McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Domino’s and Taco Bell are but a few of the fast-food players now available in Mexico. This change has affected how the US Hispanic marketplace has evolved. Countless conversations with research professionals who make their living by recruiting Hispanics for marketing studies have only confirmed what should, by now, have been most obvious. Today’s Hispanic consumers are vastly different from Hispanic consumers of five years ago. They are more sophisticated from a category standpoint. They have been exposed to cutting-edge, in language marketing communications, and they have begun to demand more from those companies looking to communicate with them. The notion that US Hispanic consumers are what general market consumers were in the 50’s is a comfortable oversimplification that grossly misses on the more significant opportunity.

This opportunity is there not only for big corporations, but also for small businesses all across the US. Although the complexity of the effort will be dramatically different, small businesses have taken and continue to take advantage of the growth in the US Hispanic population.

The bottom line is that whether a company has marketed to the Hispanic market over the years or is only now turning its attention to this market, it will find the Hispanic market is a recognized area for incremental sales, volume growth and market-share acquisition. In the next few pages, I hope you will find that valuable nugget of inspiration that will lead you to embark on a treacherous but wonderful journey into a culture that has long been a part of the fabric of Americana but is only now realizing it.

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