Fair Play or a Fairy Tale.

      Just read Nancy Hill’s op-ed piece titled ‘Fair Play’ in P&C magazine.  Ms. Hill is the President & CEO of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s), where she portrays herself as empathetic and a Hispanic market expert due to her tenure a Lowe’s Hispanic shop LOLA.

I do not think LOLA did much, I am still trying to remember their launch and what they worked on.

A yes, she also does some Peace Corps type stuff in Ecuador, where she practices her Spanish.    ¿Y esto la hace una experta en Hispanic Marketing?

Her point in the op-ed piece is that Hispanic ad agencies cannot complain about not getting the business when they pitch either Hispanic or mainstream business if they themselves do not evolve to be a “More Mainstream” and to stop marginalizing ourselves as Hispanic Ad Agencies.

¿WHAT?  ¿Que carajo dice la doña esta?

What makes us unique is our ability to deliver over 35 million Hispanic consumers that are complex due to language, cultural, religious and country of origin differences.  We have developed a $5 Billion Industry.  We developed and own through our industry professionals the skill-set to effectively and efficiently deliver Hispanic Consumer ROI for clients.

To be ‘More Mainstream is what many Hispanic focused ad agencies have been trying to do over the last decade to be seamless with their general market counterparts in the hopes of partnering up on a piece of business and/or be bought out.

Has it worked?

I say, let’s not be ‘More Mainstream’ and expand our our unique skill-sets and prepare ourselves for the new Census in 2010 that will ensure that the Hispanic Consumer once and for all is consider a key demographic target in the USA.

A potential $10 Billion Hispanic Ad Industry!

We need as an industry to get together and sell our difference, complexity, our unique skill-sets, our Hispanic ad agencies and media as the only conduit to deliver the US Hispanic Consumer. or 50 million consumers in the near future.

We cannot in our wildest dreams try to be like them (More Mainstream), they have bigger computers, a bigger agency network, more political clout and they want our business.

Ms. Hill might call it marginalizing ourselves.  I call it selling our unique sales proposition.  ¡Hay que plantar bandera!

¿Que dicen?

Gene Bryan
HispanicAd.com
CEO