Es chicha y es limoná or Brand building through Hispanic Customer Base Management.

These unsettling times of profound social and technological changes have turned upside down traditional marketing models, calling for fresh, new approaches to reaching and retaining the US Hispanic consumer.

The dangers of ignoring this reality –read doing “Business as Usual”– can lead to major mistakes and missed opportunities, not to mention a fruitless and frustrating experience in what’s arguably the most dynamic market place in today’s economy.

What were pinpointed as trends a decade and a half ago, continue to evolve, completely altering the market place, as they offer Hispanic (and all) consumers a broader-than-ever-before choice of products, creating a widely diverse media landscape and producing a far more complex, textured and layered consumer. This latter, presented since the genesis of US Hispanic advertising as unflinchingly brand loyal, now understands the power of choice in a free market economy and has shown an uncanny willingness to flex their muscle, throwing into disarray many a major company’s marketing schemes.

Let’s take a quick trip down memory lane and remember the product choices offered for Hispanic consumers a decade and a half ago.

Besides package goods, soft drinks and beer, the great battle for Hispanic dollars was being waged between telecommunications titans offering them myriad combinations of long Distance calling alternatives. It’s safe to refer to those as the “Good old Days” – things were so much simpler! Look now at Hispanic consumer behavioral changes. Consumers have changed their land lines for mobile telephony and calling cards, and telecommunication companies are still reinventing themselves in front of the Hispanic consumer.

During those days, a major portion of the market was considered far too risky for banking and financial products. Now take a look at how the banks and credit card companies scramble to put together offers for the “unbanked” (not credit-worthy) overlooking legal status and finding creative ways to accommodate their lack of credit and low FICO scores.

The list could go on but that’s not the purpose of this article. Suffice it to say that those were days when people were still marveling at fax machines and email was basically restricted to the office environment. Today consumers routinely use email, that includes photo and video, many rely on voice over the internet, and have access to powerful desktop computers that process loads of information instantly. And that’s but the top of the iceberg of choices.

The Hispanic media landscape a decade and half ago was substantially different than that of today. Broadcast ruled unchallenged. Hispanic cable choices were limited. Today, cable is growing far more diverse and highly segmented and specialized: if then broadcast presented Futbol, today Cable brings you the choice to watch Colombian, Mexican, Argentine, Guatemalan futbol. A growing number of programming is being produced and/or imported to meet specific consumer interests and tastes, increasingly focusing on the particular interests of smaller audiences – from Public TV, to Latin American regional channels catering to the audience’s particular interests, reaching consumers via cable, satellite and the web. Plus, there are podcasts — not to mention what’s now in the boardrooms and will see the light in the quickly approaching future.

Today’s Hispanic consumer is both acculturated and non-acculturated. They are blue collar BUT also white collar. He or she are banked and unbanked. Highly educated and less educated. Multigenerational. Segmented. Concentrated in major cities, but also in smaller cities. Northern and Southern. Eastern and Western. Hispanic and multicultural. In other words, he or she is everything but a homogenous mass reachable and motivated with one single message, using the lowest common denominator.

The traditional brand advertising model communicating a unique positioning, seeks impact and recall through distinctive creative, supported by mass media is outdated insofar as it lacks both grip and grit and is therefore unable to establish and maintain a beachhead in the market. Likewise, the traditional Direct Response formula, methodically juggling medium, offer and creative, shedding as superfluous all brand imagery, is proving inadequate for current conditions. These structural shortcomings stem from the absence of a key emotional element — le falta alma.

Both require adjusting to the ever changing realities.

And that’s precisely what directohispano’s Marca Directa® proposes: an insight-based, flexible, targeted strategic plan that delivers a brand message seeking to win the hearts, minds and behavior of a consumer that’s savvier than ever before in history.

It is insight-based, because success lies in the advertiser’s ability to decipher and leverage the forces driving this complex consumer. Research is data; insights are actionable interpretations of this data.

It is flexible, because the monumental maze of media venues sometimes require using a broad voice speaking in the most general of terms and using the lowest common denominator. But other times, it requires a highly focused articulation of an equally highly specific message using the highest common denominator.

Segmented targeting is embedded in this strategic approach responding to the need that advertising communications be delivered where the consumer can best receive and act to them – a strategic process that demands testing scenarios (channels, offers, messages, incentives, contact strategies), rigorously measuring efforts, rolling out learnings. Success lies in the perfect combination of brand imagery (emotions) with calls to action (behavior).

Out of the understanding that users are better for business than triers and loyal users become a key asset, Marca Directa seeks to win the consumer, earn their trust and deploy a communications strategy to manage a relationship with them. Technology plays a key role in this effort, knowing that what’s learned about a customer can help find other customers like them.

And this interplay of disciplines and approaches takes place in front of a consumer is savvier than ever before, in marketplace where change is the state of affairs, marked by a proliferation of products of similar quality and the deafening din of peddling noise, where consumers tune out irrelevant messaging. Hispanic consumers, fully aware of the strength choice infuses on them, seem to bask in the power of choice.

Marca Directa is a philosophy, a strategic framework. As traditional brand advertising, it seeks to establish an emotional connection with the consumer leading to trust. As traditional Direct Marketing and Customer Relationship Management, it relies on testing, targeting and measuring all efforts to leverage knowledge.

In these unsettling times of change Marca Directa sees exciting new opportunities.

By: Humberto Freydell and Carlos F. Torres
Partners, Directo Hispano, Inc.