In this 21st century advertising ‘blip’, whither Hispanic agencies?

A Blip for Mainstream Giants, A Boon for Smart Nimble Hispanic Agencies

By: Liz Castells-Heard

In an incisive and thoughtful Ad Age article of 8/27, Judy Shapiro sounds the death knell for the agency business we’ve known for the last 50 years. The slowing economy and explosion of game-changing technology challenges the huge organizations that often ‘stifle innovation, imagination and initiative.  Such as the great American Dream goes, so goes Madison Avenue’.  

The ad business was founded on creative messages that made products memorable with grandiose, mass-reach TV ads, and a large investment – as ‘Mad Men’ bears witness to, still true when I began my career at a big mainstream agency in 1981.   Competitive pressure soon prompted a full 360º advertising function, metrics-driven sophisticated media mix, campaign complexity, and crafted messaging. While for clients it was just one phase of sales, marketing and operations, it required ever more specialized skills. This bred mega-mergers, along with niche agencies as Clients diverted monies for direct, digital or specialized channels – or to target teens, niche or ethnic consumers. Now that social, mobile and TV everywhere is our way of life, such goes advertising.

While Ms. Shapiro pummels us with client statements ‘agencies add no value’, ‘they only want to create TV commercials’, and ‘agencies are obstructionists’, she perceives a light at the end of the tunnel, ‘in the form of a new blip emerging, centered on the agency’s sweet spot of creating brand/consumer connections.’ The agency’s magic is the creative interplay of technology, relevancy and opt-in marketing that can reach broad, mass media audiences while engaging at a sharply targeted, intimate, human level.

But for us intellectually adroit and always-nimble Hispanic agencies, this is where we smile. The ‘new’ economic realities of agencies are old hat to us: we’ve cut our teeth – and survived – on budget leftovers, monies shifted away, campaigns that clients’ higher ups didn’t see as valuable. We responded with strictly measurable, ROI-driven, efficiently and painstakingly targeted campaigns that squeezed the value out of every dollar given, and found every platform where we could share the branded story.  We were bred to jump through hoops and solve whatever challenge given.  We’ve managed it with a flexible operating model, multi-disciplinary employees (not to mention multi-lingual and multi-cultural) who juggle, evolve and dance; and we partner with the right specialists to make anything happen.  We never got a ride on the gravy train of mega-dollar commercial campaigns and media budgets.  We only dreamed about them in English anyways.

Ms. Shapiro’s vision for the future is what we good Hispanic agencies have been doing all along, using our business and cultural smarts to develop our own marketing paradigm, as clients needed ethnic specialists not just for ads or media, but across their whole business, across research, metrics, customer service, operations, products, pricing, direct, distribution, digital, e-commerce retail and etail.

Yes, like all agencies, we’re learning the technologies as consumers engage, playing ‘catch-up’, and facing challenges for things like tech training labs. The difference is our comfort level and attitude. We believe that a solid strategy leads what needs to happen, and we figure it out. Unlike big agencies, we have leaner direct resources, so our staff needs to wear many hats and train in multiple disciplines, know business, strategy, digital, devices, talk media, CRMs, segmentation, create brand content and ROI-powered ideas. If it doesn’t exist, we find it, build it, or help create it with partners. That’s our adage. We’ve developed marketing mix and acculturation models, a branded academic reality show decades ago, mobile couponing when tested, scene-by-scene product integration for the 1st-ever web-novela; and webisodes sharing an aspiring singer’s journey made possible by a product – while the mainstream streamed product highlights.

It was never about how many people named Gómez we reached, but how Mr. G, Mrs. G, all the little G’s, their relatives and friends would be impacted and buy the product, their influencers, and inter-connected influences, so we could segment and target them in actionable groupings, factoring in culture and language. Now it’s about how diverse Hispanics use smartphones, iPads, laptops, iTunes, as well as TVs and radios, what tickles their fancy on Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter, and what apps make sense. We know who’ll see the English ad on NBC or Facebook, how many, how much; what devices, media, elements, product benefit or service are more or less important; and where we should align, parallel or deviate. There’s no magic glossary to unlock access. It’s an ongoing, ever changing process of data gathering, analyzing, sensing -observing, interacting and assessing – to assure all elements across the P’s are integral; all media, technology and devices leveraged; and to nail the insights and turn them into the story that drives results.

Our Hispanic budgets vanish unless justified by a new revenue stream. We’re always tied to performance metrics, sometimes with upside for sales or saving money. This demands data skills to prove the business opportunity, customer life value, category usage, segment upside, price, marketing, and media elasticity. It means generating efficient brand affinity and loyalty by linking all the pieces in the customer experience. In fact, creating a two-way intimate relationship is the price of entry with Hispanics, where relationships rule, rapport trumps speed, and respect trumps price. We embed the brand honestly into each target’s life, customizing content to every show, event, spokesperson, DJ, tweet, concert, charity, print, mobile, social, WOM, video or integration – in Spanish, English and Spanglish – each enhancing the value of the whole.

Ms. Shapiro concludes that in this age of sophisticated targeting, messaging, data, platforms and technology, ‘the new blip is centered on creating intimate marketing, at scale’.  Welcome to our world. Hispanic/ethnic agencies can now cash in on their inherent innovation, initiative and tenacity.  After all, Hispanics are also now the mainstream.            
                                                                                     
Here’s hoping.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Liz Castells-Heard is a Stanford MBA and President/CEO of Castells, a national Hispanic marketing agency ‘for ROI-powered ideas and business integration’, with clients such as McDonald’s, Safeway, Toyota and First Five, and expertise in cable/telcomm, CPG, health and retail.  Liz is an industry thought leader known for her strategic acumen, brains and ‘tell it like it is’ magnetic style, has 32 years of General market, Client and Hispanic experience, plus finance, analytics and psychology training.