This tale of two agencies highlights a move many shops are
making to thrive -- or even survive -- in a fast-changing market.
Today's growing population of influential, multicultural Americans
are too big for general-market agencies to ignore, and fewer are
the Spanish-dominant immigrants who were once Hispanic agencies'
main targets.
"If you're a regional account in California, you should be
ashamed of yourself if Hispanic isn't at the center of everything
at the strategy level," Ms. Barrena said.
Her move to Deutsch "was about having a seat at the table from
the beginning, and not having Hispanic be a tactic at the end, or
having to break it to a client that this strategy isn't going to
work for us [Hispanics]. It's not about Spanish or English anymore.
It's about 'Where do we reach this consumer and where do they
consume their content?'" At Deutsch, her goal is to introduce
Hispanic into planning at every step, she said.
So far, DLAtino has worked with a few Deutsch clients. Hispanic
millennials were a target for a 7Up effort that partnered with
seven DJs at seven events last year using electronic dance music, a
type of music that wasn't specifically Hispanic, like salsa or
merengue, but overindexes among Hispanic millennials.
For Grupo Gallegos, Mr. Gallegos said, "We need to bring in the
best talent that believe in the vision that to understand and
deliver the total market you must embrace the multicultural
audience, if you truly believe they represent the future."
Grupo Gallegos is a key player for longtime clients like the
California Milk Processor Board. To get Californians to drink more
milk, you have to talk to Hispanic moms.
Mr. Gallegos said senior marketers really only care about
demographics that are actionable and grow their business—he
displays them on a chart with two simple pyramids. One reflects
traditional sales from the current population: 17% Hispanic on top
of the broad base of the general market. The other is based on
future growth and is reversed, because 89% of the population growth
for the six-to-34 age group between 2014 and 2019 will come from
Hispanics. "If you look at growth, the pie chart flips," he
said.