Translations vs.Trans-Creations

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Many times marketing directors, creative professionals, and other people who attend my seminars ask me the following question: Why does the Hispanic community tend to react slowly to my marketing efforts compared to the mainstream audience? I always tell them, before I answer your question, have you translated your campaign into Spanish? Unfortunately, 99% of the time the answer is YES. So I tell them, “You have answered your own question.”

Let’s get it right! In some cases, there are creative concepts that when you translate them into Spanish, the message will get across. However, is it going to be impactful enough and make the consumers buy your products or services? Not necessarily. The key is to know how you can emotionally connect the consumers to your brand. How can you tell a story and get consumers buy into it? This is where a lot of marketing professionals and creative agencies fall short in delivering the message. You can have a strong and creative campaign for the general market but you cannot assume that by simply translating it into Spanish that you will achieve the same results. Why? Because the campaign was created for a different audience, with different values, language, and culture. This is why translations tend to be half-hearted efforts from corporate America and a big frustration for some creative directors of advertising agencies. Believe me, I used to have these discussions many times in my career.

It has been proven that the most effective way to reach out to the Hispanic community is by the ‘trans-creation’ of your advertising efforts, not translations. I mean, create an ad campaign appealing to the Latino core value respecting the overall strategy coming from the general market. You need to make sure that your message is culturally relevant and memorable, and create a brand story in a way that no one has told before. This is how you win your audience and you become successful at it.

Sometimes marketers tend to tell me: “This doesn’t apply to me because I am trying to reach out to a more acculturated audience, 2nd or 3rd generation of U.S. Hispanics.” My answer is: “You are wrong, too.” There is an assumption that more acculturated Latinos have a similar consumption behavior compared to the general market. The fact is that U.S. Latinos tend to “adopt and adapt” to customs and habits in the U.S without shedding traditions and value systems. Latinos are assimilating to prevalent U.S. culture but they are not, and probably never will be fully assimilated. They are living the path of acculturation. It is the process of integrating native and traditional immigrant cultural values with dominant cultural ones. So, you may reach out to them in English but the message still needs to be culturally relevant to them. A great example of this is sports. More acculturated Hispanics tend to follow American sports but in addition to the ones from their native countries such as soccer and boxing. They add rather than replace. So, it is crucial to understand your audience before launching a Hispanic communication effort from your company. Surround yourself with marketing experts who will guide you and coach you to be successful in this niche. After all, you will be acculturating yourself to the marketing culture of the new America by making Hispanics part of your overall marketing effort. As of today, they are the nation’s second-largest consumer market.

Hernan Tagliani. President