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©2004 Max S. Gerber
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Claudia Guerrero (L), Randy Duarte (C), Veronica Miramontes (R), Banning High School Students, Wilmington, Calif.
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Target: Teens
November 01, 2004
By Luis Clemens
You can try to define them by their likes and dislikes but rarely by their ethnicity alone.
They are, for the most part, teenagers first and Latinos second. Speak to them in Spanish, and they may not understand. Talk to them as if they were gringos, and they may not like it. Whatever you do, don't confuse an Angeleno with a Tejano or talk to a Cuban about La Raza.
Out with the melting pot, ditch the tossed salad metaphor and consider instead that second-generation Latino teenagers may be "un ajiaco de contradicciones" (a stew of contradictions) as Gustavo Pérez-Firmat writes in his poem Bilingual Blues. Altogether, the multifaceted identity of Hispanic adolescents resembles a Rubik's
Cube, even if that toy went out of fashion long before they were born. Puzzling out the best way to advertise and market to this group represents a fiendishly complex conundrum. Yet, their numbers make them difficult to overlook. Tony Dieste, the Mexican-born CEO of Dallas-based Dieste, Harmel & Partners, says "Ignore them at your own risk."
LISTEN TO YOUNG LATINO TASTES
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 88 percent of Hispanics under the age of 18 were born in the U.S. This demographic represents a radical departure for companies just beginning to get comfortable with the idea of advertising in Spanish to adults in the United States. Now corporations are faced with the need to be hip to existing Hispanic teen trends. Dieste says: "They are having a major effect on pop culture and [are of] extreme interest to many youth brands ... They have too much juice."
Demographers, linguists and marketers refer constantly to the term "second generation Latinos." These are defined as the U.S.-born children of immigrants and those brought to the United States at a very young age.
Tomás Cookman, the owner of a Los Angeles-based Hispanic youth marketing company, believes there is no easy way to reach this demographic in one fell swoop. This market "is still at the point where there is a lot of trial and error. Anyone who says at this moment they have the clear-cut answer is just being self-serving."
At the risk of seeming self-serving, an intense relationship with music is one of the few constants among this group. For them, music has an almost Proustian evocativeness. "Music cannot be separated from identity because it goes right into the core of our being into our bones. If you have a favorite song and someone says that it is the worst song ever, it is war, because it is something so personal," says Josh Kun, a music critic and English professor at the University of California Riverside as well as a VJ at the Latino cable music channel, LATV. He adds: "There is no way to talk about race and ethnicity in the United States without talking about popular music."
Flakiss, one of the few Latin rappers, says teens have well-defined musical tastes. "A lot of my fans are little kids, like 6- and 7-year-olds. That's the age you start listening to your own radio, your own sound. Before that, what are you listening to? Your mother [playing] Los Bukis," she says. "I love that now. But I'm saying those weren't the CDs that I'd buy [at a young age]."
"They have no choice but to fucking listen to us. You look at the Census... We've exploded as a population," says Pitbull, a 23-year-old Cuban-American rapper who is very popular among teenagers. "We're in their face." And backside, too. "Culo" (Butt) is the most popular release from his debut album. The bilingual rap mixes lyrics in English and chorus in Spanish. Its banging beat and raunchy lyrics intensified by an incredibly catchy chorus punctuated by the shouted exclamation "Culo!" have ensured its heavy airplay on Top 40 radio and in nightclubs. Pitbull says, "It's alright to speak a little Spanish on a record. It's not corny no more."
Univision Music Group is banking on the expectation that urban regional music, a mix of hip-hop and traditional Mexican regional musical forms, will continue to sell records and captivate young Latino audiences. Senior vice president of national marketing for Univision Music Group, Lupe de la Cruz, says the label's motivation to get into urban regional was "to tap into an unmet need by young people [who were] purchasing pop music from the English market." Univision may have already tapped too hard, as it keeps signing more and more urban regional music acts with a resulting loss of quality.
RAPPERS: FROM AKWID TO JAE-P
Though some of the urban regional music is no longer considered cool, no one questions the quality of the label's first urban regional act, Akwid. Music critics, industry executives and fans rave about the two rapping brothers who arrived in South Central Los Angeles via the Mexican state of Michoacán. They effectively mix West Coast hip-hop with Mexican banda music. "Akwid grew up being rappers on the street, listening to Mexican regional music in the home," says Kun. "[They are] definitely L.A. kids but with a migrant sensibility."
That sensibility extends to other Latino artists, even when they are not actually immigrants. Popular 20-year-old rapper Jae-P was born in Los Angeles, where he was raised by Mexican immigrant parents. The title song of his first album, Ni de aquí, ni de allá, is a captivating and intelligent Spanish-language rap about the second-generation dilemma of not fitting in on either side of the border. He complains: "For the gringos I'm a wetback," and "Mexicans don't understand me and will never accept me." Yet he boasts he will triumph with "two accents on my tongue. I am not from here and not from there, but this is where I want to be and where I will stay."
Second-generation Latinos are, in fact, busy sinking roots in the U.S. "They are a 3.2 family by the time they are 23 ... They are marrying so young and having a lot of children very young," says Dieste. Early marriages, growing families and the continuing arrival of new immigrants means the Hispanic market is in a constant state of being reshaped.
BEGINNINGS OF GENERATION ¿QUé?
Compared to their general-market counterparts, Hispanics tend to leave school earlier, start families sooner and join the job market at a younger age. Latino teens do form part of the larger echo boomer generation but they are much more than just a subset. The way second-generation teens adapt to and/or change life in the U.S. will shape the future of all Hispanics in the country at large. But no one fully understands who they are or what they want or how they will view their ethnicity. Not even themselves.
Christy Haubegger, founder of Latina magazine and currently a brand agent at the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles, together with Catherine Stellin, vice president of research and trends at CAA subsidiary The Intelligence Group, directed a large study on Latino youth that is scheduled for release this month. (Marketing y Medios has an exclusive look at some data from the "Youth Intelligence" report on Page 47.)
Haubegger says the Latino Intelligence Report is designed to provide answers to the question, "What happens to Hispanics when they are born here?"
"I was surprised that there were more similarities than differences," says Stellin. "We saw many of the same trends among this consumer as in the general market. Our hunch is that [marketing to teens] doesn't need to be different. A wink or tweak [will suffice.]"
Haubegger was impressed by "how little they think being Hispanic is about language. It really is about culture and values."
Juan Faura, president of Dallas-based agency Cultura, is currently researching his own project and warns against drawing sweeping conclusions. "As Hispanic marketing professionals, one of the things we do fairly early in the process is segment the market" along the lines of culture and language, he says. But after his field work, he worries the whole approach is fundamentally flawed.
He says, "We are going to have to start with a more human and more brand-centered approach. An approach based on universal truths rather than cultural truths." It's ironic, given that the name of the agency Faura works for, Cultura, means culture in Spanish.
Aside from the role of culture, an important discussion centers on the variations between Hispanic regional markets. Chilean-born marketing consultant Isabel Valdes says, "It is different growing up a teenager in L.A., Miami or New York City. Their whole outlook on life is different." "The question of identity is no paseo en carroza (walk in the park)," adds Valdes who is also the mother of two teenagers.
OBSERVING THE OBVIOUS WITH TEENS
There's still relatively little commercial research available about Hispanic teens, and much of it broadly argues this demographic is the same — but different, which is a maddeningly imprecise conclusion. Marketers can make their own decisions by following Tony Dieste's suggestion: "The only way to learn with this target is going out and watching them.
There is a nominal distinction between observation and marketing, and companies often do both at the same time. Cecilia Brizuela, Jae-P's manager, has employed street teams to create buzz about a number of artists by putting, people out on the street, passing out flyers and postcards. "Going to the cool spots where the kids hang out," she says.
Another popular way to target teens is strategic product-placement. Nike, for example, contacted Jae-P after, more than likely, seeing him sport Nike sneakers in his music video. The company gives him free clothes but no money. Jae-P recalls telling the folks from Nike, "You got to put people like me on those commercials. We're the ones buying your products, man."
Keeping your pulse on what products teens find cool is a full-time endeavor, which is why some agencies such as Dieste have networks of "reflectors of the culture ... people in the know of Latino teen lifestyle [who provide] real-time information and insights about what is happening with food, telephony, video gaming," Dieste says. "You really have to stay on top of it."
Aside from knowing what this segment wants, it helps to have Latino teen-friendly products.
This was the approach adopted by Dallas-based Metro PCS, a wireless company with an important presence in several metropolitan markets with large Hispanic populations. According to Diane McKenna, director of advertising and marketing, the company targets teens for one simple reason: "They tend to want to talk on the phone a lot."
The company charges a monthly flat fee of $40 for unlimited local and national calls. Besides, they don't require a contract. "We see them as just part of the teen market," she says. "Obviously, we do Hispanic media in addition to general market, [and] we try to have creative that appeals to them."
MEDIA BUY OR COMPRA DE MEDIOS?
Creating street buzz, strategic product placement and ensuring products are teen friendly are important, but at some point you will invariably need mass media to market a national brand. And in Spanish-language broadcast media nothing compares with the ratings and reach of Univision.
Yet Univision is rarely cited as the preferred media vehicle for targeting Hispanic teens. The concern is twofold: Latino teens don't watch the channel, and worse, they view the programming as decidedly uncool. "Their view of most Spanish media is really negative," says CAA's Haubegger. " [They say] it has nothing to do with my life. Music-driven, bilingual channels such as Mun2, they like that." Mun2 (or "Mundos," meaning worlds) is a cable channel owned by NBC, which is one of The Intelligence Group's clients.
One key issue is whether or not this demographic truly speaks Spanish.
American sociologists routinely refer to the United States as a "language graveyard" because successive waves of immigrants have left the supremacy of English unchallenged.
According to the largest survey of second-generation students, 95% of Cuban Americans and 73% of Mexican Americans prefer English. Regardless of their preference, 99% of the students in the survey were fluent in English.
In response, a number of cable channels have sprung up to address the dearth of Latino-centered, English-language programming. Jeff Valdes, president and co-founder of Sí TV, tells of a meeting with investor Sam Barshop, who said, "They're 35 million of you people, and there's no programming in English. Are people in [Hollywood] that goddamned stupid?" To which Valdes responded, "Yes, they're just that goddamned stupid."
Valdes says, "We raised $60 million [for Sí TV]. Not one red cent came from Los Angeles. People here don't get it." According to the latest U.S. Census, Hispanics represent above 48 percent of the population of Los Angeles.
Valdes says advertisers are now producing ads specifically for Sí TV and its six million subscribers nationwide. In a stage whisper, he says, "What's the big secret? Take a Hispanic person and put him in a commercial and let him talk in English. It's called validation of self. Teens need it."
Instead, what young Latinos often see are disparaging portrayals of their demographic. "When you see movies and you see a Latino on the television on the English market they are doing something bad, either a gangster, a criminal or a bum. That's not us," he says. "You got to get our culture involved in order for us to feel it. Just represent us. We want to be heard. We want people to know that we exist. They know, but they don't show us nowhere. If we come out on TV, it is in the news."
IF YOU LOOK, YOU'LL FIND
Jae-P and other young Hispanic artists routinely appear in the three-year old Latino music cable channel LATV, which plays music primarily in Spanish, but VJs spend most of their time speaking in English.
"We are targeting a culture... Someone that lives in both worlds. Someone that will listen to Café Tacuba [and] will listen to The White Stripe," says Daniel Crowe, president of LATV. "The fact that we speak English allows us to run commercials in English."
This has not been a tough sell to advertisers. In fact, LATV has sold out its inventory for the year to clients such as General Motors, McDonald's and Univision Music. According to Crowe, "Advertisers are hungry to talk to this market in a culturally relevant way." But the main disadvantage facing both LATV and SíTV is limited cable carriage. That and a limited view of Latino teenagers.
Sí TV Jeff Valdes cringes and complains bitterly about people who say in meetings, "'My maid would never say that, my gardener would never say that.'"
For Jeff's sake and all other forward-thinking individulas, when it comes to marketing to teenagers, forget about the maid and forget about the gardener. The vast majority of Hispanic teens are Made in the USA and will not fade quietly into the background.
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