Commentary

Bilingual Advertising: The Next Thing Or Next Mistake?

The Story

Recently, a 30-second AT&T television ad, “Vivir Sin Compromisos,” caught my attention. It shows young, appealing, Latinos talking about themselves and reacting to the company’s cellular service. 

What makes this ad stand out is that the actors speak in English, Spanish and mix of the two — Spanglish

Because of that, we wanted to understand how the ad resonated with Spanish-Preferred Hispanics, English-Preferred Hispanics and Bicultural Hispanics, so we tested it. 

The Findings

This study was a strong validation for that old adage, “The buyer’s perception is the seller’s reality,” as the perception of the ad was very different across the three groups …  well, across one of them, anyway. That is, when it came to their perception of the ad and the feelings that it evoked, the Spanish-preferred and Bicultural groups were very closely aligned. It was the English-preferred group that took a different path – sometimes, dramatically so.

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Here are just two examples to illustrate the point. 

1. The following shows the percentage of participants that agreed with the statement, “The commercial was…” Likeable / Believable / Entertaining / Convincing / Funny.

2. The participants were then asked whether they agreed with another series of statement on their perception of the commercial. “The commercial…” Tells me something important / Tells me something new / Is for people like you / Stirs your emotions. Here are the results:

The Conclusion

Why the big disparity in the English-preferred group to the others? We think there could be three different factors at play here:

1. The English-preferred group simply doesn’t want to be communicated to in Spanish.

2. The English-preferred group is the more acculturated group and like most TV viewers in the US, have become numb to all TV advertising.

3. And because they are more acculturated, the English/Spanish/Spanglish mix of language in the ad in simply irritating to them… or worse, offensive.

Lastly, one of question from the study really helps to “bottom line” the results. The participants were asked about their perception of AT&T and here’s what they said:

Bottom line: AT&T — and all advertisers and ad agencies, for that matter — need to take a lesson here, that communicating to potential customers in the way that they want to be communicated to is a key driver for success. Lumping groups together and assuming that one [communication style] size fits all is not!

4 comments about "Bilingual Advertising: The Next Thing Or Next Mistake?".
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  1. Marcelo Salup from Iffective LLC, November 28, 2014 at 12:31 p.m.

    From the "Ministry of the Obvious" - Bottom line: AT&T — and all advertisers and ad agencies, for that matter — need to take a lesson here, that communicating to potential customers in the way that they want to be communicated to is a key driver for success.

    Duh.

    To the "Ministry of the Jumping to Conclusions" the English/Spanish/Spanglish mix of language in the ad in simply irritating to them… or worse, offensive.

    I didn't get that from the presented data at all.

    Unless there is much more the one --obvious-- conclusion is that people like to be communicated to in their language.

    So, two quick questions:

    #1 - How big was the survey? In sample size and geographical extension

    #2 - Where are the slides that show "irritation" and "offense", because right now, they are just not here at all.

  2. eric diaz from Nativa, November 28, 2014 at 2:22 p.m.

    My two main comcerns with this report are the following:

    1. What was the sample size? My colleague Marcelo mentioned this too, we really cant consider this study relevant without knowing how many people were surveyed, this assures us that it wasnt just someone interviewing all their primos on black friday morning.

    2. What did the same group surveyed feel about a general market AT&T commercial? It seems appropriate to ask this to find if we see the same trend in opinions among all three groups. I suspect we would, which would make this article virtually meaningless.

  3. cara marcano from reporte hispano, November 28, 2014 at 11:18 p.m.

    There is some interesting research worth taking into account that folks find Spanglish harder to process - that the mixing of the languages say in the same phrase -- at least in marketing -- can result in longer processing times. The other idea worth noting is this idea of language as a trigger for memory, same as say scent is a trigger or memory. You are dealing with deeply ingrained triggers when you speak of language and again while many of us speak both languages and use Spanglish I haven't seen convincing studies that say splitting a phrase in marketing or in a call-to-action is easier to understand by the target consumer than picking either English or Spanish and running with it. There is great and conclusive data that suggests that Spanish is necessary for winning over not just Spanish-speaking consumers but also bicultural and bilingual Latinos in the US -- the US-born Latino. L'Oreal and others have found for example that tweets done in Spanish are more popular and do better with both Spanish-preferred or Spanish-speakers who don't speak or use much English AND they also do better with English-speaking, US-born millennials. This is something that in most of its total market approach Corp America still fails to invest against. Say the extra spend on Spanish-language tweets : )

  4. Mario Carrasco from ThinkNow, December 2, 2014 at 12:57 p.m.

    Marcelo, Eric - great points. This was pulled from a nationally representative sample taking into account Census regions, country of origin, language, income, etc. We have a full report available for download that goes into more methodological depth as well as a full sample profile: http://campaigns.thinknowresearch.com/downloads/hispanic-bilingual-advertising.html

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