• by Aaron Baar , April 15, 2010

Among the general market, Ace Hardware is a well-known brand. But a bit surprisingly, the brand isn't so well-known among Hispanics. With that in mind, the 85-year-old company is using its first Hispanic-centric marketing campaign to introduce the brand to the nearly 50 million members of the Hispanic market.

The effort, which includes television and radio commercials, links Ace Hardware to the Spanish term "La Ferreteria," (hardware store) which is a center of the community for many Latin countries.

The national campaign, which will run through the spring on Telemundo and Univision, comes after two years of test market campaigns in Denver, Chicago and Sacramento, Calif. While those campaigns -- which simply translated general market commercials into Spanish -- were successful, the agency and company found Ace needed to do more in the way of introducing itself to the community at large.

"In the test markets, we were translating general market spots, and we found we needed to be more relevant," says Jose Gonzalez, a partner at Hispanic marketing agency Revolucion. "When we started talking about the hardware store [to Hispanic consumers], it was a place in the community that they could go to, where someone was always helpful to them," Gonzalez tells Marketing Daily. "In the big box [hardware stores], they can't find help. It's too big; they're walking around for a long time. In the Ace store, there's always someone there to help."

The television commercials address the issue directly. The first commercial in a pool of three shows a man trying to get assistance in one of the big-box retailers, driving from store to store. "Whatever happened to the corner hardware store?" asks a voiceover. "To the person who was always there to help you? To just getting in and out quickly? Whatever happened to the weekend?" As the consumer gets help at his local Ace, the phrase "Menos tiempo dando vueltas/Más tiempo para lo importante (Less time running around/Is more time for what's important)" appears, as does the company's general-market tagline (in English), "The Helpful Place."

A second commercial in the pool shows Hispanic families working on home improvements together. The spot was born out of an insight that Hispanic consumers view home improvements as a family bonding and teaching time (as opposed to general market consumers, who prefer to get the improvements completed and get on with their weekends), Gonzalez says.

"The Hispanic consumer did not mind doing the projects at home with their family," he says. "They [viewed] them as life lessons for their kids, showing their kids how to get through this journey in life."