Commentary

The Underestimated Power Of The Hispanic Market

Hispanic marketing strategies will need to change. The Latino market has reached a spending power of $1.5 trillion -- about 20% of the U.S. population -- which advertisers cannot ignore, according to Parker Morse, founder at H Code, a media platform supporting about 400 Hispanic websites.

Advertisers will start to take those numbers more seriously, Morse said.

“If you’re going to spend time and money marketing to this audience, you want to take the best approach to develop an authentic message,” Morse said. “You need to understand culture points and brand preference, why they purchase some products and not others.”

Morse said marketers should not just translate English into Spanish and assume they have checked the box. Marketers that are spending to reach the audience for the first time must first build a relationship.

“This audience is the growth market in the U.S.,” he said. “Just don’t have one message to all.”

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President Donald Trump has begun to take the Hispanic market more seriously. In October 2019, he began trying to appeal to Hispanic voters in places like Pennsylvania. His second campaign to this market has been called “far better financed and organized” than his first.

“Latinos are moving out of the urban centers, moving away from the stronghold of the Democrats,” said Jose Fuentes, a former attorney general of Puerto Rico who is advising the president’s reelection effort, told the Associated Press. He called Pennsylvania “a perfect example.”

Pew Research Center reports that most of the 23 million immigrants who are eligible to vote in the 2020 election live in California, New York, Florida, Texas, and New Jersey

Some Hispanics support President Donald Trump, and leaders like Goya Chief Executive Robert Unanue are providing their support. On the White House Lawn, Unanue announced the donation of one million cans of chickpeas and one million pounds of food to food banks in the United States as part of the Hispanic Prosperity Initiative, an executive order from Trump that was created to improve access to educational and economic opportunities. His sentiment kicked off a widely publicized boycott of the company.

Noticias Telemundo on Friday aired an exclusive interview with anchor José Díaz-Balart in which the President discussed immigration, plans for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the Latino community.

During the next four weeks, an immigration bill will give DACAs a road to citizenship -- something that Trump said would have been done two years ago if not for the Democrats breaking the deal.

“DACA will be just fine,” Trump told Diaz-Balart, because it will be included under a new immigration bill. Trump told Diaz-Balart he is planning to include a provision for DACA under an executive order, which will become part of a much bigger merit-based bill.

Telemundo announced earlier this month that it surpassed ten million subscribers on its main Telemundo YouTube channel. Video and social media also remain strong channels to reach the market. Hispanic Facebook users make up about 33.2 million; Twitter, 12.9 million; and Instagram 22.8 million, according to eMarketer data from February 2020.

Telemundo has been building its YouTube audience during the past nine years. With 11 channels under, eight surpass one million subscribers.

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