Did retail giant Target miss the mark to include the other types of Hispanics – black and brown– in their new Hispanic marketing campaign that is suppose to celebrate “many in the Hispanic culture”?
Along with being the largest ethnic group in the United States, Hispanics are now considered the largest ethnic group on social networking sites – and many analysts believe that we’ll spend $1.5 trillion in the U.S. – which is why Target has now – for the first time ever, ever, ever – target-ed the Hispanic pockets… I mean population with their new marketing campaign #SinTraduccíon.
According to Target’s blog site, ABullsEyeView, the campaign #SinTraduccíon (without translation) “is a sweeping celebration of moments, traditions and emotions that are treasured by many in the Hispanic culture”. However, in all of their “Sneak Peak” promotional videos the retail brand fails to place the beautiful variations and differences that help create the “many in the Hispanic culture”.
My enjoyment from watching the beautiful mamacitá trying to put her adorable chubby-face baby to sleep in the #SinTraducion’s “Arrullo” video was not because of the skin complexion of the performers – but because I could relate to the situation of trying to put my newborn to sleep while using some of the home furnishings (rocking chair, turntable and baby crib, which appears in the video).
However, it does get frustrating when ad campaigns – especially those that are created by another Hispanic like Target’s Senior Vice President of Marketing, Rick Gomez – not showcasing the wonderful black, brown, and olive skin tones that make up the Hispanic and Latino community in ads targeted to us. The beauty of our Hispanic ethnicity is the rainbow coalition of faces mixed-in and combined from different races.
In fact, the Spanish words used in the #SinTradiccíon campaign like “Arrullo,” “Sobremesa” and “Estrenar” are not common Spanish words used by many Hispanics. Actually, I don’t even know who uses them because until this day, I’ve never heard of those words. And I used Google Translator to guess what… yes, translate them.
Ok so I don’t get their campaign, which is expected to go viral (yeah, good luck with that) on March 8th, but I do get that companies like Target want to have a deeper relationship with our population.
Hispanics are the youngest and fastest growing demographic in the U.S. and, according to the analytic firm, Nielsen, they are most likely to respond with with their buying power when commercial brands market to them.
So, do you think Target missed the mark by not including all types of Hispanics?
Or, do you need to see yourself reflected in these ad campaigns to be a faithful shopper?
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