Latinos are enjoying the limelight after they helped re-elect president Obama. Pollsters and researchers who correctly predicted the Latino vote are also seeing their clout rise. These are companies that study Hispanic demographics for politicians, but also for companies trying to establish relationships with Latino consumers.
President Obama hired the consulting firm Bendixen & Amandi International to do his polling in the Latino community. Managing partner Fenand Amandi says the research shows that many US companies fail to connect with Latino consumers. “There’s been a little bit of a blind spot," says Amandi, "part of it is because of the cultural gap.”
He says companies make a classic mistake when they simply translate an advertisement into Spanish. It's an especially bad idea when the translation involves humor. “Sarcasm and irony is something you find a lot in the general marketplace,"Amandi says. "That is literally lost in translation."
Another mistake is that companies assume they need to communicate with Latinos in Spanish.
“Certainly with the size of the Latino market at over a trillion dollars, there has been a lot of interest in reaching out to Latinos," says Mark Lopez, associate director at the Pew Hispanic Center. "But a lot of that is focused, it seems, on particularly Spanish-speaking Latinos.” READ MORE
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