NY Times Article on John Gallegos
Way back sometime in September, the New York times did a profile of John Gallegos from Grupo Gallegos.
The article does a decent job of talking about the attractiveness of the Hispanic market overall and the Hispanic ad market in particular.
The story includes this quote by Gallegos on why anyone would advertise to the low-income Hispanic demographic, which makes the case for the Hispanic market as well as any I’ve heard:
“You ask: the guy who just came across the border with a coyote, do I want to go after him, too? Well, he’s going to get a job. He’s going to work. He’s going to start buying products and contributing to the economy. So while he might not be viable for a Mercedes today, I can introduce you to people who came here illegally or legally, with nothing, and are now driving a Mercedes. Advertising is aspirational. I want to aim ahead of where my audience is. Unless it’s the equivalent of beef to Hindus, I always say, any product and any service should be sold to Latinos in this country.”
He’s right. Although not all Hispanics drive new cars and buy Playstations right now, one of the reasons that many Hispanics immigrate to the US is because it gives them the opportunity to aspire to those things.
There’s a funny part later in the article where, although the article is ostensibly about how the Hispanic market is maturing and Hispanics are a growing sector of the US economy, the NYTimes reporter still feels the need to phonetically spell out how to say “Gallegos.” Pretty funny.
The end of the article is by far the strongest part. The reporter asks whether bilingualism and biculturalism in the Hispanic market will disappear the way it has in other American cultures and subcultures. The example she uses is that of Yiddish print ads from the early 20th century that were in both English and Yiddish, similar to a lot of the Spanglish ads you see today. As Hispanics become a larger and more mainstream part of the US economy and culture, will the Spanish language come with them into the mainstream? Will Spanish-speaking Hispanics become the norm in the US and spread to the rest of the country, or will today’s Hispanic children and their children after them embrace English and leave their Spanish roots behind them? What then of Hispanic advertising? The same fate as Yiddish ads for Woodbury’s Hair Tonic?