I just read an interesting blog post on AdAge’s Big Tent by Cat Lopez on whether Hispanic ad agencies have made a fateful mistake by hiding behind their ethnicity to get and keep Hispanic advertising business. The blog goes on to argue with the recession hitting Hispanic ad budgets hard, and clients increasingly looking for efficiencies (i.e. combining Hispanic and General Market programs / spend) more and more general market ad agencies are taking business away from Hispanic-focused ad shops. The takeaway is that Hispanic shops should have positioned themselves to pursue both general market and Hispanic work – and would be in a better position today to thwart the efforts of general market agencies had they done so.

Very interesting and thought-provoking thesis. As the owner of a digital shop that started almost exclusively handling Hispanic digital work, this is something I have thought about, and think about, almost every day. We made a decision to not position our agency (Sensis) as purely a Hispanic shop a few years back – but instead as one that using digital to reach the “hard-to-reach.” I feel that decision was the right one – and allowed us to grow both our Hispanic business (while simultaneously expanding our billings with new general market accounts.) For Sensis, we took the market position Cat advocates. And so far, the results are positive. My question is, would this have worked for a traditional Hispanic agency?

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