Viva the Upfront: The Truth about Spanish TV - Michael Kassan

The upfront is looming or at least it39s in the prelooming stage With it come the usual questions Will it be a buyer39s or seller39s market Will Les Moonves predictions be correct amp8211 double digit increases again Will the new shows be any good Will there be enough shrimp at the parties And that old standby is the upfront outdatedThe answers in order who knows it39s tough to bet against Les some will and some won39t probably not and stop alreadyBut there39s one question about this year39s upfront marketers absolutely must ask themselves Am I spending enough on Hispanic televisionAnswered correctly you have a direct route to 56 million Americans and climbingamp8212fast who spend in excess of 1 trillion annually demonstrate the kind of brandfriendly consumer behavior we haven39t seen in more than half a century and who index well above the total population in critical categories like entertainment QSR consumer electronics movies digital media usage and moreOh yes and one out of every three of them are 1834 years oldNow that39s what I call a targetMedia dollars have always followed the consumer and the impressions think the growth of cable and more recently digital Now the smart money in a wide range of categories is being allocated to making Hispanic a priority and ensuring that media plans have sufficient Spanish language mediaHispanics constitute probably about 20 of any given marketer39s sales today and this segment39s growth will continue to outpace overall purchasing growth But beyond the numbers is the even more enticing truth that Hispanics are in many ways ideal consumersI think Ad Age39s Peter Francese said it best in a column on the 2010 Census when he noted that quotperhaps the most remarkable aspect of Hispanics in America is how closely they exemplify our idealized concept of 1950s America They are young their median age is about where the whole nation was in 1955 and more often live in large traditional marriedwithchildren families with lots of participation from grandparents amp8230 In sort they are the sweet market for consumer goods and services that the entire nation used to be when baby boomers were youngquotYet unbelievably we still hear marketers declare that because of assimilation and acculturation they don39t need much if any Spanish TV English will do they say Well no it won39t Univision had 42 of the top 50 programs in 2011 among bilingual HispanicsThe Spanishlanguage network offers a massive unduplicated reach as some 66 of its audience doesn39t even watch English broadcast networks In fact last year Univision beat NBC more than half the nights of the year in prime with its blockbuster novelas amp8211 at prime time rates2030 lower than its English broadcast competition And for a truly refreshing change of pace 94 of Univision39s audience watches prime live compared to only 75 of US viewers who watch Englishlanguage broadcasts in realtimeHow39s that for a welcome blast from the pastOne of my journalist friends covered Hispanic marketing for many years and he likes to tell the story of when he asked the head of one of the most successful and wellrespected Latino ad agencies in the country a fully acculturated completely bilingual marketer with decades of experience to give him the truth about the English versus Spanish questionquotLet39s say I39m looking to buy a carquot the agency leader said quotI39m comfortable learning all the technical details about that car how fast it goes from 0 to 60 its torque and so on in English But if I want to know how driving that car will make me feel that I can only get in SpanishquotSounds like a pretty convincing razonamiento to meMichael E Kassan is Chairman and CEO of MediaLink LLC a leading Los Angeles and New York Citybased advisory and business development firm that provides critical counsel and direction on issues of marketing advertising media entertainment and digital technology Michael can be reached at michaelmedialinkllccomRead all Michael39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Media LinkedCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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Viva the Upfront: The Truth about Spanish TV - Michael Kassan

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