Over the past twenty-five years the buying power of the Hispanic community has almost tripled. For the first time the U.S. Census has indicated that Hispanics have become the largest minority group in the United States today. They have reached this point five years earlier than reports projected eclipsing African Americans. Advertisers and their agencies have taken notice of this but will they really be able to connect with the Hispanic community.

The greatest misconception that the advertisers, marketing directors and agencies have is that all Hispanics are the same and they can be marketed to in the same manner. There are several different Hispanic groups in the US, and an advertiser would be throwing their money away if they have come to the conclusion that they can advertise to a Puerto Rican community the same way they would advertise to a Cuban community.

The Hispanic culture is both rich and diverse so first they must understand who their audience is before they can market to them. For example an advertiser would be foolish to create an advertisement that has a Puerto Rican flavor and market that in a Mexican or Cuban community. Lets take it even further, an advertiser will totally miss their target market if they figure that by running an advertisement in Spanish that is covers the total spectrum of the Hispanic community.

The Hispanic community consists of both English and Spanish speaking people from different cultures. This is something that marketing directors have to begin to understand, until they understand they will never be able to take advantage of the large Hispanic population here in the US. Most marketers file in line to ride the bilingual trend, but in reality they haven’t done their homework, they would have greater results if they just created the campaign in English instead of stereotyping the Hispanic community.

When a marketer just assumes that all Hispanics speak Spanish, react to Spanish or Spanglish type ads and have the same preferences, this is considered “Stereotype Marketing”. An example of this would be to market hip hop music to just the African American community, or to market pasta just to the Italian American community, when we know that all nationalities listen to hip hop music and everyone loves pasta, of course it sounds ridiculous, but marketers are doing this when they try to market to the Hispanic community.

Advertisers and their marketing departments are looking at the Hispanic community as a group when in fact there are many factors that make up this “Group” and they must take into account the diversity which includes the country of origin, whether they are the first or second generation here in the US, and their general location

For example a second generation Latino living in Texas would react differently to an ad that is geared toward a second generation Latino living in New York or a second generation Latino living in Miami Florida. Hispanics are like every other line of immigrants that have come to the United States, they aspire to do better for their families and embrace the American culture. It is very possible that close to half of third generation Latinos marry Non-Latinos, which should be a flashing sign for advertisers.