Latinos and El Super Bowl

The big “Latino” news of this week is probably the announcements by a bipartisan group of eight senators and the subsequent one by President Obama that outlines a set of principles for immigration reform. Some have cautioned that this is entirely a cynical political move that will end in a stalemate (and the draw goes to the incumbent, Obama), I hold a bit of optimism that the law will take some steps forward toward a more common sense and humane immigration system.

One of the big remaining concerns, often a subtext of the immigration debate, is that it is not merely a legal issue or even an economic one, but a symbol of the cultural war. For many Americans immigrant is synonymous with Hispanic, and the big threat of immigration is really the xenophobic threat of a large cultural group coming and changing the culture in which we currently live. Harvard historian Sam Huntington was bold enough to be completely honest about this view when he proclaimed the “Hispanic Challenge” against the American way of life.

So, assuming that my optimistic views are confirmed and millions of Latino immigrants gain the legal right to live and work in the United States, what will happen next? While I don’t believe that a cultural war will take place, there is no doubt in my mind that Huntington was right, that Hispanics will remake America-they already have, and they have done so with most Americans’, and especially entrepreneurial capitalists, enthusiastic support.  Already, businesspeople not only want to court Latinos, they realize they need to. Too, bad so many of them just don’t know how to do it well.

In a few days millions of Americans will be glued to their televisions to watch the real war we all care about, Super Bowl XLVII. With a Civil War-like story line of brother versus brother, North versus South, it should once again break television-viewing records. Of course for many, the real main event is the half-time show, with the potential hope of wardrobe malfunctions, and the commercials. One might assume that Latinos would rather be watching fútbol than football and thus make an extra effort to reach out to them via the between-play marketing. That would be the wrong assumption to make considering a 2009 Nielsen poll showed that football is Latinos’ favorite sport to watch on television. Perhaps therein lies the reason why we can probably expect another lackluster year of commercials with a Latin twist during the big game-the U.S. business world knows we are important, but they still don’t get us.

One mistake marketers make is that getting the attention of Latinos is all about language. They think that if you simply translate the English copy into Spanish and have an aging Latin American actor do the voiceover, then Latinos will rush out to buy the product. That mentality ignores the fact that most Latinos are U.S.-born, English-speaking, and young.

The NBA made a slightly savvier attempt by airing a Spanish-speaking commercial during an English broadcast of one of their basketball games. It breaks away from some tired stereotypes by using a modern, Middle American, backdrop. But, they still wrongheadedly reference telenovelas, the Spanish soap operas that we American Latinos are familiar with, even though we are more likely to be watching The X-factor, or Modern Family.

One ad that has been touted in advance of its Superbowl airing is downright insulting. It already starts off bad because it is an ad for the cheap Mexican knock-off, Taco Bell. It gets worse with the ironic, punk inflected, Spanish with an American accent, signing in the background. Some probably believe that this gets the younger sensibilities of Latinos right, but by going for mockery, both in terms of the product and the ad, and they might as well just dig The Frito Bandito up from the archives.

Personally, I am a fan of a Latina marketing strategist’s idea of “the wink”, which demonstrates the knowledge that Latinos are really American in many ways, but that there is a subtle Latin American sensibility to a lot of what we do. Last year a Super Bowl commercial featuring Carlos Mencía really hit the mark. Carlos, representing what we typically think of as a Latino, with his tan skin and dark features, also portrayed who many Latinos really are with his flawless English and American style. In the commercial he teaches a diverse class of foreigners some key phrases that they will need to learn to survive in the United States. It is great because he is their cultural guide to being American, and like many successful Latinos, he has mastered the art of being a chameleon. He knows the nuances of both cultures, but is decidedly American. He drinks Bud Light, after all.

So when you sit down with your Corona, or more likely, a Bud Light, this weekend, and you find yourself eating chili con carne, and dipping some chips into salsa and guacamole for a traditional American Super Bowl, take note of whether advertisers really get what (Latino) Americans like or not.