Podcast Adsmovil Alvaro Cabal
Faced with the cultural diversity that characterizes the Hispanic market, and the complexity and costs it implies to address every one of its segments, Alvaro Cabal, manager of Multicultural Communications at the Ford Motor Company, said he likes to “count on the majority.” Which means concentrating on “the things that unite us, not on what separates us, things that all the different Hispanic neighborhoods, populations and communities have in common.” Cabal was the presenter of the Adsmovil podcast Hablemos de Publicidad (Let’s Talk Advertising) powered by PRODU, a monthly program moderated by Alberto Pardo, CEO & founder of Adsmovil, and the first dedicated to Hispanic consumers in the United States. The discussion centered on understanding why the U.S. Hispanic population, which makes up almost 20 percent of the country’s total and whose GDP in 2018 amounted to almost $2.6 trillion, is targeted with advertising spend worth only a scant 5 to 6 percent of the total. Cabal spoke of three factors that would explain such an insignificant ad spend. The first is the continued lack of importance given this market, though it has been studied for a considerable amount of time. Secondly, the number of Hispanic professionals guiding client companies is insufficient, and most are not within the top executive ranks. Finally, it takes time to penetrate this market. “The Hispanic mantra is to first make friends, then do business,” he said. “And if the head of a company doesn’t understand that, little patience is shown. Executives expect to see immediate results, and that simply doesn’t happen with the Hispanic market.”
