UM’s Xavier Mantilla: I believe the general market’s view is wrong

Xavier Mantilla, UM’s senior multicultural VP, is considered a veteran in the advertising market and in the Latin American and the Hispanic US mass media.With his wide experience, he thinks that the Total Market’s view is wrong. “The Hispanic market is part of the general market. We don’t live separated, what we have is more content options; and we cannot forget that language and culture give us more wealth for communications,” he added.In a conversation with PRODU, he commented that events like AHAA must be adapted to reality to allow participants to know how the industry is changing or breaking up. He explained that in UM and Identity (IPG Mediabrands’s multicultural agency) are evaluating to reach consumers in all possible ways. “Agencies that for so long talked about the Latinos, made their own scheme because the market evolved and the culture that keeps us together is not necessarily the language,” he said.Mantilla believes that the creative market has had a lot of “movements’’, that is, it has overcome many problems and conquered many spaces. According to Mantilla, this can be observed through Latino campaigns that have won in great festivals, like Cannes. Besides, he explained that is about the “power of the creative persons, who have a cultural baggage. In the Latino scenario, we are already seeing proposals that camouflage and conceptualize with the Hispanic’ reality in the United States”.