Gonzalo del Fa de GroupM
For Gonzalo Del Fa, president of GroupM Multicultural, Latinos still lack sufficient participation in U.S. television in terms of content, on-screen talent and work behind the cameras. He recalled that Hispanics represent close to 20 percent of the U.S. population, but fail to attract a similar percentage in advertising investment. He said that this does not occur with African Americans, who make up 15 percent of the population. “We’re not applying enough pressure,” Del Fa said in his speech at the opening of the 20th Annual Hispanic Television Summit entitledEmbracing Hispanic culture through media: The state of the Hispanic media industry. He noted that the Hispanic population has grown 85 percent since the year 2000 (rising from 13 percent of U.S. inhabitants to 20 percent), while its purchasing power in 2000 was $500 billion and today is $1.9 trillion – “a growth of four times what it was.” Clearly, the Hispanic population has grown and evolved, but “this is the Television Summit, so we want to know what happened with TV in the meantime? Facebook didn’t exist in 2002, and I mention Facebook because it was a game changer. At that time we called television ‘TV,’ and now we call it ‘one of the traditional media.’ And so it has evolved, we’ve gone from linear TV to digital video, from the 30-second spot to a 6-second snippet, and we’ve gone from the whole family gathered in front of the television set to every family member watching something different on his or her own device. Clearly, the media and TV have evolved, the Latino community has grown, but I still have a conflict of emotions about the Latino community being ignored. Maybe we’re not being ignored, but I still don’t see a fair representation,” Del Fa said.
