Ethnic Marketing: Fluency Means Currency

By STEVE DWYER
Convenience Store Products | July 17, 2013

With more than half the U.S. population growth from 2000 to 2010 fueled by Hispanics, it behooves consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, marketers and retailers to step up their ethnic-marketing competencies.

Unfortunately, many have failed to make the strides they should have by now. And there’s plenty at stake: One study projects Hispanic purchasing power to reach an estimated $1.5 trillion by 2015.

Glenn Llopis, a former corporate executive who spent several years with Sunkist, should know about this shortfall. Llopis, a Hispanic American, has been able to use two lenses—personal heritage and corporate marketing—to assess how CPG companies and retailers can market to Hispanics in a meaningful way.

Llopis is also the founder of the Center for Hispanic Leadership and a best-selling author of several books on Hispanic culture. “Cultural intelligence has to replace the misguided notion that simply translating English copy into someone’s native language is all a food company or retailer needs to do” to reach an ethnic group at their point of need, Llopis recently told Convenience Store Products.