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HISPANIC MARKET OVERVIEW 2019 Powered by HispanicAd.com
THE HMO INTERVIEW
THE POLYCULTURAL SOCIETY PLAY
When it comes to interesting conversations full of energy and passion for multicultural marketing, there’s perhaps no better person to talk to than Alex Lopez Negrete, President/CEO of Houston-based advertising agency Lopez Negrete Communications.
He’s definitely not acerbic. In fact, he’s as witty as ever. Yet, following a conversation with Hispanic Market Overview, he professed that he, perhaps, came across as “a whiner, disgruntled.”
Bullocks. Lopez Negrete is simply one of many in the industry, including Hispanic Market Overview, who may simply be tired of saying the same damn things year in and year out – only to see regression rather than progression reshape the state of U.S. Hispanic market.
So, about the “blending” theme of this report ... When
Hispanic Market Overview penned it, it was partially designed to gain reaction from some of the nation’s most esteemed multicultural marketing professionals. Yes, we admit it: We took a subject that was definitely going to generate some controversy, if you will, only because the clients likely think this way, and totally agreed with everything on the first four pages of this report with respect to “blending.”
Now, after hitting the 29th page of editorial in our annual state of the industry check-up, we invite you to fasten your seatbelts and get a final look at what will truly make your Hispanic marketing and advertising outreach shine – and resonate – with the target audience.
Mr. Lopez Negrete was, like the other executives interviewed for this report, hardly thrilled that we
believe Latinos are “blending” into the mainstream – even if we meant Latino culture was being mixed into the non-Hispanic Caucasian way of life.
Why? “Blending does mean a watering down of a source or a disappearance of some identity markers, and that is not what has happened,” he says.
Rather, it is more like an integration of Hispanic culture into the framework of today’s America, allowing cross-cultural influence to foment.
That said, America is mired in a dual reality — one that’s taken shape in the real world, and the interpretation of it in the board rooms of the marketers.
Lopez Negrete says, “People imagine that Latinos become more White as that integration happens and they lose that Hispanic identity, and then we don’t have to do any multicultural work.”