In Vegas, blazing a trail to market to Hispanics

Timothy Pratt, Las Vegas Sun

Saturday, Dec. 15, 2007 | 7:41 a.m.

Rooting through his memory for examples of Spanish-language advertising gone wrong, Don Voyles leaned back in his chair and produced the archetype: "Tienes leche?"

The oft-cited case happened in California. It was the early '90s and the people behind the "Got milk?" campaign wanted to deliver their message to millions of Hispanics. The problem: Simply translating the pitch into Spanish could make people think of another kind of milk, the kind that comes from a mother's breast.

Fast forward to today and Voyles, community outreach director for Regis University's Las Vegas campus, can't believe that Hispanic marketing still isn't being taught in universities nationwide.

As a step in that direction, his school is going to launch Nevada's first and the nation's third Hispanic marketing program.

The school's director, W. Keith Evans, got Voyles and the program's lead faculty member, Chrysanthe Georges, together to make their case for why the Las Vegas Valley is the right place to shape the next generation of pitchmen for leche.

"We have almost 500,000 Hispanics who spend between $12 billion and $20 billion a year, plus 3 million Hispanic tourists," Voyles said. "And if you call most marketing firms in town and ask, you'll find they don't have someone in charge of Hispanic marketing."

Jeremy Aguero, principal analyst at Applied Analysis, a Las Vegas economic and fiscal policy research firm, said he has gotten more calls in the past 12 months from businesses interested in marketing to Hispanics than in the previous five years.

"Given the demographic changes we've had in Southern Nevada, there's probably no more viable Hispanic market in the U.S. than here, both now and in the future," Aguero said.

Starting in January, Regis, a Jesuit university based in Denver, will offer a 20-week, four-course bachelor of business administration degree program with a specialization in Hispanic marketing.

Rob O'Keefe, group account director of R&R Partners, said he believes the program will greatly benefit local marketing firms, giving them what he called "a hometown advantage."

Recently, R&R released a Spanish-language version of "What happens here, stays here" - with the help of an out-of-town consultant.

One of the program's courses will look at the "cultural (and) demographic ... aspects of this market" - something lacking in the California case.

Georges feels strongly about this part of the program. "Many companies are well-intentioned," she said. "But they don't know how to reach the Hispanic market."

She said directly translating words into Spanish doesn't take into account the cultural underpinnings of the language, or of the people who speak it.

So her classes would help students understand the valley's Hispanic population, about 70 percent of which is of Mexican background. She said her classes would necessarily bump up against stereotypes.

"Many people think of Hispanics and they picture dumb border crossers," she said. "We'll probably get to some very granular conversations."

Voyles pointed out that the program isn't dedicated exclusively to helping marketing professionals working in Las Vegas.

"You could take what you learn here and apply it in Miami," with its Cuban and South American population, he said. That's why one of the courses will teach students how to research the differences among Caribbean, Central American and South American cultures, as well as between native-born and immigrant Hispanics.

As for those who disagree with the very underpinning of the program - reaching more Hispanics, using Spanish - Georges thinks that businesses can no longer ignore the need for doing so.

"We have become a bicultural country," she said. "We have to learn to adapt to the shift ... from a marketing perspective, that means embracing the culture."

Aguero put it another way.

"If you're marketing only in English ... you're effectively carving away a third of your market," he said. "That makes no sense."