"What we've got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach..."
- Captain, Road Prison 36 (played by Strother Martin) from Cool Hand Luke
The men (and women) in this case that can't be reached are Latinos and the reason behind the communication failure, according to Carl Kravetz, chairman of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies (AHAA), is that marketers are not speaking in a language these consumers understand.
The language, Mr. Kravetz told an audience at the Association of National Advertisers' Multicultural Marketing Conference in Los Angeles, has nothing to do with Spanish or English.
Instead, it has to do with crafting messages that speak to the Latino identity.
Presenting the results of a study conducted by AHAA's Latino Identity Project, What Makes Latino, Latino?, Mr. Kravetz said the Spanish language no longer defines what it means to be a member of this group. Other factors, such as acculturation, are also not sufficient to understanding Latinos.
In an article on AdAge.com, Mr. Kravetz was quoted as telling conference attendees, "It's not so much what unites Latinos that's important as what makes us different from non-Latinos."
According to Mr. Kravetz, "There are two parts to our new hypothesis of Latino Cultural Identity -- a heart, and a set of contextual factors that interact with and continuously reshape the heart. If the heart is the core of Latino Identity, then the four chambers responsible for its functioning are interpersonal orientation, time and space perception, spirituality and gender perception."
The differences between Latinos and non-Latinos can be quite striking, according to the study's results.
"Interpersonal orientation is the way we live our relationships with other people, and is ... radically different from non-Latinos," he said. While individualism is important to Anglos, Latinos have a collectivist culture that puts family needs over those of an individual.
When it comes to time and space, Latinos tend to be less worried than Anglos on both counts. Time commitments, Mr. Kravetz said half-jokingly, are viewed as "more of a goal than real commitments" by many Latinos. When it comes to space, the collective nature of Latino culture means there is less value placed on privacy than in non-Latino groups.
Religion, primarily Catholicism for Latinos, plays heavily into a cultural love of rituals. It also, he contends, contributes to the sense of fatalism shared by many.
The role gender plays is also quite different when comparing Latinos to Anglos. Machismo in Latino cultures is about "protecting and providing for the family." Men often feel shame and sometimes exhibit aggression when they fail to live up to the cultural role assigned to them.
"This new hypothesis of Latino Identity is a threshold moment for the Hispanic marketing industry because it not only tells us how Latinos are, it begins to explain why we are the way we are," he said. "And this is very, very significant."
Discussion Question: What do the findings of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies' research mean for brand manufacturers and retailers marketing to Latinos?