One of the biggest mistakes companies can make when they are trying to reach ethnic markets is to lump everyone by racial characteristics. For example, when trying to reach the Hispanic Market, often attempts are made to use the Spanish language in all media. While this can be effective in reaching the immigrant population, it can fall short for the large and growing population of Latinos here in the USA who speak English as their primary language, especially the older generations of Latinos.
I have also seen this occur when companies try to assume the Hispanic population is one group. They are one group in that the immigrants generally all speak Spanish, but the Spanish language has regional differences. Cuban and Puerto Rican Spanish is different from much of the Spanish spoken in Central and South America, particularly in pronunciation. Certain words in one country’s Spanish can mean something completely different in another country, so reaching your audience, if it is appropriate, in Spanish needs to be done using a non-regional and non-national approach.
For older generations of Americans of Latin descent, not all speak Spanish, or speak Spanish fluently. Many of our friends can understand Spanish if they hear it, but cannot speak it or read or write it unless they have studied it formally. Therefore, using print media in Spanish to reach a 3rd or 4th generation American of Latin American descent is not necessarily the best tactic, and it also sends another message that may not be well received.
Asian Americans are actually a very straightforward group to reach, however the segmentation is more complex. The immigrant generation can be reached in their native language, but for most Asian Americans, the common language that binds them is English. Depending on the cohort you are trying to reach, cultural and sociological knowledge and history are important for effectively knowing how to make your products and services relevant, or in some cases, not making them irrelevant.
However, when reaching later generational groups, trying to reach certain subcultural segments in another language can be almost insulting, especially given our country’s history and treatment of Asian immigrants at the turn of the 1900′s. Marketers and companies who try to do this are sending a message that they may not intend to, and worse, it can be very insulting because it taps into the Perpetual Foreigner Syndrome.
The same analogies can also be made for other types of cultural marketing when we look at generational cohorts such as The Baby Boomers. While it is a generational group, it needs to be strategically defined and segmented for effective reach and relevancy.
