Latino Purchasing Power: The $2.5 Trillion Opportunity for Brands in 2023 and Beyond | Jacqueline Hernández and Adriana Waterston
Victoria Jenn welcomes powerhouse Latinas Jacqueline Hernández and Adriana Waterston for a deep dive into the world of multicultural marketing and why brands need to pay attention to Latino creatives, businesses, and our $2.5 trillion purchasing power.
This conversation is jam-packed with data and a great listen for every brand/marketer trying to reach the Latino consumer. Creatives should also tap into this episode for insights on how to build the business case for your idea and pitch to brands.
Gain an insider view into the dos and don’ts of multicultural marketing straight from the experts driving change. Discover how to build cultural intelligence, ditch assumptions, and craft messaging that resonates across intersections.
About Jacqueline Hernández:
Jacqueline Hernández is a renowned business leader and multicultural expert recognized by FORTUNE, The Hollywood Reporter, and Advertising Age. As the Founder and CEO of New Majority Ready LLC, she boasts an impressive track record, having previously helmed roles like COO of Telemundo and CMO of NBCUniversal Hispanic Enterprises.
About Adriana Waterston:
As Executive Vice President and Insights & Strategy Lead, Adriana oversees Horowitz Research's multicultural research efforts.
Adriana is a research junkie with a flair for finding the story behind the statistics, teasing meaning out of measurements, and revealing the faces behind the facts. A thought leader in the diversity space, Adriana has consulted for clients in entertainment and news media, technology and telecommunications, travel and hospitality, CPG, retail, toys, beauty and personal care, and the emerging Cannabis market, among others. Adriana helps clients develop their strategies to reach, serve, and resonate with their target consumer segments, including Latinx, Black, Asian, LGBTQIA+, Gen Z, Kids, and consumers with disabilities. On the DEI side, she helps companies address issues of corporate culture and talent development. A Puerto Rico native, Adriana was named one of the “Most Influential Minorities in Cable” by Cablefax Magazine.
Connect with our guest: Jacqueline Hernández
Follow Jacqueline Hernández on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacquelinehernandez/
Follow Jacqueline Hernández on X: https://x.com/jshernandeznyc
Connect with our guest: Adriana Waterston
Follow Adriana Waterston on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrianawaterston/
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Full Transcript:
Right now, there are 109 billion reasons why Latinos are not buying products because they're not represented, their ads aren't speaking to them, or the products, they're not what we want. They're not listening to us.
Historically, there's been a problem in the Hispanic market space. Whether you're talking about Latino, Latinx, Hispanic, Black, Asian, whatever, it's always been undervalued.
You're talking about 20% of the population, 51% of this country's growth.
All voices matter when you're creating products, services, content, advertising for a diverse, multicultural, intersectional audience, which is the American audience today.
The definitions are changing. How does it impact me and what are my feelings about it?
Ads aren't gonna resonate just because you put a big Latino or Latinx or Hispanic word across it. It's not about the word, it's what is the creative? What is the messaging?
I just want to put it out there to the listeners that I am recently single and ready to mingle.
What's up guys? Welcome back to Banking on Cultura. I am your host, Victoria Jenn Rodriguez.
And today I got two kick ass powerhouse Latinas, Jacqueline Hernández, who is the CEO of the New Majority Ready, a value creation marketing consulting firm focused on helping companies reach and engage with both multicultural and youth consumers. So think Gen Z and millennials, y'all. She is the former president of Combate Americas, the leading Hispanic MMA sports franchise.
She also previously held the roles of chief marketing officer for NBCUniversal Hispanic Enterprises and was the chief operating officer of Telemundo, overseeing upwards of 750 million in revenue and had oversight of 600 employees. If you're thinking one of badass, you're right. I'm also joined by my amiga, Adrianna Waterston, who is the executive vice president and insights and strategy lead at Horowitz Research, a premier consumer insights and market research company.
Adriana is a research junkie with a flair for finding the story behind the statistics. She consults companies across industries, including media and entertainment, tech, beauty, CPG, toys, and even the emerging cannabis market. She focuses on bringing those companies closer to consumer segments such as Latinx, black, Asian, LGBTQIA+, Gen Z kids, and those with disabilities.
She was named one of the most influential minorities in cable by Cablefax Magazine and is frequently quoted by the press given her expertise. So yes, another badass is present y'all. So both of these ladies have vast experience for the topic that we're gonna discuss today.
And we're essentially gonna break down what's happening in the advertising industry as it relates to our community. How are they spending money? How are they not spending money?
So that you can understand if you are a business owner or if you are creative or if you are in corporate, how do you actually engage with Latinos? We need to get this all the way together because they don't know what to do with us y'all. They don't know what to do with us.
So Jackie, Adrianna, welcome to Banking on Cultura.
Thank you. We're so excited to be here, right?
Thank you for having us on this 35th Hispanic Heritage Month.
I know.
Wow, Reagan, yeah.
Woohoo!
So let's talk about how we got here. So Adrianna, you and I met at the T. Howard Foundation dinner.
Do you want to share the story of how it went down?
Well, I saw you across the room and knew you were somebody. If I didn't know you already, I needed to know you. And I just, I remember seeing you across the room and zigzagging right over to where you were and connecting
There must have been a fashion connection in here because both of you are so fashionista.
There was a little bit of a connection.
There was, you had this jacket on that was like studded out to perfection. It was absolutely gorgeous. And shout out to my boy, Christian Ortega, who allowed me to join him at his table that evening.
That's why I was there. But you just had this energy to you and this like amazingness. And I was like, I need to learn more about this woman
But then it got really interesting because we started having a conversation about data around advertisers and how they are spending money on the Latino community. And I was like, you know what? We need to bring this to the Banking on Cultura community because this is the type of information that a lot of us are not privy to.”
“And we really don't understand the politics, the dynamics between where ad dollars go and how exactly we're marketed to, which is what we're gonna talk about today. So let's get into some bonchinche because you know we like to open up the show with some bonchinche. So who wants to go first giving us some bonchinche?
You have some really good one and fresh.
All right, I have two things.
Let's go.
Okay, so the first thing is, you know it's Hispanic Heritage Month, just came out of the Hispanic TV Summit and I'm super excited because my company, slash I, won an award called the Rafael Eli Pioneer and Hispanic Television Award. Rafael was a very dear friend who unfortunately passed during COVID and so this award means a lot. Not just because of the work that my company and I have done and to be honored for it but also because I'm being honored in his name.
“So that's wonderful. And then the other is a little bit more on the personal side.
Yes, you know I like the personal, see.
So I just want to put it out there to the listeners that I am recently single.
Oh, yay! And ready to mingle?
Ready to mingle, but I've only got a couple of requirements. So just to let it all out there. I prefer to be a Latino man.
Okay.
With adult children.
Okay.
Y que tenga una lancha en Puerto Rico.
Ooh, okay.
So any takers, you know how to reach me.
Banking on Cultura, where you fall in love.
You have officially put it out there.
It's out there.
“Yes, God is gonna take care of it now, cause it's out there.
I'm manifesting.
Yes, I love it.
It might not be as good as that, except I'm almost recently single, not really. I'm very happily married, but we are about to go on our vacation to the Azores, but what's important about this is it's a redo. We were supposed to go a year ago.
One of us, four days before we were leaving, realized their passport wasn't updated.
I'm in the process of that right now.
And remember also, we had three years of COVID, no traveling to Europe, like no traveling. This was like the vacation of vacations. So I have to say, I was super cool.
I was like, I need to be cool about it. So we are doing the redo. He booked the whole thing over again.
And I'm just so excited after four years of not being able to travel.
So is that what saved the marriage?
He got it together?”
“What saved the marriage is I love him to death.
I do have to say, for those of you who don't know, Jackie is married to an equally amazing, her partner is Jack Rico.
Yes.
And he is super cool. A blogger in his own right.
He has a show. He has a show, it's Brown and Black. And he does podcasts and interviews and he's fabulous Colombiano.
Okay.
The Barranquilla.
Yeah, he's awesome. So I appreciate that Jackie's giving him a pass on the passport fiasco. He deserves it.
I love it, I love it. Okay, so let's get into some data because both of you have tremendous insight in this space. So can you tell us how advertisers are actually viewing the Latino community?
Because they're treating us almost like a monolith, right? And can you share some of the history, where we are right now and aspiration for the future?
Jackie and I have known each other for many years. So we think alike. So I'll start, I can start, but just try a minute.
“So, and actually Jackie is even more of an expert in this because she was the GM of Telemundo. I mean, you know, her whole thing was about explaining to advertisers the value of the Hispanic market from a researcher's perspective. I can tell you that, you know, what I've, so I'm a little bit of a step outside.
I don't buy or sell media, but I just do research on consumers and I help advise my clients, which are mostly either the media companies on the one hand or the advertisers on the other of what, you know, what has to happen. And historically there's been a problem, right? In the Hispanic, in the Hispanic market space, which is that first of all, multicultural, whether you're talking about Hispanic, Latino, Latinx, Hispanic, Black, Asian, whatever.
I'm sure we'll get into that.
All that we'll get into in a second. But it's always been undervalued, right? Advertising budgets are gigantic and then multicultural markets budgets are this size.
“And then within that, you know, the Hispanic market or the Latinx market. So that's been the problem that Hispanic media has had to contend with forever and ever and ever, right? You know, the Latino space, the Latinx space has been a little bit more privileged than some of the other groups because there was a real voice.
The Hispanic market, you know, there's a lot of advertising agencies we had. And now it's called something else, but AHA, which was the association. Yeah, and whoever they are now, I don't know the culture, cultural, whatever.
“No importa, pero the Hispanic ad agencies work together to really create the market, educate the market, the networks, you know, Telemundo and Univision really helped to define the market. So historically in the past, you know, within the multicultural budget, a Hispanic got its fair share. You know, post everything that went on in 2020, I think there was a shift, there was a growth in understanding about multiculturalism in general and the importance of reaching and serving diverse voices with a shift towards, I think, prioritizing the black audience, which by the way, I think is totally, I mean, they were undervalued and underrepresented for a long time.
So, you know, the, almost, he said the evening out, the rebalancing was fine. The problem is where we are right now, which is that after the hype around, you know, BLM and the murder of George Floyd and, you know, you now see all of the news is, this company cut their DNI, this other company cut their multicultural budget. Like we're almost going back to where we were before.
It's like we take 10 steps forward and then, you know, 12 steps back. That's my view anyway.
“So let's take that view. Everything you said, I totally agree, but let's also take it to like a little bit of the future and also the facts. So you asked about data.
There are many companies that do lean in and they do lean in well and they don't do it just monolithically, although there are those that have that problem. But you're talking about a market that's over, is it gonna exceed $2.5 trillion? You're talking about 20% of the population, 51% of this country's growth, also growing at twice the speed of the general population.
That is all gonna change. The underrepresentation and disproportionate amounts of dollars, that is gonna change because of two reasons. One, the consumer.
The consumer, the Latino consumer, especially the Gen Z and the Millennials, they're not gonna go with brands that are not aligned with their values. They're gonna say no or they'll cancel them. The second thing is the rise of multiracial.
So I think we're gonna start seeing a lot more ads like, one of my favorite was the NFL ad during the Super Bowl. I don't know if you guys saw it. It was Diana Flores.
She's this famous Mexican football flag racer. And she was running through, and it had very inclusive people of all different races and ethnicities were in the ad. At one point it's bilingual, está hablando con su mamá en español.
And at the end, it's all about women moving football forward. So everyone related. It's about women and women moving this sport forward.
But it was, that is what we're gonna need to see more in the future instead of just these boxes. And one more thing, I think this whole like Hispanic media, the days of just buying linear to networks for reaching Latinos, that's done. It's now, where do you see them?
You see them on YouTube, social media, TikTok, even streaming platforms like VIX, you know, ad-supported streaming. So that is what's changed. It's not formulaic anymore.
And anyone who treats it monolithically is just wasting their money, in my opinion. Yeah.
When do you foresee that change happening?
“There was a lot of data supporting D&I efforts, and still those are the first budgets to be cut, right?
There's a lot of data supporting the reason why advertisers, companies need to invest in people of color. But it's just taking so long, even though the data supports it. So even with this data, what do you foresee happening?
When, when? Is it 2050? Is it 2060?
When are we going to see the shift?
I'm not going to give you the when, I'll give you the why. I recently saw a report that McKinsey did, and currently, right now, there are 109 billion reasons why, and those are 109 billion dollars that Latinos are not buying products because they're not represented, their ads aren't speaking to them, or the products just don't, they're not what we want. They're not listening to us.
As those dollars keep growing, as we keep growing, businesses are going to be like, wait, money speaks.
“Yeah, I mean, I agree with that. It's about following the money. I think, I think one of the struggles in the past is that, you know, a lot of the sort of people that we're talking about, this longer term strategy, we're looking towards the future.
But the future is coming up upon us now, right? So we talked about when is the United States going to be a multicultural majority? Well, in many of our major urban cities, we already are a multicultural majority.
When you look at the millennial generations and younger, all these younger generations are multicultural majority generations. And including, like, like Jackie was saying, these folks that have not just these, you know, very siloed identities, but who are, who have very intersectional identities, whether it's, you know, I'm Afro-Latina and LGBTQ, or, you know, whatever the case may be. So the practice of reaching and serving these audiences is going to become a lot more art than science in a sense, and is going to require some real skill, of course, backed by research.”
“So what would you advise, let's say there's an advertiser who wants to tap into this market. They have a $50 million budget. What are the top three things you would recommend them to do?
Well, I'm going to start to say, I'm going to, of course, start with research. Get the research done. There's a lot of research you could do with a $50 million budget.
No, but seriously, I think research, I mean, and I'm, again, I know it's what I do for work, but the reality is the research is, to me, the underpinning of so much of what happens. It informs product development. It informs, you know, branding and positioning, right?”
“It informs understanding, you know, who your audience is, doing audience segmentation. Who's the target for this product and what is their, you know, what's the psychology of that particular audience? And then, of course, all the tactical research that goes into executing whatever it is you need to execute, whether it's creative testing, whether it's packaging research, whether it's, you know, all of those kinds of things.
So, I do fundamentally believe that every successful brand in the United States, whether it's they're targeting the Latinx market or any other market, is a brand that has a fundamental understanding of the role of research. I think a lot of times what happens is that research is viewed as an expense instead of an investment. And that is, you know, and maybe it's the, you know, finance bros that look at it as a, you know, a negative instead of a positive on the balance sheet.
But the positive impact of really investing in research can't be understated, in my opinion.”
“And one of the reasons we bonded throughout all these years, ever since we first met, is I believe in research firmly. But even more now. There was a time when advertising pushed out messages and we, you know, we would buy it because they marketed it.
But now if the product doesn't fit or we don't like the feel or the company doesn't stand what I stand for, like really understanding that is more important than ever. So now the consumer is pulling and not being pushed at. And if you don't speak to them, you don't understand what they want, you're not going to be effective.
So I think that investing the money is great. But first, either understanding the consumer or hiring people like Adrianna who understand the consumer. Because a lot of these companies freeze.”
“They're like, I don't really know what to do. So I won't do it, which has been a big problem. And I'm like, hire someone or learn it.
If you're in marketing, you should know the Latin market, whether you're Latin or not.
Or they'll give the money to the Mexican community and be like, oh, we got to cover.
Yeah, check.
Check.
I'm like that too.
Okay, so research, understanding the consumer psychology, right, of the Latino community. What would be the third thing? Where should they put that money?”
“Well, I'm going to say that investing in talent in your organization. And I know this sounds very pithy. Everybody says it, you know, and that's why everybody did like, got to hire a DE&I person.
But it's not about decorating your, you know, website with the images of diverse CEOs. That's not what it's for. The idea of bringing diverse people into your organization is to make sure that there are diverse voices participating in decision making at all steps of the process.
It's not to say that, you know, only Latinx voices matter. It's to say all voices matter when you're creating products, services, content, advertising, whatever it is, for a diverse, multicultural, intersectional audience, which is the American audience today, then you need all those voices, you know, sitting around the table to make those decisions. So it's, again, you know, a critical investment nowadays.”
“And by the way, part of the problem with that is that in many of the different sort of workflows within a corporation or a company, there isn't necessarily a good pipeline to develop that talent, right? And so I think it's really important for companies to really think outside of the box of how you start developing a pipeline for that diverse talent. Of course, we're on the heels of a recent Supreme Court decision that ended affirmative action, and I see that as inherently short-sighted for the future of corporate America and for the state of our economy, because if we're going to be blind to the fact that systemic inequities exist, whether it's for black folks or for Latinx folks or whoever, and we don't make an effort to even out those systemic inequities, and to allow for the development of multicultural talent at the corporate level, we're going to lose out.
Yeah, I agree with that. I also think that marketers need to really think about purpose right now, not just selling their products. What meaning does it have?”
“What are they doing? How are they connecting, especially with the Latino community? We want to know that they really see us, hear us, and they understand the nuances and what's important, and they make stands.
So I think that's also very important, incredibly important right now.
Can I just piggyback on that? I think that's so true, Jackie. You know, 20 years ago, or 15 years ago, that wasn't an issue, right?
We didn't have the internet. You know, corporate America could exist in their ivory towers, and the decision makers could be all whatever, white old men, and they could be donating money to this cause or that cause, and you know, having all these, you know, corporate practices that were, you know, whatever, unethical or not aligned with the way that their consumer, you know, would think. That, that's over.”
“That is over. There is no secrecy.
The consumer really cares now, and knows.
They care, and they can find out. It's kind of like all those TikToks where it's like, you know, blank around and find out. They're going to find out.
All right, fuck around and find out.
I said it.
Eso es así con la juventud de hoy. And you can't be like somebody that's, you know, using Pride as an example. Putting rainbows out during Pride month, and then going and donating to politicians that are enacting anti-LGBT legislation.
Like, you just can't do that in today's world. Y hablando del Hispanic market también. O sea, you're not going to go and say that, you know, you want to cater to the Latino population, and then go and fund, you know, politicians who are anti-immigration, who are anti-”
“We know that companies want to sell their products. Now we need to believe that we want to buy it because we buy into what they do.
So I wonder if that is specific to the Latino community or just overall consumer psychology given everything that we've just gone through over the last four years.
I think it's a generational, it's a new generation that's looking for transparency and for truth. With the Latino community, I think it's just being marginalized or not being seen and now really wanting to be seen and heard because of the economic power. But I think it's generational and I think it's here to change.
We're all starting to see it.
So let's talk about how advertisers, I've heard through the grapevine, you guys are more in this space than me. Consider Latinos to be part of the mainstream. So they're like, what's the point of us dedicating a specific budget just to Latinos when they are the majority of Americans right now.”
“So they're in the mainstream. So how are we market to one? We market to all.
What do you say to that?
So I think that the ad that I gave an example of, of the NFL, was very much Latino but marketing to all. But it made the Latina in it the protagonist. And it was at the center of the spot.
And we all saw it. But everyone could feel that it was inclusive. So if it was just an ad that had a message for everyone, that wouldn't have resonated.
If it was just an ad that said, you know, support the NFL and women behind the NFL, great. But this stood out. You saw it.
You saw it was bilingual. You saw it was inclusive and multicultural. That's where I believe marketers need to really look at and go.
And when they say mainstream, that's fine. You can be mainstream. We are everywhere.”
“Look, we're Coachella. We're, you know, we're everywhere. But make it the priority and the protagonist and not just a message that's going to everyone.
Yeah, I'm going to. So a couple of things. A hundred and fifty percent about that, which I'm going to go back to.
But let's just actually unpack. You started in the beginning. You asked about Latinos being treated as a monolith.
So let's just unpack that for one second as part of this conversation, right? Yeah. So I was just reminding Jackie that back in 2001, when I first published, Horowitz first published, our report which still exists today called Focus Latino, which is a study of, it's an annual study that looks at the Latino market for media.
“And it was the first report that I know of that came out and said, guess what? The Hispanic market is not all Spanish dominant immigrants who only watch Spanish language TV. I came out and analyzed, you know, we've got less acculturated, we've got more acculturated, we've got the bilingual biculturals, you know, these are all different segments with different behaviors around media and content consumption, different, you know, psychographics, all these other things.
So that was a problem for the Hispanic media market at the time who had banked on convincing advertisers that if you, at the time, was like 50 million Hispanics back in 2001 or something like that. And if you want to reach all 50 million at the time, Hispanics, you have to buy one of these two networks. And you have to use one of these whatever, 10 advertising agencies.
So people didn't really like that I came out with that information because it was a problem. But the reality is that's number one. And we are always going to have that kind of diversity within the Latino market because right now maybe immigration, whatever is an issue.
“But as soon as we need laborers there's going to be more immigration. There's always going to be people coming in. There's always going to be new generations being born.
I mean we know now at this moment that the majority of Hispanic births are US births. But that could change. There's always going to be a very diverse market in that sense.
And there's also the issue of culture, right? I'm Puerto Rican. I'm not Mexican.
Well, I'm from Ghana, so, but you're right. With the bulk of Hispanics in the US being of Mexican descent, the numbers would tell you, well, we should be making these choices. The reality is, though, is that that kind of prescriptive approach, it doesn't really fly anymore because guess what?
Guess what?”
“What?
A lot of those Mexican people are married to Puerto Ricans, to Colombians, to whoever. And we're all mixing and merging, so it's a question of really, you know, not worrying so much about being prescriptive, about, oh, we're gonna use, well, these colors and this music and this whatever to reach that target, but rather to think about what are those universal stories that would resonate for Latinos, even for people that are not Latino, but who could, you know, resonate, whose stories could resonate similarly, you know, all that kind of stuff, which is why I agree with Jackie, that really the thinking has to shift, the conversation has to shift more around how do you change mainstream marketing? Because let's face it, mainstream marketing has been code word for white marketing.
Right, and it's not a white world anymore, it's a new majority.”
“So I don't understand the question of when people say, well, we're not gonna have, you know, like all black people in this ad, or all Latinos in this ad, because it's a general market ad, and then you go and put all white people in it. Like, how is that, what's that?
Well, that's not gonna work anymore. Two things that, you know, you've always been very ahead of everything. You're like the Nostradamus.
You were done in 2001.
Talk about it.
In 2014, I commissioned Horowitz and Adrianna led a study for all of NBCU called America Reimagined. And I think it was like a number, like 45% of Latinos consider themselves black, brown, or mestizo. And it was like, oh my God, this whole concept that all Latinos are not of color is not true.
And it resulted in Telemundo, which at the time the programming was very novella-esque, doing its first Afro-Latino 100% cast with Celia, the life of Celia Cruz, like La Reina del Salsa.
Still gives me goosebumps because that was one of the best shows ever made.”
“But this was 2014, this was the first time it ever happened. This is progress, this is the world we live in. I mean, she's about to become on a, she's gonna be on a coin next year, you know?
But it's about-
Azucar.
Azucar. But it's understanding, knowing the data, but then also knowing the human truths and evolving with it. The mainstream is of color.
Right. So we spoke about what advertisers need to do, to tap in. What about Latinos?
Understanding this data now.
“Creatives, like how should they be positioning?
How should they be building a business case for support for their projects?
The power of our stories, the power of our market. I mean, you're starting to see it. We have an Afro Latino and Spider-Man.
We've got the Blue Beetle about to come out. You know, we're becoming very much the leaders in pop culture. Bad Bunny.
Bad Bunny. Oh, my favorite story there is this past summer, that the number one song on the globally on Spotify for like weeks was, it was like between Peso Pluma and Grupo Frontera. But the Grupo Frontera story is super interesting because that song, Un Portiento blew up and it's a collab with Bad Bunny.
It's unity. It's coming together. It's being authentically who we are and telling our stories and the power of it together.
And I think that's gonna continue to blow up is we just continue to be loud and proud.
That's right.
Loud and proud. I love that. You know, that's easy for us, Boricuas.
“We be super loud and proud. Okay, so, ooh, there's so many different directions I wanna go here. But I think it would be helpful for us to tap in, Jackie.
When we were prepping for this conversation, you had said you kind of find yourself stuck between the gringa complex and the coochie frito complex. So can we go towards that angle a little bit? Because I think a lot of folks can identify with that.
Yeah, so let's start with the coochie frito complex. Growing up, we were given American names. Jackie, Jacqueline, I was Jacqueline Onassis Kennedy.
That's what I was named after. We spoke Spanish at home, but not out of the home. And we were told to assimilate and fit in, and we were to get ahead, right?
So whenever we did get ahead, or if we didn't, we had that little complex, like am I supposed to be here? And it's basically our flavor of imposter syndrome. So that was growing up.
“Now flash forward to now, and it's like, oh, I feel like there's a how Hispanic are you? You know, like what is the degree of it? And this really happened to me last year.
I applied New Majority Ready for minority owned business. And I was told you're not a minority because your family, your parents are from Spain. And I get it.
And I, but it was like, oh my God, what about all those years of, you know, me being Hispanic, being Hernández, not, you know, feeling that Cuchifita. Now I'm feeling the gringa thing. And there's also the whole race thing that came out from both Black Lives Matter.
And I think we saw it in our community within the Heights. And, you know, it was us confronting colorism, which is real, very real in our community. And so all of that come together.”
“It's like, wow, white privilege here, right? But Hispanic upbringing from immigrants who came to this country didn't speak English well and were a blue collar, and yet putting it all together and now really looking at, well, the definitions are changing. How does it impact me?
And what are my feelings about it? Because that old person is still inside me, but the new person is rationalizing the new world we live in.
Yeah, I feel like I totally empathize with that story. I feel that same thing. It's, I do a lot of qualitative research, right?”
“And I hear from Latinos when we do, you know, when we do one-on-one work and we talk about, you know, what does it mean to be Latino in this country? How does it feel? You know, what do you, and one of the things that I hear a lot are about being underestimated, you know, being underestimated and then over-delivering, which is something that's very, it's a common theme I hear.
And this issue between not being Latino enough to be, I mean, I think it was Selena that said it at one point, no soy bastante Mexicana para los Mexicanos ni bastante Americana para los Americanos. Y eso nos pasa a todos, verdad? Yo me crié, Judía Cubana en Puerto Rico, nací y me creí en Puerto Rico, verdad?
Y siempre me sentí como que nunca, yo no era suficiente Judía para la gente Judica. No era suficiente Cubana para los Cubanos. Y cuando llegué a los Estados Unidos, la gente me dijo, quién eres?
Eres gringa.
White-faced.
“Y entonces, pero en mi carrera profesional, mi experiencia fue algo bien diferente because I started doing this work in 2001, as I mentioned, 2000, 2001, and at the time, there were very few Latinos in positions of power in the companies that I was working with. And I felt like my white Latinaness made my message much more palatable for the people.
You were translatable.
Because I was representing the Latino voice, but I wasn't intimidating because I didn't look as Latino as they imagined Latinos would look like, right?
It was a superpower then, is it now?
Well, I think it's interesting, I think to your point about the race issue, and rightly so, I think that the Latino market, we have a problem with colorism, we have it in Puerto Rico. I don't know about this last census, but I know in every other census, like 98% of Puerto Ricans check off white as their race, and that's a whole nother conversation. So we don't like to talk about, we hadn't liked to talk about race.”
“And I think we've had an awakening in the past number of years especially, with understanding that the divisions that have been sewed between black and Latino have been very purposeful on the point, on behalf of the people that wanted us not to see our commonalities so that we wouldn't unite together as a multicultural majority. And so what we've seen over the past number of years is kind of this new awareness of Afro-Latino identities and the alignment of Latino issues with the issues of other people of color and all this, which I think is fabulous from a social, political, economic perspective and really important. But it also does create this interesting dynamic for white Latinos.
Where do we fit in in this new sort of view of the world? It's all a work in progress. And I think a really interesting, from an anthropological perspective, a really interesting turn of events that I'm actually excited to be a part of and living at this time.”
“And you know, like I have a daughter. She was born here in New York.
But she speaks Spanish and identifies herself as Puerto Rican and Latin. And she doesn't question her identity because she, you know, young people today understand that identity is really what you make of it. You know, what you are aligned with in the communities that you feel comfortable in and all this kind of stuff.
And I think, well, I did a study recently that came out in the press with the people from See Her.
Short flex.
And it was a Gen Z study. And one of the big findings was that the Gen Z really feel that identity is something that they should be able, your identity is something that you should be able to define, not that something that society should define for you.
Yeah, I think that, and we've spoken about this identity crisis concept, and I know Adrianna, you had a different perspective. Exactly, this is the crisis. Because the different generations are all experiencing a different facet of this, right?”
“And so it's very difficult for us to mobilize around this concept, because we're all experiencing it very differently, depending on when you were introduced to America, where you were born, the family you came from. Socio-economics, race, what you've been exposed to, all the things. And so there's so many Latinos who are feeling like, it is not a competitive advantage to be Latino right now, because they still have the preconditioning of, I need to fit in, I need to put my hair in a bun, I can't rock my curls, I can't talk Spanish at the office.
Oh, we get to bring our dishes, I can't bring arroz con gandules, I gotta bring vanilla cake or something like that, right? And so what do we do about this? Because it's like, it's so beautiful that we're evolving as a community, but at the same time, because of the complexities that exist within the community, and just American society and those type of influences on us when we are trying to hold on to our cultura but still be American and fit into America and all these things.
“How do we get more comfortable in our own skin?
So I think that there's two ways. One, it is bringing whatever you want to eat at work. It is bringing your true self.
It is having the identity, this is who I am. I'm gonna understand it, accept it, and I'm gonna own it, I'm gonna be it. But also doing it in a way that we're united because that's where we mobilize.
You know, it's interesting. You were talking about never feeling enough. When I was at Telemundo, we branded the network and we did a lot of research and a lot of understanding.
We found that when you have a network that's broadcasting, you reach many different types of people, how do you speak to just one or the other? So we tried to find the human truths. And so we took that weakness of never feeling enough and turned it into a positive.
And we said, we're 200 percenters. I actually coined that. It was 100% American, 100% Hispanic.
“And I'm gonna bring, and the actual logo of Telemundo is two pieces that come together and it turns into a T. But it was everything that we did. So if we were gonna have the voice on NBC, we were gonna have la voz on Telemundo.
If we were gonna, whatever we were gonna do, we were gonna do it, but we were gonna do it our way. We were gonna do it celebrating our language, our culture, our people, our food, and our differences. But instead of pitting against each other, mobilizing and coming together and activating, these are numbers, 2.5 trillion, but activate those numbers.
Show the power that we have together. As an ethnicity made up of different countries of origin, different colors, races, whatever it might be, but the power that unites us is huge in its culture. Why do you think Hispanics have such a big influence on pop culture?
Right, so first of all, another flex. I mean, Telemundo, icon, logo, creator, all the things. Just wanna put it out there.”
“So this brings me to our Talk That Talk segment, which is going to, I think, raise another concern that I have in the community that I feel is creating isolation instead of connecting us. And it has to do with labels. It has to do with, do I talk about the community as Latinx?
Are they Hispanic? Are they Latino? Are they Latina?
I remember I had a client who called me the biggest asset manager on the firm. Not gonna say their name. The biggest asset manager in the world.
And she was like, Victoria, I'm having a hard time. I'm like, okay. She's like, how do I describe your community?
“Like I have this network here and they're trying to think of a name for themselves and we're trying to put out data.
Like, do I say Latinx? Do I say Latinx? Do I say Hispanic?
And what was so interesting is I didn't have an answer for her.
No, I have an answer.
Because it's like, I don't know. We all use the term. And I guess it depends on what age group you're speaking to maybe.
But collectively, how are we able to harmonize around each other if within the community itself, we have a disassociation and a disconnect with just how we talk about each other?
So I have a really big opinion about this, okay? In fact, I've been trying to sit down and find the time to write an article about it for a very long time. And I feel that the first thing that everybody has to understand is there's the conversation about language, there's the conversation about identity, and then there's the conversation about marketing, right?
“Let's put the marketing over here, okay? What is the reason that we are talking about Latinx, Latine, all of that? It's not one word that we're talking about.
It's actually a conversation about the Spanish language inherently being patriarchal and very gender binary, okay? So when you think about the broader concept of conversations in this world around gender and around patriarchy and around women's rights, and you contextualize the conversation about languages that are gender binary within that framework, and then you start doing some research and you learn that it's not, this is, Latinx was not invented by marketers. Latinx was invented by activists, intellectuals, and young people in many Latin American countries, I think Argentina being the first, okay?
“So it's not a marketing question. It is a language question and a question around equal rights. When, so it's, people who really, really understand this don't just say Latinx or Latina, which, we can talk about that in a second, but they'll say amigues, they'll say like the word Corillo, which means like you're okay, but they'll say Corille, things like that, because they will, the goal is to take away the patriarchal and the non-gender neutral essence of the language, and by the way, it's not just Spanish.
There are movements like this with other languages that are also gendered, so people don't know that, because we only focus on this one word within the scope of this whole conversation. So then that takes me to the identity thing. So you're right, right?
The word Hispanic, we've been using it for 50 years, right?
It's a marketing term though.
“And it was first created, it was actually first created to unite these very disparate groups of Latinos who were Mexican, Puerto Rican, whatever, for political reasons, to be able to create like a voting pack that was one, you know, whatever. So we came up with Hispanic, and this is now 50 years ago or something like that, like in the 70s. Then, you know, whatever Latino came up, whatever, for other reasons, and there's gonna be debate about the meaning between Hispanic and Latino, whatever.
And then we've got, you know, people saying now, well, but Latinx is not taking off, or Latina is not taking off. How many frickin decades did it take for us to adopt Hispanic as a term, right? It takes time for language to evolve, but language will always evolve.
“So, and by the way, in our research, we track whether or not people identify with the term. And what we're seeing, especially among young people, is that over the years, more and more people have said that Latinx or Latina is the term that they either most identify with or is a term that they are okay. You know, it may not be the one they most identify with, but it's one that they are comfortable with.
And that number has grown steadily year over year. And I think it goes hand in hand with that other conversation about awareness around gender equality issues, around issues around gender neutral language and issues around women's empowerment.
What are your thoughts? Because you come from like the corporate side.
Yeah.
And I think that's, it's like an interesting dynamic because I hear the research full through. But from the corporate side, when you're trying to develop these programs and you're trying to build a business case and create community within your hallways, how do you do that when there's so much complexity?
“So sometimes when I hear that question, I say, don't let that get in your way. Like it's a label and it's evolving because of all these reasons that you gave. But sometimes people use it as a reason not to lean in or it's too confusing, I don't understand it.
It's not confusing. First of all, I think people identify with, you identify with being Puerto Rican. Like it's more your personal background.
The reason to group people together is for either a marketing term or because you want to communicate with them. But what is your message? And how are you pulling them in with that human truth instead of the label?
Like whether or not to market to Hispanics or Latinos or Latinx or Latin, because you don't know which term to use is kind of a scapegoat, right? And so I think it's, you know, it's been evolving, but if you look at every community, labels have evolved. The difference is that in other communities, they've evolved and you can't, you don't use them anymore.
“Like that's taboo. We kind of have them all. And that's where it gets a little bit confusing, but I think it's like just, if you are gonna do something for this community and you call them any of those things and what you're doing is really good and valuable and fun and they love it, they're never, none of those are like bad, right?
They're all acceptable at the moment. Some might become unacceptable tomorrow. But right now, any of them, let's talk about what you wanna say instead of what you're labeling them.
And I also think that there's a certain, to your point, I think there is a certain generational thinking that can go into it, right? If you are targeting, you know, young, Gen Z, you're gonna use Latinx or Latina. Why?
“My data will tell you that you should, but not only that, it's because of all the other things I just said, right? They are much more aware of all of these issues around sexuality and gender identity and all these things, and that stuff matters more to those young people. Whereas you might talk to, you know, like a 65-year-old, you know, very conservative, you know, traditional Hispanic man who is gonna reject that terminology, because not only does he not, you know, understand it, but even the basic concepts behind it are not things that he would be.
Let me say this. If you're a brand, pick your favorite brand, and you're gonna donate $100 million to Planet Earth on behalf of Latinos, or Hispanos, or Latinx, if you're a consumer, you're gonna be like, yes.
Exactly, right?
So it's like, yeah, it is confusing, and it will probably narrow itself down, but at the end of the day, you use any of them, it's not wrong, you're not gonna get put in the corner. It's more what are you doing, and how does it matter?
“So you don't think folks should keep in mind what generation they're talking to?
I do think that they should keep in mind, but I also think that even if you're speaking to a younger generation, and you said unidos, hispanos, para el mundo, if the message is so powerful, I don't think a Gen Z is gonna be like, oh, they used the wrong word. Because like other communities, that words have been evolved and become taboo, they were not there yet. So I don't think it's something people should be so fearful that they can't put their foot in the water and do what they need to do.
Totally.
“Yeah, and I will also add that any marketer or brand who's concerned, who's worried more about the terminology than about how you're gonna execute, because you gotta use a little bit more creativity in your marketing if all you think about is what label, to Jackie's point about the ad and making ads resonate, the ads aren't gonna resonate just because you put a big Latino or Latinx or Hispanic word across it. It's not about the word, it's what is the creative, what is the messaging, what is that story, that hook that's gonna connect with people and it has nothing to do with the label, it has to do with the story behind the creative.
And ultimately the authenticity behind the message.
The authenticity, exactly.
Which I think is a great way for us to end today's show. Thank you ladies so much for joining. I feel like we obviously could talk about this for hours and maybe we'll bring you guys back because between the both of you there's just so much knowledge and information and research side versus corporate side.
“I just think there's so many dynamics and different ways we can pull from that. But thank you for sharing your thought leadership today. And for your magic.
Thank you guys for tuning in and I'll see you on the next episode. Hola mi gente, thanks for listening to today's episode. Don't forget to make sure and leave a review.
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Until next time.