Hasta La Creative!

The other reality is that it’s harder for marketers in the North American units of big multi-brand companies to get funding to develop creative even for the U.S. general market, she said. At a time when such marketers as P&G, Unilever and Colgate-Palmolive Co. are trying to make the same creative ideas and sometimes even the same ads work across North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia, doing separate creative solely for the U.S. Hispanic market has become a tougher sell at some companies. (However, P&G, the biggest Hispanic marketer, spends more than $200 million a year on Hispanic media.)

Ms. Eleta said there’s long been a “pendulum” in the industry. Marketers move to push as much multicultural marketing development to general-market brand groups as possible, then realize that as their multicultural “centers of excellence” thin out or go away they’ve lost valuable knowledge.

Companies shepherding one or only a handful of big national brands, such as retailers Walmart, Target, J.C. Penney, Macy’s, AT&T and Verizon have it easier, she said, because they can readily have multicultural experts who are very focused.

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