The following originally ran on Portada…
The message that sports deliver to the Latin demographic was made pretty clear last Tuesday morning at The Lamb’s Club, when CNN en Español(@CNNEE) and Portada hosted a special breakfast to talk about the challenges and opportunities in Multicultural Marketing. The packed room listened to a spirited debate about the impact brands can, or aren’t having in the Spanish speaking community and the steps measurement and engagement are taking to continue to create opportunities with outlets like CNN en Español, the largest Spanish-language platform in the country and perhaps the most impactful in North America to penetrate the Spanish language consumer.
Away from that, the topic of sports continued to assert itself, as an engagement point across cultures, languages and all barriers. “When looking for where to spend, we go to where people are engaged, and many times that engagement is in sports,” said Manny Gonzalez, Senior Director-Multicultural at Moët Hennessy USA (@MoetHennessy). “In many cases our consumers are led less by language and more by lifestyle, so that makes sports a key part of our marketing. Sports crosses all barriers and gives consumers a common ground to share stories and storytelling is key to building a brand.”
While the numbers across all platforms are encouraging for those looking to engage the Latino audience, the question of accurate and targeted measurement is still in flux.
That common experience in sports, especially for Latinos, continues to be in soccer. “The Beautiful Game,” as we head toward the World Cup, remains the fastest-growing sport for viewing and for grassroots engagement in North America, a fact that is not lost on marketers who have grown up experiencing a multicultural environment.
“When you look at the numbers and see that 93 percent of Liga MX fans don’t watch the NBA, and 74 percent don’t watch the NFL, it tells you a lot about the power of soccer and how important it is to engage with the Latino fan in the U.S.,’ added Nelson Pinero, Senior Digital Director, Senior Partner at GroupM. “That is a really powerful look at how valuable not just sports, but soccer is, to brand engagement in the Latino community.”
How this translates to brand spends is still up for some debate. While the numbers across all platforms are encouraging for those looking to engage the Latino audience, the question of accurate and targeted measurement is still in flux. CNN en Español’s recent expanded partnership with Nielsen (@Nielsen) will help ease those questions and should bring more brands into the mix for the platform, and for those working in sports marketing, the purchase of Spanish language or sports that tread heavily in Latino culture should benefit from bigger numbers and better engagement as we head toward World Cup, and a key sport like soccer continues to be a big factor in the mind of the consumer.
No matter what the language, sports continues to be key.
