This is a post by Alberto Ferrer that I found to be so much along my lines of thought that I was compelled to post it on my blog. If you are interested in this subject you may read the article I authored: Finding the “right” Hispanic expertise for your company – May 2008
Thank you Alberto!!
Beware the Professional Hispanic: Professional Hispanics are folks who are Hispanic and have chosen their ethnicity as their profession.
In my previous post, I discussed the danger to clients of the mainstream agency’s Hispanic-acquisition practice of “poach the junior talent at Hispanic shops by promoting them beyond their capabilities.” Catchy, isn’t it? The point was that the same individual who a client might not have invited to planning meetings, for example, the next day might be in charge of that very planning.
A related practice exists in the client ranks and it is equally dangerous and even more pervasive in the industry. The practice is that of the Professional Hispanic vs. the Hispanic Professional.
Professional Hispanics have been around for a long time in the Hispanic Marketing world, but are becoming more widespread with the growth in importance and prevalence of Hispanic Marketing in organizations.
Professional Hispanic Defined
Professional Hispanics are folks who are Hispanic and have chosen their ethnicity as their profession. They have no specific expertise in Hispanic Marketing (or even marketing per se, for that matter) but rather ride the ethnicity of their name to define and build their career.
They can come from all walks of life in a client organization and from all levels. However, they are usually from junior levels because (a) the organizations that choose these folks to lead their Hispanic Marketing are usually companies that don’t value Hispanic that much and thus have these positions at relatively low levels in the organization, and (b) these same organizations are not those where Hispanics have reached high positions in the company.
Professional Hispanics usually see the market with very old-fashioned, traditional eyes (what they remember from growing up) rather than seeing it as the vibrant, ever-changing, dynamic, complex space it actually is. They tend to prefer things like street festivals and local radio. This is because they are not really marketers and thus do not continue learning about the market, changing with it, experimenting with it, etc. They continue using their personal experience as a filter, not realizing that their own selves 10 to 15 years ago are not the target.
Hispanic Professional Defined
Hispanic Professionals are [continue on page 2]
Claudia, que tema!!!
Things are changing FAST in our industry/market. The evident rising of Multicultural groups–especially Hispanics–is opening a few eyes, both in agencies and clients.
This is good and bad:
It’s GOOD because those marketers that have been ‘flirting’ with the Hispanic market for a while; now understand the need to assign real talent to this more-than-obvious-not-so-emerging segment of their businesses. In other words, organizations that did not value the importance of the Hispanic market in the past are beginning to move from hiring Professional Hispanics, to hiring Hispanic Professionals.
It’s BAD, because as the market grows more and more businesses that are recently acknowledging the impact of the Hispanic market, have starting to hire Hispanics ‘like crazy.’
There are General Market agencies that now understand that Millennials–the Boomers of tomorrow—are not white, or Hispanic or African American, but rather Multicultural: Tommy Hilfiger’s dream came true. There are also African American agencies that detected an opportunity to broad their Multicultural positioning and scope of business. And there are also small/medium clients which don’t want to miss the lucrative wave. All are adding Hispanics into their organizations; which–in most cases–are as Multicultural as having Irish and Italian last names in their payroll. So we can imagine the outcome…
It won’t surprise me if the Professional Hispanic phenomenon still finds a place in payroll of these new players.