Nothing lost in translation

By Kari Richardson, Kellogg World, Kellogg School of Management

Reaching the right audience
Though most 21st-century companies realize ethnic marketing is more complicated than casting an African-American in a commercial spot or posting a sign that says “se habla Espanol,” many still struggle to find the right way to reach their core audiences.

Focus groups can be an effective tool for getting inside the consumer’s head, but research methods must be sensitive to cultural variations. In-home visits can uncover insights that subjects are unwilling to share in larger groups, but Rodriguez says researchers must understand why, in some cultures, people are uncomfortable sharing personal information or buying habits with a researcher who is outside their ethnic group.

Building a racially inclusive workplace, he suggests, is a good way to start tapping into the multicultural marketplace: “You can’t reach multicultural consumers unless you have diversity in the workplace. It’s not about casting. It’s about cultural insights and cues.”

But even marketers with their feet firmly planted in one culture sometimes have to work to understand all of its nuances.

A first-hand witness to the dramatic family separations wrought by migration to the United States, Guatemalan-born Gabriel Biguria ‘96 founded AmigoLatino to connect Hispanics living in this country with their family back home. Customers, who pay $40 for a half-hour live videoconference, use their time to wish someone a happy birthday, gaze at an infant’s face for the first time, or say farewell to a relative who is seriously ill.

From the beginning, Biguria struggled to explain his service to a dubious, tech-wary clientele.

“My Kellogg friends didn’t even believe this type of videoconferencing was possible,” he says. “Imagine a family that comes from the countryside in Guatemala. I had to hit on the right wording to describe it to them.”

Translation alone wasn’t enough to get the message across. Though Biguria is fluent in Spanish and familiar with Guatemala, that country alone, he points out, has more than 22 different dialects and a host of contrasting cultures. And his clients hail from Mexico, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela, to name a few.

“Each country is so different,” Biguria says. “There’s so much diversity. You need to understand who you are dealing with.”

To reach his diverse audience, Biguria set up shop in San Francisco on the same floor as the Latin American consulate, where daily traffic to and from the office provides the perfect opportunity to communicate with prospective clients. Advertising efforts here and abroad center around community fairs and festivals, where Biguria and staff show videos — preferably of clients from the same region as the group sponsoring the fair — to prove to doubters the service is real.

Biguria says his efforts to build client trust are bearing fruit. Now operating in Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, he has expansion plans slated for another six to seven cities this year, including a location in a San Rafael, Calif., community center.

“It takes perseverance,” Biguria says of his efforts to understand his ethnic customer base. “Some companies try something, have limited success, and abort without figuring out what else they need to do.”

In this, small companies may have an advantage, he adds. “In trying to tap into the Hispanic market, little details make a big difference. The more you can individualize your message, the more you will resonate with each one of the groups.”