Search

Join the Email List

Del.icio.us Links

Flickr

Selling American

Yesterday’s New York Times Magazine held a story about a U.S. based ad agency marketing goods to Spanish speakers. I wanted to point this out as a subject found within our current exhibition, Manifest: Colonial Tendencies of the West. There are two aspects of colonial practice at work here: one is the use of Western goods and ideals to colonize the minds and pocketbooks of the world; the other is a de-colonizing or reclamation of native roots to subvert the Western “culture bomb”^[1] meant to make people ashamed of their language, culture, and history.

John Gallegos is a publicista — he runs an ad agency that targets Spanish speaking audiences. His agency categorizes its audience for effectiveness: Leaners — foreign born, Spanish language dominant; Straddlers — immigrated young, blue collar/semi professional, bilingual/mostly Spanish; Navigators — English dominant, some Spanish, household income of $76K+.

Gallegos tilted his head toward four teenagers shambling along. “Those kids? All Straddlers,” he said. “Well, the guy with his cap backwards — he might be a Navigator. He’s probably more English-media-consuming.”

Levels of American assimilation can be gauged by language, commercial consumption, income, and education. American goods and services are portrayed as fun, exciting, essential, and part of the national identity. Gallegos’s agency represents Fruit of the Loom, Comcast, Bally fitness clubs and Energizer. The agency enters a push-and-pull struggle with Spanish speakers with each magazine ad, radio spot, or TV commercial. The audience is encouraged to take-part in the economy, buy the goods, subscribe to the services, fatten the pockets of the corporations, and prefer this new life and economy to their old one or the one their parents left. Gallegos is in the business of selling America to Americans (or hopeful Americans). However, he does not demand that his audience speak the national language (whatever that is). He sells to them in their native tongue.

It is a economic cultural bomb. The targets are taught to live the American life of consumerism complete with cell phones, luxury SUVs, and hi-speed internet but still respect their language and therefore aspects of their culture. The agency reaffirms the strength of the Hispanic market without requiring that market to fully assimilate to participate. The Hispanic audience is both subsumed and validated at the same time.

You can track part of the modern history of United States Hispanics, in a way, through the proliferation and escalating ambition of this country’s publicistas. Forty years ago, they were mostly a small group of Cuban-exile ad executives in New York and Miami, talking American agencies into letting them translate ad copy into Spanish. Then all-Hispanic agencies started opening up here, trying — often to no avail — to persuade clients that there were enough Spanish speakers in this country, with enough disposable income, to merit whole campaigns aimed directly at them.

The Hispanic market is now seen as a viable source of disposable income. Welcome to America.

^[1]Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (London: J. Currey; Nairobi: Heinemann Kenya; Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1986) 3.

• Bookmark it:
• del.icio.us /
• Digg it /
• Furl /
• ma.gnolia /
• Spurl /
• Yahoo MyWeb