Hispanic Online Best Practices:
In-Culture What is culture? Two common approaches used by marketers to connect culturally with U.S. Hispanics are leveraging the strong connection that Hispanics have with their countries of origin To appeal to Hispanics’ strong sense of heritage, marketers can profit with strategies that make reference to keeping in touch with loved ones back home, the differences within Hispanic culture in the U.S., and other themes that reinforce feelings of nostalgia. A successful approach can be to remind Hispanics of the importance of their countries of origin and of maintaining a strong connection to their past. Companies promoting wire transfers, communications, and travel have had great success using this approach to market their products and services. For marketers in other product categories, connecting with a key Hispanic passion can achieve an emotional connection. As was exemplified during the 2006 World Cup, companies such as Coca-Cola and MasterCard leveraged U.S. Hispanics’ passion for their “home” soccer team to associate their brands with this favorite Hispanic pastime. Catering to the importance of family Family is paramount in the Hispanic market, and this cultural value is manifested clearly online. The 2004 AOL/Roper U.S. Hispanic Cyberstudy shows that online Hispanic Americans are far more motivated than the general online population to use the Internet as a tool for providing advantages to their children and learning how to be good parents. They see the Internet as an empowerment tool that helps improve their lives and the lives of their families, thereby helping them achieve the American dream. The strong connection between Hispanic Internet users and their families influences online perceptions, preferences, and routines, and marketers who can craft an online experience that appeals to strong family principles will appeal to the core Hispanic value of family. One company, two approaches On the one hand, the U.S. Hispanic site for Lipitor, www.colesterol.com, is culturally relevant. This site was developed from the start specifically for the U.S. Hispanic segment. The entire user experience—content, information architecture, visual design—was developed to addresses the unique healthcare needs of Hispanics online. The content of the site focuses on the health of the entire family and provides culturally relevant information around the incidence of high cholesterol within the Hispanic community. From an information architecture perspective, the site is simple and intuitive and addresses that Hispanics tend to be novice Internet users. Pfizer also leverages imagery of Hispanic families in order to deliver visual cues that support the cultural relevance of the site, the site “feels Hispanic.” A quick glance at the general market site, www.lipitor.com, will help illustrate the principle of cultural relevance. The look and feel of the two sites is very different, the content on Lipitor.com focuses on the individual, and the site uses a more advanced information architecture. In sharp contrast is Pfizer’s Hispanic online strategy for Viagra. Unlike www.colesterol.com, it seems that the U.S. Hispanic Website for Viagra, www.viagra.com/espanol is a direct translation of the English-language Viagra site. Although the translation may be accurate from a linguistic perspective, the Hispanic site may not account for differences in perception and attitudes between Hispanics and the general market regarding erectile dysfunction. In addition, the design elements on the Hispanic and the general market sites are exactly the same and were most likely driven by general market user needs. Language communicates…. but culture connects
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