Latino Culture Has Growing Crossover Appeal

Issue: Hispanic Marketing

Short Article: Latino Culture Has Growing Crossover Appeal

By: Christina Hoag

Pub. Date: May 11, 2015 Access Date: October 2, 2021 DOI: 10.1177/2374556815588529 Source URL: http://businessresearcher.sagepub.com/sbr-1645-95695-2671698/20150511/short-article-latino-culture-has-growing- crossover-appeal ©2021 SAGE Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ©2021 SAGE Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved. On television and in supermarkets, products adopt an accent Executive Summary

Like other immigrant waves before them, Hispanics are leaving their mark on the United States. Food and cuisine may be the most visible, but the Latino influence is being felt in numerous other arenas of everyday American life, including Major League Baseball and television. Full Article

Stir dulce de leche creamer into your coffee, sip on lime-flavored beer, snack on jalapeño potato chips. Up and down the supermarket aisle, Hispanic tastes are increasingly influencing the American palate. “Tacos and burritos are right up there now with the hamburger and pizza, both of which, incidentally, came from other places,” says Robert Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University. “This is pointing to the integration of Latinos into overall mainstream American pop culture.” Like other immigrant waves before them, Hispanics are leaving their own indelible mark on the United States. Food and cuisine may be the most visible, but the Latino influence is being felt in numerous arenas of everyday American life. Spanish is the foreign language most likely to be spoken at home by non-Hispanics. 1 Baseball, the all-American pastime, has become a Latino showcase sport—27percent of Major League Baseball players were Hispanic in 2012, up from 11.6 percent in 1980. 2 Television's highest paid actor, male or female, is Colombian-born Sofía Vergara. 3

Sofía Vergara and other members of the cast of TV hit “Modern Family” tape an episode in front of a “green screen”—that is, background scenery will be added later. Vergara, who plays a Colombian immigrant married to a wealthy American man, has parlayed her success on that series into a lucrative string of advertisement and movie roles. (Mitchell Haaseth/ABC/Getty Images)

This growing influence is not going unnoticed. A 2012 study by Conill, a Hispanic advertising agency in El Segundo, Calif., found that 78 percent of non-Hispanics said Latinos have a significant influence on beauty and style, music, television and sports, with the biggest impact seen on cuisine. 4

Hispanic flavors have become the norm for food and beverage companies seeking to jazz up old products to grab market share among both new and existing customers. Anheuser-Busch looked to Mexico's popular “chelada” drink to come up with its Budweiser Clamato & Chelada, a mixture of beer, tomato- juice cocktail and clam water. Nestlé's Coffee-mate now comes in Mexican chocolate and dulce de leche (caramel) flavors, while PepsiCo's Frito-Lay rolled out Chile Limón chips and plain Limón (lime). These products are smart moves, appealing to Hispanic consumers' sense of familiar comfort foods while giving the mainstream consumer something new and exotic, says Michelle Greenwald, a marketing professor at New York University and former marketing executive. “They sell more products that way,” she says. Media companies have had a harder time hitting the right balance in cross-cultural content. TV networks are eager to capture Hispanic viewers but have a mixed record with crafting shows that do not portray Latinos as stereotypes or that rely on cultural tropes as comic gags. “Negative stereotypes of Hispanics are viewed as a fixture in media, with 73 percent of Hispanics and 68 percent of non-Hispanics noting their presence,” said the Conill study. 5 ABC has scored hits with “The George Lopez Show,” a sort of Hispanic “Cosby Show,” and “Ugly Betty,” which was based on a Colombian telenovela. But another sitcom, “Rob,” which portrayed a non-Hispanic marrying into a Mexican family, backfired. Hispanics viewed it as playing on jaded cultural stereotypes, and CBS canceled the show in 2012 after one season. 6 ABC megahit “Modern Family,” which stars Vergara as a sexy bombshell, is top rated among English-language shows Hispanics watch, but its Hispanic ratings pale in comparison to Univision's Spanish-language soap operas—1.1 million Latinos watched an episode of “Modern Family,” while 3.9 million viewed the telenovela “Lo Que La Vida Me Robó” in May 2014. 7 “Sofía Vergara is funny to non-Hispanics because she's a stereotype,” says Linda González, chair of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies and president of Viva Partnership, a Miami-based advertising agency. “She's not so funny for Hispanics.” There are signs that networks are broadening their view of Hispanic characters. “The Bridge,” a 2013–14 FX drama, set on the Texas- Mexico border, featured a Mexican cop as a lead character and brief portions of Spanish dialogue subtitled in English. NBC is rolling out a show aiming at a Hispanic audience for the 2015–16 season, “Telenovela.” 8 It revolves around the personal drama of a soap opera star, played by Eva Longoria. Latinos will likely continue to influence popular culture simply because of their sheer numbers. “There's a demographic mandate that it will increase,” Thompson says. “It's kind of extraordinary that it's taken so long.” About the Author

Christina Hoag, a former foreign correspondent who is fluent in Spanish and lives in Los Angeles, has written about Hispanics for the Miami Herald and the Associated Press. She also has freelanced for The New York Times, Business Week and Financial Times, covering a variety of topics on Latin America. Notes

[1] Mark Hugo López and Ana González-Barrera, “Spanish is the most spoken non-English language in U.S. homes, even among non- Hispanics,” Pew Research Center, Aug. 13, 2013, http://tinyurl.com/o59uzqu. [2] Mark Armour and Daniel R. Levitt, “Baseball Demographics: 1947–2012,” Society of American Baseball Research, http://tinyurl.com/olam3ty. [3] Vanna Le, “Sofia Vergara Is (Once Again) The Highest-Paid TV Actress,” Forbes, Sept. 3, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/nohewlb. [4] Chris Traina and Verena Sisa, “The Hispanic Influence on American Culture,” Conill, 2012, http://tinyurl.com/lkpyxte. [5] Ibid. [6] Tanzina Vega and Bill Carter, “Networks struggle to appeal to Hispanics,” The New York Times, Aug. 5, 2012, http://tinyurl.com/ps2qhcx.

[7] “11th Annual Hispanic Fact Pack,” Advertising Age, July 28, 2014, p. 16, http://tinyurl.com/ndvl6jt. [8] Elizabeth Wagmeister, “Eva Longoria Signs On To Star In NBC's ‘Telenovela,’” Variety, Jan. 16, 2015, http://tinyurl.com/lkyjqj4.

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