Latinos Are The New Mainstream, Especially In Ads
If you didn’t know it before, you can certainly start to see it now, and that’s the fact that Latinos are increasingly becoming mainstream. It’s apparent in the ways that politicians are reaching out to this community leading up to the election — in ways similar to what they’ve done with seniors and students, for example — but nowhere is this more strikingly apparent than in marketing.
A good example of this in the beverage market and a new campaign from Jarritos that is not actually aimed at the Latino market, but rather, is introducing the brand of sodas to non-Latinos with the tagline, “We’re not from here.” If you’re anything like me, you grew up with Jarritos (tamarindo is the best!) but for many, this yummy soda is an unknown product. In about nine different videos created by the Austin-based agency GSD&M, familiar Mexican icons — like men with mustaches and lucha libre wrestlers — shill Jarritos in an introductory way using these icons to make a culturally cool case to a non-Latino consumer.
You can see the videos here.
In a story in The New York Times, it turns out that Novamex, the El Paso-based company that’s been selling Jarritos in the U.S. for 25 years, wanted to expand their market reach, so they turned to a new group of consumers: “trend-setting young men.” Some of us might call them hipsters, and I think if you watch the videos, you’ll see that’s partly true, The Times noted:
…the new campaign was aimed specifically at trend-setting young men because they were “independent thinkers, with a more bohemian lifestyle. We want to focus on one single group that will influence all around them, including women.”
Duff Stewart, chief executive of GSD&M, said “you can’t talk at” this group, and added: “We’ve tried to create a platform that reaches the target audience in ways they like to engage…”
Novamex is also handing out samples of the soda in select neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area. The samples are transported by large tricycles driven by luchadores, or masked wrestlers, and a food truck. Painted with a Jarritos bottle and flames, the truck also carries a wooden sign with a wrestler’s mask design that has a functioning bottle-opener in the wrestler’s mouth.
In sum and as I mentioned earlier, this particular campaign highlights what I’m sure will be a growing trend as Latinos continue to become an integral part of the American cultural fabric. Latinos and their culture will become increasingly mainstream, which carries the danger of becoming stereotypes, but the bonus of being so culturally relevant that everyone knows what a lucha libre wrestler looks like.
