Latino families challenge old reality

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WASHINGTON -- Advertisers have a better handle on important concepts than do some academic researchers and certainly many commentators. The odd part is marketers have selling in mind while public-interest research tries to inform us for our own good.That was made clear this month at the Digital and Print Media Conference in New York City sponsored by Portada, a magazine that tracks Hispanic media.The reason for correcting imprecise, ill-conceived ideas and adding mid-course corrections is because there's a lot of money on the table.The 50-percent economic growth in five years expected among Hispanic consumers means buying power in the $1.2 trillion range. That also means having to get the perspective right if one is going to sell to this segment.Advertisers and marketers know 20 million Hispanics are online this minute. Latinos register above average in almost all indictors measuring use of digital devices, and they are heavy buyers of nearly all digital products. Sixty-six percent have broadband at home.The marketers have refined their observations about the Latino way of life and developed an appreciation of it that is, frankly, the wave of the future.For instance, McDonald's has been a leader for a decade in advertising to our hybrid, fused, blended national family portrait. Kraft's Liz Pirez Angeles shares her company's awareness about how its Latina customers are online testing the authenticity of the downloaded dishes they request. These interactive communications have to transmit as reliably as one of grandmama's recipes. John Patton, impreMedia's CEO, is especially revealing. His company will deliver a research report in "a few weeks" dealing with new media segmentation, acculturation and the tipping-point connections, he discloses. ImpreMedia's impressive family of publications is finding out how information enters and leaves its consumers.Through videotapes and ethnographies, not the old multiple-choice questionnaire, his researchers can define Latino families serving as "influencers" and "connectors." Latino families depend on the traditional newspaper to provide reliable information. Certain members transmit items of importance. Other media sources may be good, but the newspaper is a proven brand.Information in family networks flows from one language into another. A bought newspaper gets "read" several times.A selling point for advertisers, the observation reveals what's changing in the "American family."Previously we have been saturated with notions about alienation and the break up even of the nuclear family. The theme was foremost in the 1999 movie "American Beauty." That accepted truth has shaped how people think about themselves and reality.The emerging Latino-family imagery, however, is re-visualizing the notion of an integrated family. Evidence supports this perspective, which is becoming a new accepted reality. The idea is not a statistical construct but coming from a new source -- clients with money at stake and skin in the game. The new research and talks are more about helpful roles we all play.The Web site hispanicgenerations.com comes to the point: "You will notice that Hispanics are relational people." That generalization is the opposite of alienation.The time has come for some researchers to doff their lab coats, put on a tropical shirt and start paying attention to how the nation is changing.Enough with the negativity, already.(Josi de la Isla writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. E-mail him at joseisla3(at)yahoo.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)