With 50 million Latinos in the United States according to the U.S. Census, there has been an awakening to the reality that the Hispanic community commands the attention of businesses who want to market their goods and services to the community. The question at hand is in what language?
For years, media organizations have transmitted their message, products, and shows in Spanish, but with 63% of Latinos born in the United States, 65% speak English proficiently, and 50,000 Latinos are turning 18 every month for the next 20 years, U.S. born and English speaking Latinos out-pace immigrant Latinos according to the Hispanic Pew data. Will the dominant form of communication to Latinos in the future be in Spanish or English?
With these growing numbers, there is a new market forming within the Latino community and all of these organizations are a part of a huge land grab for a new market that has been here for years, but has not been taken into consideration until recently. News organizations like Fox, NBC, and Huffington Post have crossed over to the Latino news market, but not in Spanish. There sites are in English, web sites such as Fox News Latino, NBC Latino, and HuffPost Latino Voices. It’s not only on the web that these companies are looking to crossover, but on TV as well. Univision and Disney have partnered to launch a 24 news channel focused on Latino News in English. MTV’s Tr3s and NuVo TV have also jumped on board in the recent years. But these are not the only players on the scene. Start-ups, such as Voxxi, have focused on the “acculturated Latino”. According to Giovanni Rodriquez, a technology and marketing expert with Deloitte Consulting “it does feel like the interest in English has come all of a sudden. But in fact, the market has been moving in this direction over the last few years.”
With all of these established media companies racing to stake a claim on this new found market, the English speaking Latino community, will there be room for new players. New players that have known this for years, such as Latin é whose mission is to uplift the Latino community through entertainment and focuses on redefining the American Latino, for them this is not a crossover, but a way of life. The answer is yes there is room for new players to stake their claim and fulfill the American dream.
These are interesting times that Latinos are living in the Unites States, the wild west of Latino media: A new market and a new frontier to explore.
