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Driving home several weeks ago, I was listening to a Spanish radio station that played one of the funniest
and most effective commercials I've ever heard. The characters were exchanging comical descriptions
of how bad their credit was: "My credit is so bad that my ATM card requires a safety deposit,"
"My credit is so bad they won't even take my cash," and so on.
Then the very serious voice of a woman broke in saying, "Un momentito, wait a moment, your credit history is
not a joke!" It caught my attention, so I didn't switch the radio station and kept listening.
The concept was to teach people that having bad credit is not funny at all -- that you can fix it and that
it is a serious matter. It was so well done!
Yet many try to appeal to the Hispanic market regarding financial services in a canned lecture-sermon type
of mode, and I truly believe that they are missing the boat. This market clearly needs many of these
financial services, but we must find ways to make it less threatening, more appealing, and more effective.
Clearly, humor is one of the answers.
Hispanics enjoy laughter and comedy, and they enjoy products that represent a moment. Hispanics, especially
Mexicans, laugh about adversity, about things and events that do not go their way, and even about death
and themselves in certain contexts. Music, good food, and humor are present in their daily lives.
When there is no emotion, no feeling, then there is an unbearable emptiness.
Market research experts say that advertisers must build loyalty and sales with the right emotional
connections; they must think beyond product function and tap into all the human senses, increasing the
opportunity for emotional brand attachment.
A service or product should not feel empty. It must contribute to create good moods and happy memories,
and to empower people and make them feel better or more capable. The products we love and choose
to buy must reflect on us positively. It doesn't matter if it's a T-shirt, a mortgage, a car, a new
pension fund, or a credit repair service.
Humor helps to reach an audience's happy heart and helps get the point across.
Our job as translators is to help you present those choices in a way that will make your
foreign-language-speaking audience feel closer to your services and products more quickly than they would
to your competitor's. And how do we do this? By helping you effectively relate humor to your brand or
product so that they fall in love with your products first.
Use humor, but be careful... and use translators as a cultural bridge.
Humor sells very well to Hispanics, but be careful in choosing who translates your messages.
There is nothing worse than taking a funny and witty English commercial and translating it into Spanish,
only to have the punch line lose its humor and the campaign lose its whole purpose.
Likewise, you need to be careful not to insult or be misunderstood. To convey the right meaning,
the message must be really clear to the people who are acting as your cultural bridge between your
product and the market.
Experienced, professional translators can be a golden key to crafting and testing sensitive and culturally
meaningful messages before you go full speed with that campaign. Rely on their talent at reading between
the lines and knowing the cultural nuances very well. Only they and their network of contacts can perceive
the upfront message being delivered plus everything else in between.
The ultimate goal is to help you get your feel-good message across gracefully and effectively in the
global marketplace.
For more information on Hispanic Cultural Traits:
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/5000/5237.html
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Penetrating a New Foreign Market? -- How Your U.S.-based Translation Agency Can Help.