CHICAGO—A group of six companies formed a new industry alliance to develop ways to help marketers, advertisers and retailers maximize effective best practices and marketing strategies to best serve Hispanic consumers. The consortium includes IRI, Latinum Network, Univision, Telemundo Media, UM and Rentrak.

U.S. Hispanic consumers are a powerful and growing economic force with a buying power in excess of $1 trillion, driven by a population 56 million strong that is expected to grow to 131 million people by 2050. Despite the tremendous potential of this market, less than 5% of current media is devoted to advertising, representing a spending gap of approximately $22 billion.

The consortium—unique in its breadth and scale in understanding the impact of marketing activities geared toward Hispanics—has two primary goals: To develop a scorecard of brands’ performance and traction with Hispanic consumers relative to their peers and industry; and to enable members to maximize the impact of advertising targeting Hispanics by building Hispanic brand strategies and a “total market" approach that balances general market and multicultural investments.

Highlights of the Hispanic Marketer’s Playbook will include efficient Hispanic reach generation strategies; Hispanic engagement and impact through social and mobile media; synergy and halo of Hispanic media with promotional levers; impact of dubbed and translated commercials versus original Spanish language creative effects; show integration strategies and effectiveness; and creating Hispanic research and metrics frameworks for success.

The study will leverage IRI’s proven Hispanic Mix Drivers platform—a powerful marketing-mix modeling platform that incorporates robust statistical techniques in modeling Hispanic sales trends and quantifying Hispanic marketing lifts. The modeling rigor is balanced with heuristics derived from a massive industry benchmarks database collected from a multitude of consumer behavior studies conducted over a 10-year period. The modeling engine is further enriched by cross-media audience data through the consortium alliance and IRI’s network of resources.

The study will enroll participants in April and through June 2014. Participants will receive results on their brands in August 2014 through in-depth review sessions. Macro insights distilled from across all participating brands ,as well as the Hispanic Marketing Playbook, will be unveiled at a industry event targeted for Fall 2014.

FPD’s Take:

Understanding which product categories appeal to each Hispanic consumer group will be critical to effectively connecting with these consumers and understanding the situations and motivations that drive category consumption will enable food companies to influence future sales to these

Hispanics make up 17% of the U.S. population, wield $1.2 trillion buying power and are more brand loyal with a lesser emphasis on price-point compared to the national average, according to data from Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies (AHAA). The findings suggest consumer packaged goods brands that focus on Hispanic marketing are most likely to see more rapid topline revenue growth than those who are not as focused on the market.

Not only do Hispanics represent 56% of the U.S. population growth between 2000 and 2010, but they spend more time and money per trip to the grocery store than the national average, they bring more family members with them to shop. Data showed a significant difference in the revenue growth rate attained by CPG companies that designate a higher focus to the Hispanic market than those corporations who focus less.