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The Summer of 1999 was a pivotal moment in the U.S. cultural zeitgeist: Latin pop music burst into the mainstream, driven by the crossover success and appeal of artists such as Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, to name a few. The “Latin Boom” was so powerful, that it heralded the inception of the Latin Grammy Awards the following year and led the nation’s top marketers to double their efforts in reaching Hispanics.
Before you get too excited, it should be noted that doubling efforts meant going from 1.5% to 3% of their total advertising spend. Baby steps, but steps, nonetheless.
So, it stands to reason that Hispanic ad spend must have experienced similarly explosive growth from that much-heralded leap to 3% in 2000, right?
Only if you consider going from 3% of total advertising spend to 4% over a quarter century an “explosion.” Instead, the explosion was reduced to a spark, its fire extinguished by legacy planning paradigms that kept Hispanics relegated to the “whatever we have leftover” spend column.
Meanwhile, the business imperative of connecting with and winning today’s young and rapidly growing Hispanic consumer segment (which represents 25% of the U.S. population under 30) has become even more critical to brand growth and health for the long term.
In reaching the Hispanic audience, the problem and the solution come down to two words: better data.
The stats
The biggest effect of the “Latin Boom” was the long overdue spotlight on the economic significance of the surging U.S. Hispanic population, which was growing four times faster than the general population by the time the 1990s had come to a close.
Fast forward 25 years later, the U.S. Hispanic population has more than doubled from 31 million (11% of the population) to 63 million. That’s almost 20% of the U.S. population.
As of 2021, their economic clout increased to $3.2 trillion in annual buying power. To put that in perspective, if Latinos were an independent country, their GDP would rank fifth in the world, ahead of the United Kingdom, India and France.