Two years ago, consumer goods giant Danone North America was spending significantly less on media that targeted Hispanic audiences. Many advertisers only purchase Hispanic media for one-off campaigns and do not consider Hispanic audiences when constructing the media plan.

But during the volatility of 2021, the company was looking to find ways to extend its reach in communities that had already shown loyalty to its brands. Hispanic consumers were 37% more likely to consume probiotic yogurt than the general population, according to market research, and Danone wanted to make greater inroads with the community via probiotic yogurt brand Activia, said Mike Sallette, vp of media at Danone.

So the company did a media buy for Activia with Hispanic-focused streamer Canela, and the results were impressive. Not only did the ads have particularly high video completion rates, but within the company’s mixed media modeling, Canela delivered the highest return on investment of any other media channel.  Plus, for a sustained period of time after the campaign ended, sales from Hispanic consumers grew faster than the general market, Sallette said.

After this success, Danone increased its investment in Hispanic audiences from a small, localized test-and-learn campaign for one brand to multiple months-long national campaigns for not just Activia but Silk, Danimals and International Delight.

“We needed to build street cred with these other brands,” Sallette said, noting there was internal concern that Danone’s existing creative would not resonate with the audience.

Test campaigns showed the original campaign messaging still resonated with Hispanic audiences, and there were easy options to translate campaigns to Spanish after an initial English run. “They took the test-and-learn approach seriously with us, it paid off, scaled nationally, and then we use that as an internal case study,” he added.

“We’re not recommending them just for the sake of being a Hispanic partner, but because it’s a top performer just like YouTube, Amazon, Hulu, GumGum.”

Danone is among the brands taking a more systemic approach to reaching Hispanic audiences in its media buying. But while there has been progress in recent years, brands like Danone are still more exception than norm, four industry sources told Adweek. Most brands still engage Hispanic audiences sporadically, despite making up 19% of the U.S. population as of 2022.

“Their investments should be much bigger,” said Isabel Rafferty, CEO of Canela Media, who noted 80% of the firm’s revenue comes from 10 brands that have always reached Hispanic audiences, with only meager sums coming from the rest of the Fortune 500. “It’s not big enough for the audience scale.”

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