At the recent ANA Multicultural Marketing & Diversity Conference in Miami, Univision’s Graciela Eleta introduced a discussion between Bob Liodice, the Association of National Advertisers’ president and CEO, and Brad Davidson, president of Kellogg North America. Davidson outlined his four-phase approach for reinvigorating Kellogg’s Hispanic strategy over the past three years – a time in which the company moved from a strategy with only one brand planning against this consumer, to making the Hispanic consumer a strategic business imperative across the entire organization. For Davidson, the opportunity was clear. “Hispanics are driving population growth in America,” he said.
Here are highlights from the discussion:
- In the “Jump Start” phase, brand teams took responsibility for delivering strategies, tactics and budgets that corresponded to the brand’s “right-to-win with Hispanic consumers.” For example, brands that had high equity in the U.S. and in Latin America became a natural fit to lead Kellogg’s Hispanic portfolio, dedicating more than 10 percent of their budgets to Hispanic consumers. Others were deemed complimentary brands. Also, Kellogg’s partnered with Univision to educate their teams about the consumer and market landscape and to drive consumers to Kellogg’s custom Spanish-language site through a media buy.
- In the “Cultural Relevance” phase, Davidson shared that Kellogg’s moved from a “blunt” approach of adapting Latin American creative and became more sophisticated. “We realized that Hispanics in the U.S. are very different than their counterparts in their home countries,” he said. Getting to the heart of what drives that difference was key to success remarked Davidson. Kellogg’s began applying qualitative and quantitative research and uncovered powerful aspirational and emotional themes like education, success, nutrition, health and the importance of family. Those became the cornerstone of both Hispanic-only and total market campaigns for brands like Special K and sponsored events like the Summer Olympics, since often the insights serve non-Hispanic consumers, too. Davidson knew the strategy was working when the head of the Kellogg’s call center demanded that she “needed more resources” after getting swamped with Spanish-language calls from Hispanic moms. Davidson added: “When you communicate with Hispanics, they will communicate back. They want to have a dialogue with brands, and Kellogg’s learned a lot from these calls.”
- In the third “Customer Activation” phase, Davidson turned his sights to building win-win relationships with his retail partners through activation events, point of purchase offerings and a zeroed-in focus on high Hispanic density markets and community events like Hispanic Heritage Family Day, Back 2 School and the upcoming Copita Alianza soccer youth tournament. Kellogg’s also developed a Family Rewards program in both English and Spanish that builds loyalty – and drives customers to retail locations. His retail partners understood the value of engaged Hispanic customers, too.
- Davidson shared that Kellogg’s is now in the fourth stage of its journey – a “Fully Integrated Marketing Plan” that is sustainable, engages Hispanic consumers along the path to purchase and develops long-term loyalty. Davidson remarked:“For Kellogg’s, our destination with Hispanic marketing is that it becomes core to all that we do. Our hope is that Hispanic marketing evolves from specialty skill to an integrated capability that marketers at Kellogg’s possess and it becomes part of how they think holistically and completely about the business- simply great customer marketing.”Where is your brand on this journey? We’d love to know. Talk to us on Twitter at @hispanic411.
