Many U.S. marketers recognize the importance of Hispanic consumers but lack the research and content-creation resources needed to reach them most effectively. NBCU has just delivered those resources in the form of a new $250 million, state-of-the-art facility in Miami.
The 500,000-square-foot Telemundo Center houses “eight studios the size of eight football fields and newsrooms to create all of our original content for Telemundo and beyond,” says Laura Molen, EVP, Lifestyle & Hispanic Advertising Sales Group, NBCU.
In this interview with Beet.TV, Molen, who took over Telemundo last year, explains the company’s Hispanic market dominance along with its total market approach to programming that includes news, live events and the upcoming 2018 World Cup Russia.
Telemundo Center is now home to Telemundo Network, Telemundo Deportes, Noticias Telemundo, Telemundo Studios, the Universo cable channel, Telemundo International and its digital operations, according to Forbes.
“It’s not a surprise that the U.S. Hispanic market is the biggest growing market,” says Molen. “In most industries, the U.S. Hispanic is making up if not all most of the growth of the products.”
She cites research done in conjunction with IPG’s Magna unit showing that a total market approach that uses English-language ads across networks and platforms isn’t the best way to reach Hispanic consumers. According to the research, 71% of bilingual Hispanics in the sample chose to watch Spanish-language content, while 61% of Hispanics said that total market ads did not resonate with them, as MediaPost reports.
“What we’ve heard from marketers is that it’s expensive” to research and target Hispanics, says Molen, adding that Telemundo has held some 400 meetings in the last four months to explain the breadth of NBCU’s resources.
Some marketers that opted for a total market approach in which Hispanics had been included in “just our regular group…found it wasn’t working with them because it’s a very different mindset, it’s a different culture. And so they feel like they’ve gone too far back.”
Telemundo offers what Molen describes as a “true total market approach to premium content.” For retailer Target, that involved a televised awards program with a feature titled Red Alerts in English on E! and in Spanish.
“It is doing incredibly well. Target is so happy with the program and more and more marketers are asking us to come up with total market” solutions, she says.
