All this week the news outlets confirmed how Latinos, women and young people helped President Obama win the presidential election. What baffles me is the Republican party's apparent inability to recognize the changes in today's demographics, a marketing 101 lesson. I ask myself, how is this possible?
In the late 80's in Providence, RI, I got introduced to Buddy Cianci who was seeking re-election after being removed from his mayoral seat. At that time the city had a large Dominican population; he decided to hire me as his Hispanic campaign director to seek their support. Imagine his foresight as the 1990 census report still had not been released. He knew his city, he understood the demographics and we developed a plan to captivate that audience. We bought Spanish-language media, recruited Hispanic leaders from the business and non-profit sectors, organized coffee hours and went door-to-door in South Providence to get out the vote. Buddy Cianci won the election by a slight margin and those votes came from the Dominican community.
In the early 90's I landed a position working as the group account manager at FOVA, the Hispanic arm of Grey Advertising. I managed a $20MM budget overseeing Proctor & Gamble's brands marketed to the Hispanic consumer (Jif, Downy, Crisco), along with specific Kraft brands. Fast forward to today, company's like Blockbuster have added a new Cine Latino movie section in more than 200 stores of their stores; Disney just launched their first Latina princess, Sofia; Salma Hayek became the first bilingual star to lend her face to the popular “Got Milk” campaign. Then there's one of my favorite TV ads whereby two guys get into a Passat and after their music-less road trip, come out of the car speaking fluent Spanish.
Obviously the demographics in the US have changed to a multi-cultural ecosystem. How is possible the Republican party missed this in 2012 when there were so many market indicators???
