Culture is the thing for serving the Spanish-language market

LAS VEGAS -- Addressing the needs of Latino markets anywhere in the world takes more than just saying "se habla espanol": It isn't just a language issue, it's a state of mind.

Tribune Media Services, a Chicago-based content provider, estimates that there is a growing Hispanic audience in the United States with $150 billion in disposable income -- the majority of which speaks Spanish exclusively.

In the United States alone, there are already about 500 Spanish language newspapers, with projected growth during the next year to as many as 800. Especially big markets are found in Texas, California, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Florida, Kansas and Massachusetts.

The Latin populations in these states are anything but homogenous, however, with people from vastly different origins. Among them are Americans of Latino ancestry, and first-generation immigrants from Puerto Rico, Central America, South America, Costa Rica, Cuba and other Caribbean countries.

Responding to this market may mean providing extended coverage of Latin America, and at times, extended risk to journalists covering this region.

Among its diverse services, the Inter America Press Association, with members from 34 countries including the United States, regularly intercedes on behalf of journalists and newspapers who have run into difficulties with local governments.

Its working groups take on issues surrounding newsprint, ethics, advertising and technology. Its technical center provides members with technical and management information, and distributes a monthly bulletin in Spanish to Latin American members.

This year, Iapa conducted a series of technical seminars at NEXPO for the 80 to 100 South American companies who may have sent attendees, and provided Spanish speakers with a special NEXPO edition of Horra de Cierre, with supplier listings in Spanish.

NEXPO suppliers specializing in Latino markets in the United States and Latin America agreed that "culture's the thing."

Most of them emphasized the need for sensitivity to cultural distinctions not addressed by simply translating English products into Spanish, and awareness of and responsiveness to cultural distinctions and penetrations within markets.

Many attempts to sell Spanish-language products and services have disappointed Latino markets by offering "lousy information, background, intonation and grammar," said Morris Menasche, director of international affairs for Amaco International of Miami.

Among the companies trying to break that mold are Amaco International, Spanlink (see The Cole Papers, July 1996), Dalai/Cyan, Betco and Tribune Media Services.

TMS's Exito! is a two-page, tabloid-sized, fully paginated weekly entertainment section targeting upscale Hispanic readers and advertisers in North America.

It is not an Anglo product translated into Spanish. Its content is developed by TMS with a specifically Hispanic community in mind. Special editions are offered in Miami, where TMS targets audiences with a Latin American or Cuban cultural influence, and in Chicago, where it provides Puerto Rican and Mexican perspectives.

TMS also offers a national edition (delivered on CD-ROM each Friday by Federal Express), which combines these perspectives, for large and small market papers around the United States. The product can appear as a stand-alone section or an insert, or may be blended into an existing section.

Amaco International offers a turnkey audiotext/voice response solution with both service bureau and ownership options. Amaco has its own voice processing unit, three sound studios and pulse tone recognition.

A provider of services to the banking industry for years, Amaco's first installation in the newspaper industry was a 144-line audiotext product for El Colombiano in Colombia in 1992. Since then it has installed additional sites elsewhere in Columbia, as well as in Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, Guatemala and Mexico, with recent growth into the United States.

Menasche said Hispanics have been getting horoscopes and soap opera reports for years. But Amaco offers more than 100 daily Spanish and Portuguese audiotext information services -- presented by either male or female voices with different Latino accents.

Amaco also recently launched a culture-sensitive, perhaps less confrontive, personal ads service in Brazil. In the United States, marketing efforts have focused on how to extend the length of calls, but the focus in Latino markets will be to make calls short so people will believe they are affordable and safe -- they can be in and out in two or three minutes.

Cultural sensitivity and bilingualism are also translating into success for companies which provide products and service to Latin American markets. For example, Berges Et Co. Inc., alternatively known as Betco, is a digital pre-press integrator serving the Latin American market (both Hispanic and Portuguese). Betco now is working with more than 200 sites.

Gustavo Berges, president and CEO, is proud that his Stuart, Fla.-based company has made the Hispanic Business 500 list, even though the company is not yet three years old. The success is built on a long history of experience with Latin American computer markets: Berges was one of Apple's first distributors outside the United States, working in the Dominican Republic in the 1970s.

Betco is family owned: Berges' wife is vice president of administration, his son is a territorial manager, his niece is a product manager, and his daughter and nephew are also involved in the business.

About 15 percent of its business is domestic, with the remaining 85 percent coming from Latin and Central America and the Caribbean. Betco also provides Spanish-language training, and can recertify technicians to provide service in foreign markets.

"Services were always brought in from the outside before," Berges said. "Now work can be done in the country by locals with our support."

An Apple value-added reseller, Betco is Quark Inc.'s newest integrator in Latin America, and has agreements with a long list of other companies, including Sharp, Nikon, Polaroid, Optronics, Die and Techtronics. The company may be visited on the World-Wide Web at http://www.gate.net/~betco/.

Dalai/Cyan, based in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, provides both an in-house software product and integration services for classified, display ad and circulation systems. Dalai is its line of software, developed in-house, and Cyan provides system integration services.

This was the sixth year the company has been at NEXPO, but the first time it appeared under the Dalai banner; before, it appeared as Cyan.

Dalai offers Latin companies ways to help them overcome the language barrier, including training and giving Spanish-language demos for a variety of products, often localizing products (such as those from Baseview Products Inc.) in Spanish, and leaving behind a trained system manager who can deal with general problems. (For those occasional vexing problems that can't be resolved locally, Dalai will fly a consultant to the site within 12 hours.)

The company has 80 installations in Mexico, Latin and Central America, and the Caribbean.

Its own DalaiSMF, launched last year, is a collection of 11 system modules for presenting business information from other systems including Quark and Cascade Systems Inc., as well as wire service materials, circulation and advertising data, and display and classified ads -- on an intranet or the Internet.

DalaiCompass integrates these modules, along with information from press, purchasing, maintenance and warehouse systems. The DalaiMobil module also provides PDA connectivity for sales agents in the field; DalaiAdPlacerXT, DalaiPagePlannerXT and DalaiPageXTractor are Quark XTensions for ad placement, element tracking and digital archiving.

SMF, available in both Spanish and English, is installed at five Latin American sites. The company's Web site is http://www.dalai.com/SMF/.

-- L. Carol Christopher

Amaco International,
(305) 599-1363;
Berges Et Co. Inc.,
(407) 692-9900,
e-mail: betco@gate.net;
Dalai/Cyan,
(011) 52-8 365-4077;
Spanlink Communications,
(800) 452-8349;
Tribune Media Services,
(312) 222-4444,
e-mail: tmc@tribune.com.

From THE COLE PAPERS, August 1996, Copyright © 1996, All Rights Reserved.