Backchannelmedia

Tulsa World

One glance around the bank's lobby told Angelica Valadez why the financial institution's efforts to attract Hispanic customers weren't working.

"'You want Hispanic clients to come in here and bank with you, but look around here -- do you see a single picture of a family together?'" Valadez asked the bankers. "I said, 'I see students, and I see a career woman -- probably a single mother, because she's with a baby, a little kid -- but I don't see a family together.'"

Valadez knew what the bankers did not: Family is important to Hispanic customers.

"Other than religion, family is the most important entity to the Hispanic community," she said.

Attracting Hispanic customers requires more than a few bilingual employees, Valadez said.

"Everybody thinks it's just the language barrier, but it's also the culture," she said.

Valadez estimates that 75,000 Hispanics live in the Tulsa metro area.

Her new company, Bravo Advertising Group, is helping connect Tulsa companies with those prospective customers through Spanish- language advertisements and marketing programs that cater to Hispanic culture.

For instance, Valadez helped a convenience store create signs in Spanish to advertise three products popular with Hispanics: Gatorade, which she said construction workers especially enjoy; Pepsi products, which she said Hispanics like better than Coke; and spicy snacks.

"We like spicy snacks," Valadez said. "If we know that Fiesta Mart has spicy snacks, we go to Fiesta Mart rather than QuikTrip or somewhere else."

The wording of the signs was important, too, she said. Simply translating an advertisement word-for-word from English to Spanish won't work.

"You have to put it in words where you can relate to the general Hispanic community," Valadez said.

She said in most Hispanic families, the father is the primary breadwinner, so he has the final say over major purchases such as homes or cars -- but he doesn't make decisions alone. He brings his wife, children and extended family out shopping with him.

Knowing that, a business can cater to Hispanic customers by providing enough chairs for the whole family, a play area to amuse the children and a bilingual employee to help everyone understand what is going on, Valadez said.

If the man likes the company, the payoff can be huge.

"If you do business with one (family member), then you're going to do business with everybody else," Valadez said. "In marketing, when you're marketing to Hispanics, you're not marketing to one person -- you're marketing to a whole group of people."

Bravo began when Valadez visited Larry Henry of Advertising Anything while she was selling ads for a Spanish radio station.

Henry's clients were looking for ways to reach Hispanic customers, and Valadez -- who has a degree in marketing -- had dreamed of starting her own advertising agency some day.

When Henry asked her to start an agency to reach the Hispanic market in Tulsa, Valadez didn't hesitate.

"Opportunity knocked on my door, and I thought, 'OK, I'm taking it,'" she said.

In addition to helping American business owners reach Hispanic clients, Bravo helps Hispanic business owners advertise to the broader Tulsa community.

Bravo works with Advertising Anything to provide clients with ad design, Web design, logos, radio and television advertising, direct mail, signs, billboards, public relations, consumer research, Spanish-English translation and more than 400,000 types of promotional merchandise, Valadez said.

BRAVO

Where: 1224 N. Lewis Ave.

Offers: Advertising services gearedtoward the Hispanic community

For more: Call 851-8000 or e-mailbravo@advertisinganything.com.