This article is by Vanitha Swaminathan, professor of marketing, Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh.
Consider María José, a 40-year-old housewife who moved from Mexico to Los Angeles in her twenties. She is fluent in Spanish and English and is a devoted mother of three children. She regularly talks with her extended family, who lives in Mexico, and watches the Spanish-language television network, Univision. The multicultural consumer landscape, with nearly 232 million people living outside their home countries, poses a unique challenge to companies. Therefore, marketers are increasingly targeting consumers who identify with more than one culture, like María, in their advertising. For example, advertising in 2010 to Hispanics in the United States was estimated at around $5.5 billion in gross advertising revenue.
One of the challenges of appealing to ethnically diverse populations is that members of these groups may be at different stages of assimilation with the host culture, and may have varying levels of receptiveness to ethnic marketing efforts. The extent of assimilation depends on the relative identification with home and host cultures based on factors such as languages spoken at home, the types of foods consumed, the types of magazines read, and so on. Bilingual ads—ads involving the blending of words from the home language—offer marketing managers a unique way to appeal to this bicultural population.
To what extent is the blending of two languages in advertising (i.e., bilingual advertising) effective among bicultural consumers? We found that the degree to which the bilingual ad enhances liking for a brand varies depending on the type of brand. For example, Budweiser and Levi’s are culturally symbolic brands that strongly remind consumers of their American identity. Contrast these with brands like Coors beer or Gap clothing that are neutral in their cultural symbolism. I recently conducted series of experiments involving biculturals (e.g., Hispanics, Asians) living in the U.S., with Dr. Umut Kubat. We found that for highly symbolic brands, biculturals equally preferred English and bilingual ads. By contrast, biculturals responded more positively to a bilingual ad than an English-only ad when the brands were not symbolic of the host culture.
Why do biculturals respond more positively when a culturally neutral brand uses bilingual advertising?Consumers like María are continually juggling their dual identities of being both a Hispanic and an American and look for ways to blend these identities. So, when an iconic American brand engages in bilingual advertising, its strong associations with the host culture will bring to mind her identity as an American, limiting her ability to evoke the home cultural identity. By contrast, when a non-symbolic brand uses bilingual ads, its associations do not stand in the way of appealing to her ethnic identity. For a less-symbolic brand, biculturals find it easier to integrate their dual home and host cultural identities, following exposure to bilingual advertising.
CMOs and marketing managers need to be aware of the contextual brand cues that consumers use to interpret bilingual advertising. In doing so, they can ensure that the brand’s positioning and identity do not trigger conflicting identities, which would ultimately reduce the impact of bilingual advertising.
