Diapers For Fatima

Coca-Cola slashed its Spanish-language TV-advertising budget 48% in 2003, then reversed course, promising to spend an additional $350 million to $400 million on advertising, with a percentage dedicated to the Hispanic market. In November new CEO Neville Isdell said Hispanics are one of Coke's three most important growth segments for North America (young people and baby boomers are the others).

P&G gained an early edge in the Hispanic market, in part because it started before anyone else. More than 40 years ago, P&G became one of the first major companies to air a Spanish-language TV commercial. In 1984, it was the first major U.S. corporation to sponsor S??bado Gigante, America's leading Spanish-language entertainment-and-variety program. But with so much competition--and money--now rushing into the sector, P&G can't afford to rest on those laurels. Enter Eleta's 45-person Puerto Rico--based multicultural-marketing division. "I realized how important this [division] was when a few white men within P&G wanted to come and work for us," says Eleta. (She jokes: "They're part of our minority diversity program.")

Eleta's tactics are instructive. Step One: P&G chose to focus its marketing dollars on just 12 of its 300 brands: Always feminine products; Bounty; Charmin toilet paper; Crest; Dawn dishwashing cleaner; Downy fabric softener; Gain and Tide laundry detergents; Herbal Essences, Head & Shoulders and Pantene shampoos; and Pampers. Why not, say, P&G's Iams pet-food line? Median household income for Hispanics is $33,000, compared with $48,000 for the non-Hispanic population; P&G's market research found that relative to the general population, Hispanics tended to spend less on their pets.

And why Pampers? Here, P&G is obeying what Juan Faura, a Hispanic-marketing executive and author of The Whole Enchilada: Hispanic Marketing 101, calls a basic "law of the Hispanic universe": "Family is always first," writes Faura. "Family means your mom and dad and brothers and sisters and second cousins and cousins of your aunt's husband's sister and aunts of your mom's second cousin Dionisia from Veracruz." (Or, in real-world terms, Parilla, a single mom, won't skimp on her baby, no matter how stretched her pocketbook.) Plus, diapers are a growth category: 1 in 5 babies born in the U.S., and 1 in 2 in California, is Hispanic.

The next stage, after identifying target product lines, was honing P&G's marketing message. According to P&G research, for instance, 57% of Hispanic customers describe themselves as "avid scent seekers," compared with 31% for the general market. So P&G tapped into that sensory preference in its packaging of Gain, a midpriced laundry detergent, launching several versions geared specifically to the Hispanic consumer: Gentle Breeze, Island Fresh, Whitewater Fresh. "There was really no other soap that satisfied me," says Juan Nungary, 35, a Dallas cabinet installer and faithful Gain user, touting the detergent's scent.