“Who will Salt Lake marketers’ largest clientele be in 10 years?” 

Gladys Gonzalez, president of Salt Lake City-based Hispanic Marketing and Consulting/La Agency, posed that question to Utah CEOs and marketing professionals in early March.

Her answer: Hispanics. That audience is key to Utah marketers, Gonzales told attendees at her agency’s third annual marketing conference at the downtown Hilton Hotel.

Alex Guzman, marketing and sales director for Mundo Hispano newspaper, echoed Gonzalez’ prediction and pointed out some differences between Anglo and Hispanic purchasing patterns. In general, he said Hispanics tend to buy more and involve whole families in buying decisions, whereas Anglos are more prone to save money and have adults guide all large-scale purchase decisions.

Guzman further reported that 80 percent of his paper’s revenue comes from advertising support from traditional Anglo or Caucasian-oriented companies reaching out to and recognizing the power of the Hispanic dollar. Case in point? Mundo Hispano’s largest advertisers read like a Who’s Who of American business —Anglo-American business, that is, with these marquis customers filing the ad pages: McDonalds, Cricket, Coca-Cola, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Intermountain Health Care, Worker’s Compensation Fund, State Farm Insurance, Wells Fargo and Zions Bank.

Zions Bank? At one point, there may not have been a “whiter” brand in Utah than that of the venerable Zions Bank. That’s in the past, thanks to a vigorous effort to court the Hispanic community. The courtship goes far beyond placing “Se Habla Español!” in ads and on in-store placards to designing programs that cater to a well-researched and varied Hispanic population.

CEO Scott Anderson had the idea to appeal to Spanish-speaking clientele and brand select locations “Su Banco” — a more formal-language translation of “Your Bank.” During the conference, Zions Bank Executive Vice President of Marketing and Communications Rob Brough received encouragement from marketing expert Kip Gienau to consider shifting the “Su Banco” to “Tu Banco” (“Your Bank” with a more casual, friendly tone).

Zions Bank has since tweaked the approach of specifying select branches and branding them differently. Instead, Zions ensures that all branches offer bilingual information and associates, while also relying heavily on outreach and education programs tailored to the Hispanic audience.

Gonzalez challenges would-be marketers afraid to cast their budgets specifically toward Hispanic marketing: “With word of a recession, [now] is exactly the time companies need to double their advertising … we need to continue buying and continue moving the economy.”

Jennifer J. Johnson owns and operates a virtual public relations firm. No clients are represented in this article. She welcomes your feedback at jjj@joandco.com.