Adding “Gasolina” to your Marketing Strategy: Four Tips To Reaching U.S Hispanic Youth

Posted by Elena del Valle on May 3, 2006

By Natalie Boden, BodenPR 

Flavio Morales, vice president, programming, mun2 

Photo: mun2

We all know it. We’ve all sung it. Some of us don’t even know what it means. What is it? It’s “Gasolina” (“Gasoline”), Daddy Yankee’s popular reggaetón hit. The album has sold over a million copies and the music sure is catchy. And marketers have taken note. Why? Because it reaches a young Hispanic demographic segment that according to studies represents a purchasing power of $25 billion dollars per year. In fact, today, Latino youth stands for 20 percent of the total U.S. teen population with studies showing that they will reach 62 percent by 2020, increasingly becoming a very lucrative segment of the economy.

Although companies are catching on, signing deals with top Latino artists including big reggaetón stars and developing campaigns aimed specifically at this youth segment, some, according to Beatrice Rangel, president of AMLA, a U.S. Hispanic market research firm, still don’t “get it.”

“Marketers are lost. They have no clue what this generation needs. These kids hate Telemundo. They hate Univisión. They don’t watch ‘Sábado Gigante,’ they watch the WB,” she said.

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