After watching the new Old Navy commercial targeting the Hispanic market, I am surprised for the ignorance in conducting such campaign, I am upset and offended because of the same circumstance: Ignorance!. Despite the catchy lyrics and the production of the video, I definitely will not buy Old Navy clothes because I do not want to be "La super estrella de la vecindad" or the "Superstar of the 'hood'."
When Old Navy uses a word like vecindad, it has neglected to do a basic search of this term in Google, violating the first principle of marketing "KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE", particularly when those words are such integral part of its tagline.
According to the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language (RAE). "Vecindad" means: Group of people that live in different units of the same house, or in different houses closer to one another; which resembles what in the U.S. is know as 'the projects'. Moreover, Wikipedia notes that vecindad "is a Mexican term for a building containing several (often low-income oriented) housing units" which leads to the second problem.
Old Navy has neglected the Hispanic Community from Guatemala to Chile. The term vecindad is not used in all Spanish speaking countries, in fact, we became familiar with the context of the word watching Mexican TV shows. In some countries this term does not have a good connotation referring to people with no class.
What I hate about this circumstance is that Hispanics are surrounded by stereotypes, although we all share the same language (which inspired the ugly looking award in the Latin version of the MTV Awards), there is much more of us that distinguish us from country to country. Not all the Hispanics eat burritos and tortillas, the taste and style of food vary greatly; South America is not a big jungle, although we do have the Amazonas rain forest, and not all of us live in vecindades. Which I believe these marketers still think when preparing the content of this ad. This is a big faux pas for this company.
Another problem is that what might make sense in one language (English), might not make sense in another (Spanish). Every language has its rules, grammar and context. One cannot translate literally.
The lyrics of the jingle in English are "This is real life I am not posing for a magazine, don't ask me any questions until I get my caffeine 'cause I look C.U.T.E. whenever I am on call whenever I get a mani or pedi or root canal. I am super C.U.T.E every single day knock knock it is the neighborhood hottie." Let's not discuss the depth of the message, the point is, in Spanish that does not make any sense. I do not believe that in our culture we are worried about being the hottie of the "neighborhood" because that does not have a very good connotation, although we do pay attention to the style and quality of the clothes we use. So, then again, the message was lost.
In the history of marketing those kind of mistakes are abundant, but I won't make the mistake of buying clothes at Old Navy and accidentally become "the superstar of the hood"
No comments:
Post a Comment