Media X: Get a Vida

““What’s an Anglo?” asked my New York copy editor when I filed my first “Hispanic Marketplace” column for Adweek West in 1984. Marketers were just then waking up to the fact that Latinos actually bought things. Every column I wrote used the word “burgeoning” to describe the market. And, of course, it has burgeoned like street vendors on Olvera Street ever since.

Back then, there was no shortage of points of view muy stupido about Hispanic consumers, on both sides of the language barrier. Like the marketer who, after hearing a Univision presentation in his office in a big Midwestern city, walked over to his window, looked down and declared: “I don’t see any brown faces down there.” To which the presenter replied, smiling: “You will.””

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