Generation ¿Qué?

This month’s Marketing Y Medios has an insightful article into the Latino/Hispanic youth market. Here’s an extract:

Compared to their general-market counterparts, Hispanics tend to leave school earlier, start families sooner and join the job market at a younger age. Latino teens do form part of the larger echo boomer generation but they are much more than just a subset. The way second-generation teens adapt to and/or change life in the U.S. will shape the future of all Hispanics in the country at large. But no one fully understands who they are or what they want or how they will view their ethnicity. Not even themselves.

You can try to define them by their likes and dislikes but rarely by their ethnicity alone.

They are, for the most part, teenagers first and Latinos second. Speak to them in Spanish, and they may not understand. Talk to them as if they were gringos, and they may not like it. Whatever you do, don’t confuse an Angeleno with a Tejano or talk to a Cuban about La Raza.

Out with the melting pot, ditch the tossed salad metaphor and consider instead that second-generation Latino teenagers may be "un ajiaco de contradicciones" (a stew of contradictions) as Gustavo Pérez-Firmat writes in his poem Bilingual Blues. Altogether, the multifaceted identity of Hispanic adolescents resembles a Rubik’s Cube, even if that toy went out of fashion long before they were born.

When it comes to marketing to teenagers, forget about the maid and forget about the gardener. The vast majority of Hispanic teens are Made in the USA and will not fade quietly into the background.

Meanwhile Anastasia Goodstein’s Ypulse blog summarises some of the findings on Latino teens in the in What Teens Want Report. The key findings she cites are:

Language: Young Hispanics don’t define their Latino Identity by the language they speak but instead by maintaining their community’s traditions and cultures through family, music, and food.

Pioneers: Many young Latinos are the first in their families to finish high school or college, making Young Hispanics see themselves as pioneers.

Trend Setters: Young Latinos take great pride in the fact that they are setting trends for general population consumers.

Party Crews: Latino teens forming into “party crews” to work together to create elaborate flyers, promotion, and music for regular parties.

Celebrities: Dave Chappelle and Angelina Jolie are celebrity favorites among young Latinos.

Movies: Action/adventure and comedy movies both ranking highly among young Latinos. Horror films and “car movies” are of notable interest too

Marketing Y Medios Article via Hispanic Trending
Ypulse Post