OPINION– Bernadette Rivero Of The Cortez Brothers: Adiós, Latino Creatives

It hurts to see Creatives disappearing so quickly. Especially because it’s not all Creatives are vanishing… it’s just the Latino ones. There was a time, not long ago when U.S. Hispanic ad agencies were filled with unique, original creative work driven by talented Creatives. Then, in recent years the General Market ad agencies claimed multicultural business for themselves. Unfortunately, now in 2017 they don’t invest in Latino talent or creativity the way their Hispanic counterparts did. Instead they hire English-to-Spanish translators – whether or not their clients’ target markets are best served by bilingual rather than bicultural messages in the first place. For a while, there was a trend of General Market agencies hiring Latino Creatives only to relegate them to the work of translation. Brilliant, imaginative minds were reduced to copyediting or interpreting someone else’s work, rather than being allowed to create anything original of their own. But now, when even that was coming to an end, I’m seeing more and more that General Market ad agencies are simply casting actors and models that LOOK Latino or (as they state in casting notices) “ambiguously ethnic.” The ad seems Latino on the surface, but there is no full-time Latino agency staff behind the scenes at all. I don’t know how or if the shrinking role of Latino Creatives can be reversed at all… In the meantime, I toast to the inventive, innovative ones who helped build the U.S. Hispanic ad industry in the first place, so that the General Market has now something they could take over today.*Bernadette Rivero, President, The Cortez Brothers @CortezBrothers BB@CortezBrothers.com