Hispanic Markets & Innovation Thinking

I am a car guy and I absolutely love the new 2015 Mustang.

It really is a design with Soul (yes, capitalized). An amazing and seductive blend of European and American design cues. Simply gorgeous.

I was able to recently experience the Mustang at the Washington DC auto show. A shadow of the auto shows in LA and Frankfurt but hey, this is DC, the land of beige and black sedans and soul-less minivans and SUV’s.

In any case, cue in the real-life Mustang I experienced at the show.  I was instantly smitten. So much so that I gave them my email so that I could be notified the minute it is for sale.

Following up with me via email Ford was kind enough to ask me for my opt-in to future advertising.  Attached to the email was also a link to their site.

I never, ever say yes to these things but, hey, I am in love.  Upon checking the web site for the car I was given the choice of languages and for kicks I opted for Spanish being fluent in that language.

Wow.

I was absolutely taken aback by the poor quality of the translation. This from a global brand that one would think has the resources to hire the best talent. A global brand must optimize for global Spanish with proper verb usage and tenses. Further, the copy used must not address the readers in casual Spanish. This is a no no in advertising. In fact it is disrespectful in many cultures. 

Ford, listen up: it is ‘mire’ and not ‘mira.'

My indignation got me to send them an email and offered to properly translate the site.

The quickly developing Hispanic markets are in many ways a disruption to businesses in the USA and Ford is a case in point. Not in the negative sense but in the I-don’t-know-what-to-do-sense and will throw-some-spaghetti-at-the-wall-and-hopefully-no one-will-notice, approach.

Well, this internationalist and a hispanic noticed.

So, Ford, listen up. Give me a call and I will help you out with your copy and a suitable approach to what will become a very important market for you. The hispanic market is a huge opportunity but also posses steep challenges. It should be treated as a disruption to which Innovation-based methodologies should be applied.

It is that simple.

Technics such as journey mapping and design thinking should be the rule of the day. If they had done so maybe they would have discovered that they need proper Spanish to address a global audience.

Wow.