Advertisers are reaching out to younger Hispanics in the United States with ads and commercials featuring Spanglish, a mix of Spanish and English.
In fact, Spanglish is about to achieve the advertising ultimate. Toyota plans to air a commercial for the new hybrid Camry during the Super Bowl, with a young man comparing the car's ability to switch between electric and gasoline power to his father's switching between Spanish and English.
"Overall we are really trying to capture a creative voice for the Hispanic market," Catarino Lopez, chief creative officer for a San Antonio ad agency, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "The use of Spanglish is really taking off. Young kids are trying to create their own language."
Some of the ads go in for wordplay and bi-lingual puns.
Lopez's company, Bromley Communications, created a series of billboards for Coors Light two years ago that said "What's the wave ox?" After two weeks of gathering buzz, West Coast residents learned that the sentence was a too-literal translation for "Que onda güey?" or "What's up, dude?"
© Copyright 2006 by United Press International
