Carlos Santiago, presidente del Comité de Investigación de la AHAA y CEO de Santiago Solutions Group
It seems like the Hispanic market still isn’t a goal for pharma marketing, according to new data from the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies (AHAA). In fact, between 2010 and 2014 advertisers in this sector increased the accumulated investment in Hispanic advertising by just 4% and among the top 500 advertisers in the U.S., the allocation to Hispanic media in this category varied little, remaining in 2.5%.”Every year we acknowledge that we need to do something, but things really haven’t changed much in the last 15 years” said Carlos Santiago, Research Chair at AHAA and president and Chief Strategist of Santiago Solutions Group.Although Hispanics spend 60% less on drugs than non-Hispanics and use 40% fewer medications, they could be a key goal for the pharmaceutical market. This group has higher death rates in certain chronic diseases such as diabetes, chronic liver disease, and cirrhosis, according to the CDC.For Santiago the highest obstacle has to do with regulations and translations regarding medicines and pharmaceutical companies. The industry seems extremely cautious about making mistakes translating from English into Spanish and are even more so in creating campaigns that take into account culture and lifestyle. The executive hopes that not only the pharmaceutical industry takes note of those types of campaigns, but also starts to think about Hispanic consumers earlier in the drug´s life cycle, when it is being developed, in clinical trials and in the conceptual stage for marketing.
