A Shopper in Spanish? : It All Ads Up : PennySaver-Style Magazine Targets Potential Buyers in County’s Latino Population

What’s an hombre de negocios to do? Say this businessman’s got a tienda full of muebles to unload quick, a sala de espera but no cliente awaiting his servicios.

A market definitely exists for that shop full of furniture, and there are clients to fill that empty waiting room too . Official estimates put the state’s Latino population at more than 6.5 million and Orange County’s at 334,300 and rising.

But advertisers--Anglo in particular--have perennially complained that they just can’t figure out how to reach it.

Enter El Mercado, a Spanish-language shopper based in Santa Ana, which industry experts call the first serious publication of the PennySaver sort in Southern California targeted solely at the Latino audience.

Consumers “have been programmed for 25 years with the PennySaver,” said Marcus (he goes by only one name), president of El Mercado (The Market) Publishing. “That’s what we are, an advertising vehicle. But what we’re offering is a targeted market--directly to the Hispanic household. . . . We took a good idea and put a language to it.”

On Nov. 17, the first issue of the free magazine hit the porches of 35,000 homes--and the racks of 75 to 125 local markets--in largely Latino neighborhoods of Santa Ana, Stanton and Anaheim and in the El Modena neighborhood, for a total circulation of 40,000.

El Mercado staffers used 1980 census tracts to target their circulation areas and then drove or walked each street to ensure the highest possible Latino concentration. The result, Marcus said, is that the small publication promises 95% Latino readership.

“That’s why we feel we’re better than the English periodicals that do Spanish ads,” said Jay Lindsey, El Mercado’s director of operations. “They have to offer six times the circulation to reach the same number of people.”

The original PennySaver is a direct-mail giant, with 3.1 million in circulation in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. It is more than a quarter of a century old and professes to be the largest shopper in North America.

The periodical is tightly zoned to allow advertisers to target their audiences. Although it has created a Spanish-language prototype, PennySaver has decided to remain one of those “English periodicals that do Spanish ads.”

“Customers asked us to do Spanish-language ads, and we have a growing number of them,” said Harry Buckel, president of the shopper division of Harte-Hanks Communications, which produces the Huntington Beach-based PennySaver.

But all a company accomplishes by publishing a single-language product, Buckel contends, is “that you really block yourself out of one or the other market. . . . Our perception is that there is enough bilingual blend in our zones. So now we’re opting to go with a product that has both Spanish and English.”

PennySaver officials track their competition carefully, and have seen the occasional Spanish-language shopper come and go, rarely lasting more than a couple of weeks. El Mercado, Buckel said, is the first “serious effort” at reaching Spanish-speaking consumers and “the concept is an interesting one.”

“We’re watching to see how they do,” he said. “I think anyone in the market offers an element of competition. We don’t see them as being significant yet.”

But the potential is there. Leslie Call, national advertising manager for La Opinion, said that the 3.7 million Latinos in the Los Angeles metropolitan area are the most well-to-do Latino group in the world and comprise a natural target for advertisers.

“The Los Angeles-area Hispanic families are the most financially well off among any other Hispanic population group in the world,” said Call, whose newspaper is the largest Spanish-language daily in the nation. “The average household income is $32,000 annually. The (average) U.S. Hispanic family income is $22,900.”

Although Call has never heard of El Mercado, “I’m surprised no one did this before,” she said. “My basic philosophy is that anything that can be marketed to Anglos can be marketed successfully to Hispanics. It has to do with understanding and making a commitment. There is a huge number of dollars out there.”

Classified ads in El Mercado range from spiels selling cars to help-wanted ads searching for nannies, sales representatives and seamstresses. In one recent edition, a Cadillac El Dorado en excelentes condiciones . . . con todas las extras was hawked beside a help-wanted ad for especialistas en rayos-X.

Display ads offer wares from televisions to real estate services and dentistry. It is in display advertising where Marcus predicts some of the greatest growth for his publication. He has already won contracts from The Forum and Corona Beer, and is trying to woo the California Lottery.

The Forum’s contract does not start until July, so there is no basis yet for the Inglewood arena to gauge El Mercado’s effectiveness, said Helen Graham, a Forum senior account executive.

But Graham chose to advertise Forum events, from basketball to soccer, in the fledgling periodical because of “the unique way they cover the market.” Graham, a fluent Spanish speaker, said that she needed no convincing to reach out to the Latino population.

“I think the problem is more with our director of advertising,” Graham said. “It is hard to relay what a market there is there. It’s been a campaign of mine for a long time to prove what a market is out there.”

Said Gary Colbert, sales and marketing director for Orange County’s Corona distributor, Quality Beer Distributors: “In Orange County, the Hispanic market is very important to us, and El Mercado seemed like a good avenue to reach the market we want to reach.”

For its first five months, El Mercado was published biweekly but on April 6 it graduated to weekly publication. So far, the enterprise has been mostly hard work for the bilingual staff of 15 and has reaped little profit.

“We’re breaking even,” Marcus said. “It’s rough. . . . Our profit grows when the size of the paper grows. We also do translation work and marketing for other businesses.”

El Mercado’s long-term plans include expansion to the San Gabriel Valley within the next four to six months and Los Angeles within the year.

“Once we get Los Angeles,” Marcus said, “We’re going up the 5 and 99 freeways, Fresno, Modesto, Turlock. Then Northern California and national in three to five years. Then, if the PennySaver or (media magnate Rupert) Murdoch say they’ll give us $22 million, so be it.”