An interview with Victor Villalba, of the Dallas Cowboys
The timing was perfect this week for a conversation about NFL Hispanic marketing. With the NFL kicking off full festivities for Hispanic Heritage Month including community events, Hispanic Heritage Leadership awards, and even mariachis performing outside of stadiums, the relevance of Hispanics to the NFL was on the tip of everyone’s tongue.
On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to catch up with Victor Villalba, Manager of Spanish Language Broadcasting for the Dallas Cowboys. I approached Villalba, as it was obvious of his qualifications to discuss the team’s marketing and community outreach efforts towards Latinos having worked for the NFL team over 10 years, during two stints.
Villalba most recently returned to the Cowboys in 2002 to work with the Spanish radio broadcast. Soon after, Villalba was given the opportunity to do the Spanish language play by play which he does for every game, including this past Monday night’s game against the Washington Redskins.
I wanted to know what we all could learn from the most well known NFL team about marketing to Hispanics, community integration and the importance of knowing your customers. I have laid out my findings in the subsequent categories. Please review and add your comments and questions to the end, and also consider reading a similar article about the NBA’s Hispanic Marketing efforts.
Read the entire article by Eric Diaz (DK Web Consulting) at Social Media Spanish.
So far the methods to targeting the Latino community keeps missing the mark. Despite of the population growing at an acelerated rate I feel that the techniques or the language used in advertisements across the board are directed to a single population, a monolingual population. We Latinos speak Spanish but it’s more like different dialects. A company that has really captured the essence of commercials targeted at Latinos it’s Sears. I can watch a commercial done by them in Puerto Rico or New York and the transition from one group of Latinos to another it’s seamless. The commercial doesnt leave me thinking, man that comercial was made for a different Latino group. By the way I dont work for any advertisement company.
Hello Giovanni. Just saw your comments. I would be interested if you can explain your comment about how you feel the Cowboys are missing the mark with their marketing techniques. I feel they have done quite well as Hispanics in even Mexico City can listen to their games and locally they support Hispanic Heritage month and the Adelante program as I document in the blog. While there is always more a team (or brand) can do they are of course limited by what the budget will allow.