The Lakers may not be winning much on the court, but recent shifts in strategy have increased popularity with Latino audiences.
In a world of personalized marketing, audience intelligence has never been more important.
As with any demographic segment, marketers must think of nuances within the greater Latino cultural landscape as they develop marketing strategies and implement campaigns. According to research, most Latinos consider themselves bicultural. A recent study by agency LatinWorks and EthniFacts discovered that Hispanic consumers make up a significant part of the market, many of which consider themselves American or American and Latino. According to the study, this growing segment has come to “turning to the adage ‘ni de aqui, ni de alla'”–neither from here nor from there. In that same vein, this demographic is generally not choosing one or the other culture, but rather redefining a middle ground, making traditional marketing targeted towards a homogenous :atino culture insufficient and antiquated. It is important for marketers to understand the nuances within specific audiences.
The NBA has been working on building their Latino fanbase since the mid-90s. The Lakers have been on the forefront of initiating innovative campaigns to encourage fan growth from this high value demographic. Based on data pulled from Lakers Twitter followers, the Hispanic demographic represents roughly 20% of the aggregate audience. Efforts to grow the fanbase have been largely unsuccessful, until recently. the LakersIn 2011 the Lakers signed a deal with Time Warner Cable to create TWC Deportes, the United States’ first Spanish language regional sports network. The network would be focused on the Lakers, and would kick off the 2012-2013 season.
Time Warner Cable launched TWC Deportes for the 2012-2013 season. The network is entirely separate, and showcases regional sports teams including the LA Galaxy and the LA Sparks. The face of TWC Deportes is sportscaster Adrian Garcia Marquez, who effortlessly blends English and Spanish in a nuanced way, representative of a key market that brands have until recently had a difficult time plugging into. Watch the short video below to see how he incorporates English and Spanish into his broadcasting:
NPR recently broadcast a radio segment, that peaked the interest of the People Pattern team. Curious to know more about the nuances of the Lakers’ target audience and to understand the benefit of TWC Deportes, we took a quick look at the data by ingesting Twitter followers of @Lakers and @LosLakers. Once in the system, the application algorithms and classifiers analyzed each individual user to predict demographics and psychographics on a per-person basis, rolling the analyses up to understand the aggregate.
From the data, we discovered that the Latino community was critical to economic viability of the Lakers. Based on the random sample that we pulled, 76% of the audience was male, 36% of the audience was Hispanic, and 41% of the aggregate were millennials plugging in on their mobile devices.
Top Demographics: Fans of The Lakers
Drilling down further, we wanted to know what these folks were interested in, and how nuances within the audience suggested a more multicultural segment than simply lumped in a generic “Latino” audience segment.
Top Interests: Fans of The Lakers
Based on the language that fans used and online conversations and affinities, most of the audience is interested in gaming and humor. Reaffirming the multi-cultural dimension of this audience, we can see that among the top interests are networks including NBA Brasil and popular German sports station, SportsChau.
The Hispanic millennial demographic is growing quickly in numbers and in spending power. As such, the demographic is top of mind for many brands and marketers. Armed with better intelligence and an understanding of the nuances and unique intricacies behind their audience, the LA Lakers have been able to become very successful in engaging new customers and fans with the Lakers brand.
Brands use tools like People Pattern to their advantage by discovering distinguishing factors within niche and wider audience segments. For more information about how to get started, contact us or request a platform demo below.
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