Independent Research Study

Uni-fox from Xiomara Lopez

Quality – A general market ad agency will work with the Hispanic ad agency. Both work together for a client, but because they compete for resources, the Hispanic agency has a more subordinate role. To minimize costs for Hispanic-American television advertising production, techniques such as the following are used:

                    - dubbing: directly translating spots from English to Spanish
                    - re-editing footage obtained from general market shoots
                    - shadow-shooting: using the same concept, location and film crew but shooting with Hispanic actors
                    - Voiceovers: avoiding on-camera dialogue in an effort to minimize talent and residual costs

I found that there were in fact many voiceover ads on Univision. Existing commercials were adapted to the Hispanic market by using clips with no on-camera dialogue and adding Spanish narration. From my commercial sample, Bounty, Head and Shoulders, Toaster Strudel, Target, Maybelline, Yoplait, Charmin were all examples.


Social structure– Secondly, I focused on social structures which unexpectedly reflected much on each market's culture. I did this by counting the number of people in each commercial and categorizing by Solo (1), Couple (2), Group (3+), Family. As slide 16 demonstrates, Fox had the lowest family type commercials but highest Solo type and Univision had low Solo types for its sample.

The most popular types of commercials on Univision were Couples, Family and Groups. The Fox commercial samples consisted of one Family type. The majority of commercials on Fox however were Solo type while Univision only had 3.


I also proved that there was an emphasis on humor in the general market commercials as opposed to  family emphasis in the Hispanic-American commercials.