Am I bicultural because I speak Spanish or because I can look at a stock photo of green plantains and not see a hunk of rotting bananas? Because when I see it I think of standing in front of the stove lifting hot disks from popping oil and placing them on a salted napkin before pressing them and frying them again. Because when I see the brown spots, I think of how the skins will eventually go black, the inside will go pink, and they’ll get sweet and bake inside the oven with white, squeaky cheese.
Or am I bicultural because when I was in Colombia this summer I mentioned to my husband’s aunt that I was dying for something green and she said, “We have plantains,” and I laughed. She was completely serious in offering this starchy, heavy food as a vegetable when I was Jonesing for some lettuce, bell peppers, even broccoli – all of which I found when she left the house and I raided the fridge and made myself a salad.
How is it that this Georgia peach understands an Ecuadoran plantain? Am I holding the key to some mystery that will unlock an ever-increasing share of the U.S. market? How can I take this culinary knowledge and, as a communications professional, bridge cultures for my clients and my team?
It is interesting what discussions around the design table reveal. One member of our team, from Argentina, reminded me that its all meat all the time there, and the plantains might not strike the same chord as they would with Dominicans or Guatemalans who make up a large part of the Hispanic market in Rhode Island. Another colleague, a native of New England, said she’d tried plantains once and didn’t like them, but perhaps she’d prepared them wrong. When she told me she’d eaten them raw, she looked shocked when I replied that was the equivalent of eating a raw potato.
These conversations and this experience also reveal in a new way the importance of knowing and targeting your market. Where this piece would be distributed was key to what it should include, not only in terms of being offered in Spanish as well as English, but the images that would be chosen and how they would be represented.
While our non-Latin clients and some members of our team might initially see it and want to break out the Photoshop to smooth out the spots, a large portion of our Hispanic target would see it hanging in their kitchen and look over to a large aluminum bowl on the counter filled with the same green staple waiting to be prepared.
Perhaps I do hold some key to unlocking the Hispanic market. But if I do, it is just the willingness, like my colleague, to try something unfamiliar, to sit with gusto at the table set with dishes that, growing up, I might not have been able to pronounce.
