For my Current Topic Report, I would like to explore Noche Latina, the NBA’s current marketing campaign that was launched to attract Latino fans to the world of professional basketball. This topic interests me for the simple reason that I am a fan of the NBA and I am of Latino descent. Over the past decade, there has been a dramatic rise of the Latino population in the U.S. and with that we have seen an increase in business strategies to market to this segment. In regards to customer insights, I would like to explore how successful this campaign has been for the NBA in attracting and keeping Latino fans and in what direction they are wanting to take their efforts. They types of questions I will be addressing are:
-How have they designed their campaign in order to make the greatest impact in attracting Latino fans?
-What type of persona have they created for this campaign?
-What are variables/factors that are affecting this persona’s decisions/behaviors?
-What is their long-term marketing strategy?
-How has behavioral economics, stereotypes and expectations affected the target market’s experiences with Noche Latina?
The ultimate goal for this report is to explore a customer insight issue. With that being said, I feel that one of the issues with this initiative is that it is only being executed among teams that are in cities with large Latino populations and not across the board. If the NBA really wants to penetrate this market they must do so on a larger scale, otherwise their efforts may not seem genuine to this segment. Another issue is that the NBA should be careful in not making the assumption that all Spanish-speakers are culturally and/or linguistically similar. For example, simply putting “El” or “Los” in front of a team name does not necessarily make them more relatable to such a mass market and it might even be considered offensive to some. This is where behavioral economics and stereotypes come into play. Going back to the point of larger-scale efforts, I feel that the Latino market is too huge to be effectively marketed to by just one night of pre-game and post-game activities, only done by teams in cities with large Latino populations. For the NBA’s campaign to be truly successful, it must be carried out all season long. An idea could be to possibly integrate Noche Latina with another one of the NBA’s well-known initiatives, NBA Cares. Doing so would allow this marketing campaign to be executed year-round and help the organization reach out to the Latino community. Making a large-scale impact on the community would go a much longer way in terms of building customer trust and loyalty as opposed to trying to build awareness of the Latino culture and language a few nights during the regular season. This would make it easier for the NBA to build brand equity, especially because studies have shown that the Latino population is overall very brand loyal.
I’m really looking forward to writing this paper not only because I am a huge basketball fan but also because I am Latina and this marketing campaign specifically relates to me. Although I have never experienced Noche Latina first-hand, I have been to a Houston Rockets game, several San Antonio Spurs games, the 2010 All-Star game in Dallas, and I’ve visited the Staples Center in L.A., all cities with large Latino populations. I’m hoping that the fact that I’m so closely tied to the topic as a customer will make for a more interesting paper in which I will be able to provide some of my own key insights and experiences.
Here are some articles that I found on the NBA’s Noche Latina initiative:
http://www.pe.com/sports/basketball/lakers/stories/PE_News_Local_N_lakers18_cp.483817d.html
http://www.nba.com/2010/news/features/art_garcia/03/05/noche.latina/index.html
