By Cliff Peale
The Cincinnati Enquirer

When you think of leading brands at Procter & Gamble Co., Gain detergent might not come to mind.

It's a midpriced brand in laundry, a category that P&G has dominated for decades with higher-priced Tide.

BUYING POWER

A key reason that companies like Procter & Gamble are focusing on marketing to ethnic groups is their increasing economic clout. The buying power of Hispanics - which have surpassed blacks as the largest U.S. ethnic group - will be roughly $900 billion a year in 2007, up from just over $200 billion in 1990, according to a study by the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia. African-Americans' buying power will surpass $800 billion in 2007, up from $300 billion in 1990, the same study says. That growth in Hispanic income is only likely to accelerate. The Census Bureau estimates the Hispanic population will jump from 11.8 percent of all Americans in 2000 to 18.2 percent in 2025 to 24.3 percent by 2050. The number of Hispanics in Greater Cincinnati has more than doubled in the past 10 years, although the community is smaller than in many other Midwest metro areas. According to the 2000 Census, the Hispanic population here totaled 20,819, and some experts believe the actual count is significantly higher than that. About 10 percent of the Hispanic population here posted household income of more than $100,000, Census figures showed.

But Gain is way ahead - "overdeveloped," in Procter-speak - in one playground where Procter wants to play more: Hispanic consumers.

Every box of Gain sold in the U.S. features both English and Spanish on the box. Its market share among Hispanic consumers is 80 percent higher than among the general population.

Catalina Landivar of Oakley said Gain is her favorite detergent because of its different scents, which P&G said is important to Hispanic consumers.

And she gets direct mail from P&G with offers in Spanish.

"If I have two products that I'm not familiar with before, I will be tempted to try first the one that has a bilingual label, just because I think they're making a special effort to cater to people like me," she said.

Within P&G, Gain is a symbol of the company's success in targeting certain brands to consumers in certain ethnic groups.

Like most big companies, it has specific programs to attract Hispanic and African-American consumers, hoping to tap into fast-growing demographic groups.

"This is not a fad," said Robert Montemayor, marketing director at market-watcher HispanTelligence. "What's turning heads is when you look at aggregate totals, it's making the cash registers ring."

For P&G, targeting ethnic groups is a business proposition - as much as $5 billion in added sales during the next decade, the company said.

Combined, African-American and Hispanic consumers in the U.S.have more than $1.2 trillion in spending power and are increasing that faster than the general population.

Last summer, P&G created separate budgets to target African-American consumers, hoping to make similar inroads. That has led to product lines such as the new Pantene Relaxed & Natural, targeted specifically to women of color.

"We definitely are better than we were five years ago, and we continue to make progress," said Susan Mboya, associate director of African-American business development at P&G.

P&G, which spends more than $4 billion globally every year on advertising, spent $80 million last year on marketing targeted to Hispanics, the most of any company in the country and up almost 15 percent from 2002, according to HispanTelligence. Giants such as Walt Disney Co. and P&G beauty-care rival L'Oreal were far down the list.

The Hispanic-marketing effort has been a separate part of P&G's structure for several years to take advantage of the demographic trends. But in the last year alone, the company has:

• Introduced Crest Whitening Expressions, a series of flavored Crest toothpastes that P&G thinks will appeal to Hispanic consumers. P&G's research has told it that brands with scents and flavors are popular among Hispanics.

"I think there's some truth to that," HispanTelligence's Montemayor said.

• Started selling Ariel detergent in the southwestern U.S. It was sold in most of the world except the U.S. until now

• Aired a Spanish-language commercial for Crest on the U.S. broadcast of the Grammy Awards.

• Launched its first bilingual packaging for Tide in the U.S.

• Introduced Charmin Scents, again targeting the scented product to the Hispanic audience.

The strategy is classic P&G: Swarm the consumer with packaging, advertising and publicity that makes its commitment to certain ethnic groups evident. Then add to the product itself to make it more attractive.

Thus, the Spanish-language ads, the new scents and flavors, and the multilingual packaging.

Once again, Gain is the classic example, with advertising touting it as "the irresistible scent of Gain."

"I wouldn't go so far to say that Gain is only for Hispanics, but it's very suited for this type of consumer," said Mauricio Troncoso, marketing director for Gain's Hispanic marketing efforts in North America. "It's a considerable part of the brand's growth."

In the 12 "client brands" targeted to Hispanic audiences, about 80 percent of the packaging includes Spanish as well as English in the U.S., said Graciela Eleta, P&G vice president for multicultural business development. She said that unless regulatory issues prohibit it, P&G clearly is moving toward putting Spanish on every package.

"Language is about as specialized as you can get, when it comes to marketing," Montemayor said. "For a number of us in the Hispanic community, even though we're in an English-speaking country, we like to be sold to in the mother tongue. And for a lot of us, that's Spanish."

E-mail cpeale@enquirer.com