Hispanic marketing 101: what do to with “Chi-chis”

Hormel Foods has enrolled a bunch of marketing students from Chicago’s DePaul University to help find answers in how to market to Hispanic consumers.

According to –who else?– Pork News, 12 DePaul students were enlisted to analyze a dozen of Hormel brands that are not currently active in the Hispanic market and identify “growth opportunities.” This, of course, to give the kids a chance to prove their marketing skills. “We easily could have assigned this project to an established research company, but we wanted to see what these promising students could discover,” a Hormel executive said in a statement.

I have no idea what these kids came up with, but I can only hope they could talk the company into reconsidering the name of one of its most popular “ethnic” salsas: Chi-chi’s. Or, at the very least, recommend a more spicy –and suitable– pitch to make the most out of such a kinky brand. How about a celebrity spokesperson? (think Lorena Herrera, Verónica Castro or La Tetanic) And don’t worry if they are not real; the salsas are also pretty fake.

(And in case you don’t know what Chichis are, you can always click here).