For many brands, there is the tried and true method of taking an overarching pan-Spanish language approach to advertising and marketing, thereby appealing to as many Spanish speakers as possible, regardless of cultural distinction. The advantage to the pan-language approach is that it's a cost-efficient way to reach as many people as possible without devoting more time and resources to micro-targeting. The drawback is that with a void of significant cultural symbols, the approach can leave a cold, generic impression without ever really reaching the intended audience.

The financial services industry—banking, in particular—has in many ways pioneered the targeting the Latino markets through bilingual branding and marketing efforts. While bilingual brochures and marketing collateral began to appear as early as the 1980s with major banks such as Chase and Bank of America to target Spanish-speaking customers, their visual presence in branches was more secondary and often had to be requested.

Today, walking into a Bank of America in regions such as the southwestern states of the US is an experience in true bilingualism, complete with large posters advertising the latest mortgage rates in English and Spanish and fluently bilingual bank representatives behind teller desks—even reps of Caucasian ethnicity. Banks today make no secret about aggressively hiring bilingual staff to accommodate their growing customer base.

According to Bank of America, deposits from Hispanic customers totaled more than $15 billion—one third of all new checking accounts opened in 2004. The numbers continue to increase mostly due to word of mouth. "It used to be Latinos held onto their cash and didn't use bank accounts," says Robert Calvillo, a personal banker and loan officer for Bank of America. "Now they talk to one another, and one will tell the other about this or that kind of account…. They educate each other and so they're a lot more savvy than before."

A more savvy audience also includes a more computer- and Internet-literate audience. J. Moncada, vice president and chief strategy officer of Bromley Communications, a Latino advertising agency, notes that the marketing trends are moving toward further demographic segmentation and further micro-targeting of specific cultural groups—not only through traditional brand-building applications but particularly through the Internet. Adds Terra.com's Azan, 98 percent of her site's advertisers use Spanish copy to direct consumers to their Spanish-only website.

Alycia de Mesa is a brand identity consultant and writer with over 10 years experience from Fortune 100 to start-up companies. She is author of Before The Brand, the definitive brand identity handbook, published by McGraw-Hill (under the name Alycia Perry).