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Spanish Language Web Site Analysis - barackobama.com/espanol |
Analysis of Barack Obama's Spanish Language Website
by Ricardo González
analysis completed on web page in January, 2008
Senator Barack Obama has been all the rage with his message of hope and change. In this month's Website Marketing Analysis let's take a closer look at his Spanish language website. My intent here is not political, only business. We can learn some important lessons through this analysis.
There are some things to emulate and some things to avoid. Please open this .pdf file, print it and have it there as a reference during this analysis. Let's dig in!
Overall Grade: C-
The Effective: I always like to start with the positive so here goes.
1. Navigation is in Spanish. This may seem like an insignificant point but so many "Spanish Language Websites" make this blaring mistake. For example, check out Hillary's Spanish language website. You will see that the navigation is in English, not Spanish as one would expect at a Spanish language website.
2. If you don't read Spanish, you will miss this but I quote from the first paragraph, "hasta el liderazgo visionario de César Chávez". To align oneself with César Chávez is to align oneself with arguably the most important Mexican civil rights leader in the history of the United States. This is a very direct appeal to the support of the Mexican people. As you will see in the "On-the-Border" section, this is a double-edged sword when one is seeking the vote of Latinos from many countries.
3. On his front page he cites an interview with Univision about Immigrations. Now, you can't get any more bottom line than this. Univision is THE dominant media outlet among Latinos and that includes both television and radio. Immigrations is obviously the hot-button issue among Latinos.
4. He puts an essay by Mario Vargas Llosa, a Peruvian writer and ex-Politico for the Presidency of Perú in 1990 in opposition to Alberto Fujimori. He has been a visiting professor and resident writer for many universities around the world, including Harvard, Sen. Obama's alma matter. What I applaud here is aligning himself with one of the leading Latino writers of modern times. It would take another analysis completely to dissect Mr. Vargas Llosa's politics, which is not the point here. By the way, "Vargas" is his father's last name, "Llosa" is his mother's last name. Latinos outside of the United States the on both of their parent's last names. Even upon marriage, many Latinas maintain this last name and do not assume the last names of their husbands.
The Ineffective:
1. Ok, here's the BIG mistake, and it is visual. The picture. Yes, the picture. There are NO Latinos in the pictures. All Anglo Senior Citizens. How this one could slip past Sen. Obama's marketing team I have absolutely no idea. If you click through the rest of the site as I did, you do not see any pictures of Sen. Obama with Latinos — at least I didn't. If you see one, submit it here.
2. Although the top-side navigation is in Spanish, the navigation for my.barackobama.com in the right-hand call out area is all in English. They should change that to Spanish.
3. The front page is heavy, heavy text. Too much reading and not enough pictures. Latinos are even more visually inclined than Anglos and this is a mistake.
4. His front page lead message is on the Hispanic Heritage Month which is in October. That was almost four months ago. The subliminal message is, "you Latinos are so important we are going to update the Spanish language section at least three times a year."
5. In Sen. Obama's appearance on the Univision show, Piolín, he says, "No hay una América blanca, otra afroamericana y otra América hispana", dijo Obama. Here's the English translation and then my comments on it: "There is not a white America, and another African American, and another Hispanic America." When are Anglos, whether Black, White or whatever color going to realize that Latinos are of all colors? Latinos are black, white, mestizo, whatever. You can as easily see a blond hair blue eyed Latino as you can a black Latino. Our divisions are not primarily about race color, they are about socioeconomic classism. This type of statement irritates a lot of Latinos and Anglos are wise to avoid these types of skin pigmentation based divisions.
The On-The Border
1. At the very bottom of his front page for Spanish-speakers they make a case about incorporating Spanish language sub-titles on their Internet videos. You can link to this through the call out on the right that says, BARACKTV en ESPANOL. (By the way, if letters are capitalized in Spanish you do not need to put the accent marks, but you do need to put the Ñ over the capital N. They should fix this on the BARACKTV en ESPANOL button.
Back to the point about the television. I think that he would be much better off doing voice over than subtitles. He should do this for his most important videos like getting to know him and his wife, Michelle. The Latino culture overall is not as much of a reading culture as the Anglo-American culture. Also, and unfortunately, many Latino laborers have not had opportunity for formal education and do not read Spanish well. The subtitles effectively disenfranchise these people from Sen. Obama's message, something I am sure, he would not want to do.
2. Sen. Obama needs to make sure he truly wants to align himself with César Chávez. He is highly regarded among Mexican labor and civil rights activists to be sure. The problem he has to consider is that there is zero or possibly even negative resonance here with Latinos from Cuba, Venezuela, Cuba and Puerto Rico. There will be some affinity from most Central Americans in that many of them in the U.S. are in the labor class.
I think this is enough for you, and perhaps Sen. Obama's staff, to chew on. The lessons here apply just as much to corporate websites as to political websites. As we all know, politics is business as usual.
Adelante,
Ricardo González
Ricardo González is Founder and Executive Director of Bilingual America and Publisher of The González Report. He is published regularly by BNP Media and has a regular feature in Florida Home Builders Association Residential and Commerical Magazines. He is also the author of several training courses as well as has a new book coming out late summer 2008, "Café con Milk."
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