Tier10 Marketing owner Sean Wolfington was honored to be a featured panelist at the second annual J.D. Power Automotive Marketing Roundtable in Las Vegas last month. Wolfington was part of the panel discussion titled Top Marketers Insights on Winning with Hispanics. Wolfington and panel members shared their research and insights on how they opened new doorways and crossed the threshold of traditional automotive marketing to expand their market reach into the Hispanic automotive marketing arena.

The panel also featured Brian Benstock, Vice President and General Manager with Paragon Auto Group; Trina Barta, Director of Media Operations with General Motors; Tom Peyton, Associate Vice President of Advertising and Marketing with American Honda Motor Co., and was moderated by Paul Sellers, Vice President of Automotive with Univision Communications, Inc.

“Millennials and second or third generation children with Hispanic heritages are a huge group to reach right now during the digital and mobile age,” said Peyton. “Their parents love [certain automakers], but they might not buy into everything their parents did. It is a huge opportunity. We just need to understand their purchasing habits are different and discover how to market directly to them.”

With 52 million living in America today, Hispanics are the largest, youngest and fastest-growing minority group in the country. Additionally, 10 percent of all car sales are to Hispanics. The executives sitting on the JD Power Panel saw this growing gap within the automotive industry and made a conscious choice to fill it.

Wolfington recognized that the traditional advertising tools do work for the Hispanic community. It is the approach, rather, that needed to be altered. Hispanics media markets, celebrity figures, and cultural events have shown to be very effective ways to market to the community.

“This growing and yet underserved community will now be a priority in the automotive marketing world thanks to forward-thinking marketing strategies that take the initiative to ensure all demographics are sufficiently targeted,” said Wolfington.

The J.D. Power & Associates Automotive Marketing Roundtable is a three-day event that featured automotive industry experts from around the world sharing their thoughts and proven methods through multimedia presentations and panel discussions. Over 1,300 automotive industry professionals attended the event.