Signet Launches First Spanish-Language Ads

RAPAPORT… Signet Jewelers has introduced its first foreign-language advertising campaigns in the US market, targeting the growing number of Hispanic millennials expected to marry in the coming years.

“They are a big customer group, and getting a lot bigger given the disproportionately high portion of the millennial population that Hispanics constitute,” Signet executive vice president and chief marketing officer Bill Brace told Rapaport News Wednesday. “That in turn translates into a higher incidence of engagements and marriages.”

The Spanish ads, which are for the jeweler’s Jared and Zales banners, premiered in the two weeks before Valentine’s Day, with the Jared ad continuing to run for an additional week. After the campaign ends, Signet will review the data and decide whether to bring the ads back later in the spring. The company focused on those two banners because their geographic location lends itself to a higher percentage of Hispanic customers, but there are plans to roll out additional ads across all banners.

“As we speak, we have our marketing team sitting downstairs in San Antonio doing focus groups with Hispanic consumers and shop-alongs,and other things,” he noted. “[This will help us] continue to really immerse ourselves in the insights into how Hispanics see our category and to build out from those initial steps across all our banners,” Brace, who is also the head of the Jared banner, explained.

Signet plans to launch the campaign nationally on television and digital, including YouTube, video on demand, Telemundo, Univision and ESPN Deportes, Brace noted. The move is part of the company’s new customer-first focus, which it has been implementing over the past year and a half as part of its broader Path to Brilliance plan to realign the company with consumer demand.

“We are really trying to be more true in speaking to people when and where they are receptive, in a manner that really resonates with them,” Brace said. “I think what we’ve realized is that we had a big opportunity to really modernize the way we were depicting love and relationships, and part of that comes with the diversity of who we’re speaking to, so we’ve been much more deliberate in representing the diverse composition of the US market.”

Hispanics comprise approximately 18% of the US population, and about 23% to 24% of millennials, according to Brace.

Image: The Jared Spanish-language ad (top); Bill Brace (right). (Signet Jewelers)