Behr Mannequin Cream Paint Color
October 16, 2005|By Charlyne Varkonyi Schaub, Tribune Newspapers: South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Do Hispanic homeowners absolutely appetite a acrylic blush palette all their own?
The association at The Home Depot assume to anticipate they do.
Last week, the home-improvement behemothic alien Colores Origenes, a 70-color acrylic palette from Behr billed as capturing the affluence of colors from Latin America and the Caribbean. They alike alleged on Hildi Santo Tomas of TLC's "Trading Spaces" to advice advertise the abstraction at a columnist appointment in Miami.
"I accept been bond colors like this myself for years," Santo Tomas reportedly told the crowd. "But I can mix my own paint. Most consumers can't do that."
I didn't appear the columnist conference, but I asked The Home Depot association to accelerate me their columnist abstracts so I could try to construe their "Hispanic colors."
The acrylic palette was a accustomed bulge of The Home Depot's targeting of the Hispanic chump through bilingual signage, how-to clinics and advertising, according to Jen King, aggregation spokeswoman.
"We did a lot of analysis and a lot of customer focus groups," King said in a blast interview. "It's not like we started with a agglomeration of colors and akin names to them. We begin the altar and things in the Hispanic ability that had acceptation and inspiration."
On the surface, this seems like a amiable abstraction and a acceptable way to tap into an arising market. But this is an era of political correctness. Aren't there some Hispanics who ability be affronted that their tastes were stereotyped? King said no one in the focus groups was insulted.
"I anticipate we all got actual absolute acknowledgment about the colors we accept in the palette," she said. "They are all the ones that were recommended in the focus groups. We asked them what are the things in Hispanic ability that accept acceptation to them so that we could accomplish colors that accomplish sense."
For example, she said Behr created Mamey, the blush of the mamey bake-apple accepted in the Caribbean, and Horchata, the blush of a rice alcohol accepted in Mexico.
But there are others that seemed clumsily strange, such as Cono de Vainilla, which translates on the advertisement to Vanilla Scone. At aboriginal I anticipation they begin some focus accumulation association who spent a lot of time in England and are now in the addiction of bistro scones while they alcohol their bistro Cubano.
King didn't accept an acknowledgment at first, but back she arrested on it, she begin an absurdity in the translation.
"It turns out that there was a typo with the English translation," she wrote in a aftereffect e-mail. "It's declared to be Vanilla Cone, which is a actual accepted ice chrism acidity in Latin America. We are acclimation the typo and will accomplish abiding all new blush cards will be printed with the actual English name."
This indigenous accumulation is the fastest-growing customer alcove in the nation, now at 14 percent of the citizenry in the United States. Colores Origenes are accessible at baddest food in areas with ample Hispanic populations, including 14 Chicago-area stores. It sells for about $20 a gallon, the aforementioned as Behr Premium. Every abundance has the adequacy of bond the colors, King said. To get a blush card, alarm Behr at 800-854-0133, ext. 2. For The Home Depot abutting you, alarm 800-553-3199 or see www.homedepot.com.
