Ed Flores and Hector Fabio Prado are the creative backbone of Bromley Aguilar + Associates, a predominantly Hispanic ad agency based in San Antonio, Texas. Flores, the agency's senior art director, and Prado, creative director, see the main challenge of their job as transcending the cultural stereotypes that so frequently form the basis for advertising aimed at Spanish-speaking consumers.

"We can communicate with people in the Spanish market in forms other than stereotypes - they are not dumb. We want to work with more global ideas, to send a message that can be understood by an American, an Argentinean or a Korean," says Prado. "When you see our commercials, you can't identify if they're Mexican or anything else. They feel Spanish, but you are not sure what country they are from."

Prado, 32, started his advertising career in his native Colombia. After working for McCann-Erickson Lintas Worldwide and other agencies throughout Latin America, on multinational accounts such as Coca-Cola, Nabisco and Chevrolet, he came to Bromley Aguilar in 1997.

Flores, 41, is a native Texan who has worked for Bromley since 1992.

He supervises art direction and conceptualization for accounts like Procter & Gamble and Western Union. Before coming to Bromley, Flores worked as an art director for JCPenney. He says his client-side experience helps him work with clients, which, in turn, helps him convince advertisers to avoid using ethnic stereotypes in their advertising.

"(Stereotyping) comes from creatives who have not been on the client side and don't know how to tell a client they are stereotyping without offending them," says Flores. "(Clients) have this perspective of Hispanics as 'oh la familia,' and we've been there and done that. It's time to move on."

Prado adds that many clients fail to appreciate that the Hispanic market is made up of people from many countries other than Mexico.

"So we try [to] speak in a voice that is pan-Hispanic," says Prado. "We eliminate the use of idiomatic expressions so our ads can be understood by an Argentinean or a Mexican or a Puerto Rican."

Flores' work for P&G's Charmin brand and Levi's Hard Jeans won Bromley Aguilar the best of show and best retail awards at Advertising Age's Hispanic Creative Advertising Awards this year. Both spots take unusual approaches. The Charmin spot uses a male voice singing "soft, soft is how I like it," harmonized with a whining dog outside the bathroom door to drive home the point that Charmin is so soft people don't just sing in the shower anymore. The Levi's Hard Jeans spot begins with the image of barbed wire. As the camera pulls out, we see the barbs are actually rigid Levi's jeans.

Prado, who works closely with Flores on most projects, says this work demonstrates how the agency tries to push its clients past conventional advertising into what he calls communication advertising.

"Communication advertising tries to include something more interesting than just the benefits of the product," says Prado. "It's not just for information, more for empathy, so consumers will like the product. If we can create this emotional moment and connect it with the rational benefits of the product, then we have made it."

Prado says generating this empathy is necessary because of the increasingly sophisticated nature of the U.sboards||19991101. Hispanic consumer.

"The people who are consumers now aren't the same people who crossed the river from Mexico years ago," says Prado. "This generation is [composed of] people who came here to study, professional people. People like me."

WEB.FILES
Bromley Aguilar + Associates: www.bromleyaguilar.com