Bilingual Strategy: Double Language, Triple Engagement

0:00Today I'm speaking with Susie Jaramillo, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder at Encantos. We're doing what Disney did. We're taking ubiquitous IP and we're bundling them into a beautiful nursery rhyme world and we're presenting them to families as something that they can bash themselves with. As a result, we're solving an audience problem. What has been your biggest lesson from building emotional connections through bilingual content? Your marketing is your content and people should love it. Don't see a separation between the marketing and the content. It's all one thing. Social media is the real media.

0:34Also, being less rigid around your brand guidelines. In the world of social media, it just doesn't work that way. It's way more organic. And sometimes the most raw videos are the things that perform the best.

0:57Hey, everybody. Thank you for listening. Today, I'm speaking with Susie Jaramillo, chief executive officer and co-founder at Encantos, an award-winning children's entertainment and tech company that focuses on bringing diverse stories and characters to life through apps, books, content, and consumer products. How are you doing, Susie? It's a pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here, Andres. Ah, yes. No, we have been so excited, Susie, to get you on the show because after we've looked at what Encantos does and all your experience of the different roles you've had, this is going to be a very interesting podcast.

1:36So that we can put our listeners in contact, Susie, please let me know and tell us a little bit more just about yourself, what Encantos is, and anything you think would be appropriate to share. Sure. So a little background on myself. I'm a I'm actually an artist by training, believe it or not. I went to art school. And so creative is something and, you know, and content that that that inspires people and moves the needle of humanity in the right direction has always been something that's been very satisfying to my soul. And I built my career actually in advertising. I actually built and sold one of the top Latino advertising agencies here in the United States.

2:16And in doing so, I realized that there was this tremendous opportunity around this thing that we call the Latin market, right? This is the U.S. Hispanic market, which is, you know, 20 percent of people and 26 percent of kids. But when you look at the advertising spend, when you look at, you know, the content marketplace, you see that, oh, my goodness, the representation is really low. in the case of, you know, Hollywood representation, it's like under 2 % when it comes to kids content, even though it's 26 % of kids, it's under 5 % of media targeting kids. And, you know, at the same time, I was sitting here at these meetings with my with my retail partners that were like, how do we bring Hispanic families in and in my head, I was like, build a brand, build a brand, There's nothing out there.

3:07Own it, build it, you know. And so when the tech platforms came out and you and I realized you could go direct to consumer and build your own cohorts of audiences. I was like, OK, this is it. I as an artist, as someone who loves content, who loves culture, who loves people. This is an opportunity. It's low hanging fruit. And I need to do this. And so that's how that's how Encantos was born. Encantos is the product of, you know, two families that came together with passion around what is content, what is tech and what is, you know, children and especially specifically to solve the problem of representation for diverse kids.

3:49But we also think we're solving a huge retail opportunity because we know that stores are struggling and we know that Latinos are driving retail purchases and a lot of consumer product growth. So we think we're solving a problem on multiple levels. Oh, my goodness. No, I just leave us to Latinos to always get behind a product that represents us culturally or that even actually appeals to us. Because in the States, I know it's not something that is recurring and could even be diminishing nowadays. The Latino market might not be expanding as before. But that's amazing, Susie. And when talking about Encantos, how are you able to create content that kids love and that the parents will actually want to purchase or buy?

4:34Yeah. So believe it or not, our flagship brand with Encantos is Canticos, right? And so Canticos is the number one bilingual learning brand in the United States. If you think of like, you know, oh, what's a really well-known franchise, a kid's franchise, right, in your head, a show, you might think, oh, Dora the Explorer, right? But what you may not know is that Dora the Explorer is 27 years old and she is a multi-billion dollar brand. Right? And so that just goes to show you the power behind building a kids franchise that people love. And a lot of people don't realize that when you build a kids franchise that lands, these become like multi-billion dollar brands.

5:14I mean, Winnie the Pooh is worth something like$72 billion, right? Right. So this is the thing, like the business opportunity around children's content. And so I thought to myself, wait a second, Latinos. Did you know that Latinos drove 70 percent more, more than 70, 70 plus percent of births in this country as of last year? Yeah. So we are still driving the population growth and we're driving the population growth, not through immigration. It's because we're Catholic. We have four babies. we have bigger families we have bigger families and so it's something like 48 percent of latinos have kids versus 28 percent of general of non-latinos that have kids so we have more kids in our households here in the united states and we are completely driving the population growth of this country and if demographics are destiny i know that we're just destined for success so it's just a matter of time of course no and i understand that if latino families are driving the growth of the people and everybody at this and in the states and everywhere really where they are um it must be really interesting to create content for kids that parents like because i do not imagine anybody more loyal than a latino mother that this show or whatever you provide is actually works for her kids and is bilingual it's like something that must work so well like that's exactly right and so we you know our our look when you're little like people ask me what were your what was your favorite um character cartoon character when you were little and to be honest my favorite cartoon character was was uh pebbles from the flintstone because she was i know this is before your time but i always loved a super sweet and super cute and super sweet, super cute kind of appeared from the landscape of children's media.

7:09And I know that Latino parents specifically love super sweet, super cute, and children love super silly, right? And fun. So when you combine cute with silly and whimsical, and then add on to that layers of just fabulous Latino music, because we know we make the best music. Come on. we do we do we do come on every party who's ruling the world right now bad money shakita right so so um when you add on to this our our amazing music you really have a little a special something right that the market waves and and when you think about it we're doing what disney did i mean disney did it with um hans christian anderson's fairy tales right he took um ip that was in the public domain, you're right, The Little Mermaid, you know, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, all of these like public domain nursery rhymes.

8:05And he bundled them together and put them in a world. We're doing exactly the same thing. We're taking ubiquitous IP, Los Pollitos, Un Elefante, you know, Este Pimpong, and, you know, La Vaca Lola. And we're bundling them into a beautiful nursery rhyme world. And we're presenting them to families as something that they can bash themselves with. And so as a result, we're kind of we're solving an audience problem, right? Because for it's really hard otherwise to meet to reach specific Latino families. It's really hard. It's hard to reach them because a lot of them here in the United States, they're watching HBO, right?

8:40They're watching. They're watching Hulu. They're watching mainstream TV. Only you'll find them on Univision only if they're Spanish dominant. They're on Univision. that's a classic no it's true it's true and they're more there for the sports like honestly if unibir sean killed its sports its audience would be like you know so it's really um and so we're all over the place we're a super fragmented audience that's really hard to reach with canticos you know we super serve latino families no matter their language dominance because what happens you're an english speaking latino um we first of all we do everything in English and in Spanish.

9:18So you're going to understand everything. Right. And secondly, you're going to value, you know, the ability of your children to speak to their cousins or grandparents. Right. And so that which is that's everything like the language is kind of the glue. You know, if your kids can't speak Spanish, they can't speak to their to your parents. And that becomes, you know, you get in trouble with your in-laws. So not to mention your parents um so so with that we knew we had something special with cantico so what we had to do was just execute it in an award-winning way to where it was a really premium brand because the other thing is you know latinos are ciprinos like we like we you know how do i say that in english latinos um we we're discerning we like we're discerning viewers we like high quality premium stuff that represents as well.

10:12And you know what? We overspend. So we overspend compared to our household income and compared to our demographic makeup. And so at a given point, I remember I was working with General Motors back in my agency days and the highest grossing, I'm sorry, the highest grossing dealership, GM dealership was Miami. Of course. Right. Of course. The place of birth with all Latinos. Yeah. So that's, that's the thing. It's like, you know, we, we love, we love design. We love beautiful things. Um, we love culture, we love music. And so we're creating a product, a brand, if you will, that, that really shows up for this market and also shows up for moms that want to expose their children to a second language, right?

11:00To parents that value bilingualism. Now, the educational plus of it being bilingual, and as you mentioned, bridging that gap between the grandsons and the grandparents and just making it a possibility for them to actually communicate well is something beautiful. And Susie, I'd love to know, how do you turn Latino nursery rhymes, or the ones I know as well? because if the audience is not aware here, Susie and me are both from Venezuela. So that's why I have been mentioning so much the Latino culture. But how do you turn these Latino nursery rhymes into an actual modern brand experience that will resonate behind even the fact that just because it comes from the Latino origin, I believe it will.

11:44But is there something else to that formula? Well, first of all, it's, you know, have world-class sensibilities when it comes to producing animation, right? So we work with the best studios and the best talent. I think the studio that put our initial package together was the same studio that did the Mickey Mouse reboot. Right. So we work with really great talent. That's number one. So work with great talent. Number two, work with great musicians. And so we work with, you know, Grammy winning musicians in Latin funk. Right. So Latin pop, Latin funk. So we're working with musicians that don't traditionally do children's music.

12:27They actually, they cater to more of the young adult market. Therefore, they bring a sense of cool to our music that most children's music doesn't have. And so if you think of one of the things that I love about what Disney did is that they might be giants did the hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog song for the Mickey Mouse Club. And if you don't have kids, you don't know it, but it's such a great song. Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog. And we're like, wow, that's such a fun song. And it's because the Giants did it, you know? And so making sure that you work with talent that really is going to make music that parents are going to love too.

13:11Because if parents love the music too, then it's going to be even more on repeat in the house. And there are so many children's brands that parents hate. Like they really are. I'm not going to name any names. But I'm sure parents can think of a few brands that their kids like to watch that you just hate listening to. and we didn't want to be that brand we want to be the brand that brings joy to parents and to kids and so we'll see videos i have this is one video that i love of a woman that posted um uh on social and it's like her cleaning the house with her kids sound asleep and she's like this is me now cleaning the house to cantikos music the kids asleep but i'm still happily cleaning my house to cantikos music you know and that's a win for us i know and i totally get what you mean there because um some of my friendships are already having kids and their kids are not even a year old or maybe a little bit older but what keeps them calm is these tv shows or these things that they put on youtube and it's these songs that just get in their head and kids need to like repeat it endlessly and it's so funny that i go to these parents houses to see the kids and i talk to the parents because they're my friends and they're they only have in their heads the songs that their kids listen to and it's like yeah let's be here let's spend some time talking but we'll have uh now i'm gonna shill canticos and ask them to play it while we're there but they have anything else on and it was on repeat and the child was sound asleep but you can see the parents always like singing to the music and just have it in the back of their mind all time and it was a whole topic of conversation so now that i have better music that I can actually recommend to them that their kids would like, that would be amazing.

14:54And by the way, one of the things that we do is we take advantage of that repetition. So we'll do something, we'll do it in Spanish and then we'll repeat it in English with the insight that when you repeat it, when the child wants it again and again and you do it in that second language, you're really helping with the language acquisition skills. So if they're in Latin America, children are learning English with us. And if they're in the United States, their children are learning Spanish with us. That's amazing. because they know the melody and once they know the words to from one language they'll be able to make the connection to the other oh i that's such a genius idea susie it's so nice if you see our books just really quickly our books are reversible so this is in one side it's in spanish and then the other side it's in english and so right and you go through and it's it's interactive lift the flap and all this stuff right but it ends again in English.

15:50And so that's our whole thing. Again in Spanish, again in English. Wow. I had never seen a book like that. So that sets you apart from all the other brands. And, Suzy, is there any type of process for testing the characters or the products that will make you make sure it's going to connect with the audience? So because we're YouTube brands, we don't have to worry about that. The audience will let us know in all of like, you know, two hours, whether it works or not. We put out the Vaca Lola and she was a hit. I was so thrilled. We got like 2 million views in two weeks, right? And so we were like, amazing.

16:32Like the Vaca Lola is a hit. And now we just put out Chivita, sale ahí Chivita, Chivita. And already it's taking off. We're getting, you know, three times the amount of views we normally get. And it's just only been on the air for a couple of hours. so viewers will let us know quickly if they like a new character or not and if they like we lean in and if they don't you know move on it's the beautiful of the two million views in two weeks that was for la vaca lola i love it and yeah metrics are the best way to know what's happening and what's not i i think after this show after we finish the episode i'm gonna put canticos on youtube and just listen to everything because it just needs to be so interesting.

17:21And, okay, next question up is, Susie, is there a type of balancing that you need to do between the educational messaging, the Spanish, the English, and the entertainment that you make for the consumer market? So I have a core philosophy that if you're not entertaining, you're not educating, you're boring. Okay. because if a child is not engaged, you will not be able to teach that child anything. So you need to start by engaging, entertaining the child, and then you sneak in the learning. Now, our songs are always going to have a little, a little bit of learning because there's always the literacy component, right?

18:00So there's always like, you know, there's, they're always going to be learning words and they're going to be learning vocabulary and they're going to be learning it in two languages. So there's always our number, our sort of ground floor is always going to be language acquisition. Right. Now, on top of ground language acquisition, we might do something like the days of the week. Like, for example, in Sol Solocito, we teach the days of the week or with Dale, Dale, Dale, we teach, you know, we'll teach shapes. And so what we do, we figure out if there's a moment where intuitively it makes sense to teach learning.

18:34um por ejemplo it's like oh we broke a piñata well what comes out in the piñata oh triangles you know you know rectangle little dollar bills with a face you know what i mean so we'll come up with um intuitive ways to do the learning and then sometimes it really is just a nursery rhyme like it's kind of a little lesson about like stubbornness because it's a little stubborn chivita and she does not budging with peer pressure and everybody tries to make her do stuff and she's not budging but then you know when everyone leaves she decides to budge on her own terms wait a second i do want to go play no everyone's leaving let me go you know what i mean so i think i think we um we we don't follow traditional formulas in terms of of of the separation between educational curriculum and entertainment content, we see it as it's all entertainment.

19:35And we're going to leverage this, this, this content body to teach as much as we can. So if we do an oopsie, I'm sorry song, it's really about teaching children, hey, something goes wrong, you can say you're sorry and make things better. Or thank you song where you, you can just meditate on the fact that being grateful for things makes you happy right so we have a very uh 21st century approach to education um and and our parents seem pretty grateful for it it seems and i really like it like because what you're saying are like core values with which i was even raised with and that was 30 years ago so it's something that i believe is always timeless and it's what people want their kids to learn so if that's embedded there and it doesn't feel forced within the entertainment i think you got a perfect formula there

20:32and suzy um i'm not sure if this has ever happened to you but since you actually um what's it called since your brand has representation of latino culture and i believe there must be some stories that are more specific to other cultures, like Latino ones, how do you manage the feedback from communities when you try to represent them? Is that something that happens? You know, okay. So normally everyone's just thrilled. Like we did Wheels on the Bus, but we did a chivita, a chiva from Colombia. You know how those chivas are super colorful and they have all this stuff on the top? We did that. And then we, you know, ping pong is obviously Mexican, but I will give you an example.

21:13We did a little celebration, a little coloring video for 4th of July. And we got some feedback of like, hey, you know, the flag isn't so great. Why are you showing us the American flag? The American flag isn't very popular right now in the Hispanic community. Okay, of course. Because, you know, the American flag is, you know, instilling fears in certain communities, right? And so we had to respond to that because, and in no moment are we ever going to relinquish the American flag. And in fact, we've designed our own canticles version of the American flag when we take our stars and we turn it into a heart.

21:47And so it's a heart in the corner. Because we put the heart in this country. And so I, as the CEO, made a video to talk about the fact that, listen, we have to own this flag as Latinos here in the United States, as proud Latinos in the USA. We need to own this flag and we need to show people who we are. And I understand that certain communities may feel like this flag is now a symbol of exclusion, but it's not. For us Latinos in the United States, we need to keep the integrity of the flag. And we need to keep emphasizing that the flag should represent our values as Latinos in the United States.

22:30And so that was probably the first time we ever got real feedback of that that wasn't positive for what we do. um and so i i would say in general people love it when we put you know we we we put little mexican details or colombian details or puerto rican or we're about to do something that's very cuban right um and you'll see it's a son um but um i think that's the beauty of the u.s hispanic market it's this just mix it's a cacophony of different you know latino cultures all mixed up and it's unique to the USA. Like the USA is its own Latino country. Did you know that there are more Spanish speakers here than there are Canadians in Canada?

23:14I did not know that. Did you know that Spanish is the longest continuously spoken European language in this country? That the Spaniards were here before the pilgrims and that the entire Southwest of the United States was colonized by Spain before it was colonized by the British or any other of the European countries. So the reality is the United States is a Latino country. It's just a Latino country. Of course. I do get that when you mentioned that the Colombian family, if you put something that's Colombian there, they'll get excited or the Cuban families. But it must be true because you and me both know, since we've lived away from our homes at certain points in our lives, that whenever you see a representation of what was your home anywhere else, when you're not there, it just feels like a safe space.

24:09And it feels like somewhere you want to return to. Yeah. I think that's, that's one of our, that's a core value. It's, it's nostalgia, you know, in the same way in American, American family might see curious George or good night moon. And it reminds you of your childhood. People see canticles and it'll remind them of their childhood. Even though canticles didn't exist 30 years ago, they'll hear our songs and we get passionate love letters from families that are like oh my god you gave my child my childhood you know like i excuse myself for comparing canticos to wine but it just seems like it's gonna age so well with time and as the kids grow those kids are gonna remember it for their childhood and they'll play it for their kids so it's like an endless uh business Mark my words, mark my words.

24:55Canticos will last longer than I do. And that makes me very happy. I think that is the goal because you're going to leave a legacy if that happens. And that is amazing, Susie. That's amazing. And tell me something else. What has been your biggest lesson from building emotional connections through bilingual content? So I think that, you know, I've learned a lot. And it's just it's just it's not a single lesson. Remember, I came from traditional advertising to building an entertainment tech startup, you know, leaning into educational content that would reach families in a direct to consumer way.

25:36Right. So one, the responsive ecosystem that all marketing has to live in now. Right. You've got to be plugged in. You've got to be responsive. You have to understand what audiences are looking for and you have to deliver. number two really just thinking that people just have to enjoy like your marketing is your content and people should love it right and so don't see a separation between the marketing and the content it's all one thing i like i used to you know i used to say oh social media takes away from making real media but now it's like no no no social media is the real media you know it is it is the real media.

26:15It's content. It's content snippets. It's just shorter and it's just as important. So really seeing everything, marketing and the content that we make, I see it as kind of all one thing with different formats and different, you know, calls to action. And then also being less rigid around, you know, things like, you know, your brand guidelines and all these things that we used to be really, really rigid about back in the day. In the world of social media, it just doesn't work that way. You know, people... Yeah, it's more organic. It's way more organic. And sometimes the most raw videos are the things that perform the best.

26:57That's true. So it's like almost when you try to be too, you know, controlled, people don't, they're like, ah, this is corporate speak, you know? Uh-huh, yeah. so yeah people don't fall for the overproduction of the content you make it needs to be like genuine and made in the moment and they must know that you're not lying to them so um a lot of that and then you know what else um the we're very clear on our audience and i think that part of what gives us clarity as a business and as a brand is that you know we're inspired by culture and we're starting with latino families because it's the low-hanging fruit and what we know best eventually hopefully we'll expand into other cultures i would love that um every time you say long-hanging fruit all i think of is mango bajito so you gotta go yeah that's right that's right but the truth is that this is this is the this is also the the the audience that's driving most business growth whether it's in you know telecom telecom whether it's in consumer products, whether it's in retail and automotive, it's really this audience that's driving, that's driving all the growth.

28:10And we need bigger cars because we have bigger families. It's like, this is an, and we, we spend more on phones because we're on the phones all the time. And we over, you know, and we're over indexing on social media and we're buying more online because we're on our phones all the time. You know what I mean? And so these are just consumer insights that if you understand it, and if you happen to be both a marketing expert like myself, but also from the culture, and also from the general market, like I've presented to many a CEO, sort of like laying out what is the Hispanic market or a CMO plan, you know, what where the opportunities are, how their shopping habits, their their media consumption habits.

28:53So we're just taking everything that we've learned from from marketing to this demographic. And we're supersizing it with a content-led brand that also has products that they can subscribe to or buy. Oh, wow. Okay. You have it all thought out, Susie. It seems like such a flawless plan. Oh my goodness. And is there any plans to have? Because from my understanding, it's Encantos and Canticos is a product that is coming from Encantos, right? That's right. Of course. And are you guys expanding beyond canticos and or like is there anything else underway yeah we have we you we have a brand called tiny travelers which is slightly smaller and it's it's a it's mostly books um and it basically the idea was to help raise citizens of the world and so it introduces countries and cultures to children at a very young age so they're beautiful we have you know we have Colombia, we have India, we have China, Japan.

29:53So we have a myriad of different countries. And those books have done especially well in libraries and classrooms. People really love that series. We have another series called Skeletina and the In-Between World. And Skeletina helps children deal with their fears and nightmares. So she's a little girl who lives in the in-between world. and when kids come and they're having nightmares and scary dreams Skeletina helps them diffuse their nightmares and she does that with humor and she just helps them figure out this really crazy in between nightmare world and so we've put out two Skeletina books and now we're in conversations to do the series or the movie so that's there A series or a movie for Skeletina?

30:39I love the name it's just so cute but now think about it do you remember your dreams are you the type that remembers or not i do i do remember my dreams i actually try to write them down because i want to astral project but that's another story so so i used to have really intense nightmares and um when i was a very catholic family and so i would wake up and i would go to my mom and i would say mom i had a nightmare and she'd Did you do something bad? And say, you know what I mean? And so she never helped me with my nightmares. And then I finally I was like, I'm just going to let myself drown because I had this constant nightmare that I was drowning.

31:19And so I let myself drown. And then I discovered that I could breathe underwater. And then once I discovered that I could breathe underwater, I learned to fly. And then I learned to reverse time. so once you let go of your fears inside of your dreams you can lucid dream and and like control them and like i my nightmare stopped right there and so i was like and then my daughter has the same thing wouldn't it be cool if if you know there was a girl that would help kids kind of let go of their fears and like let the worst happen i'll be okay and isn't that a great lesson for life you know just letting it flow and making the best i refuse to make decisions based on fear let it flow i'll say that right no no no it really is and i love how it started to sound like a superhero movie suzy because you learned how to breathe underwater you learned to fly reverse time i'm like oh my god in every in your in your dreams you are a superhero and that's part of what a skeleton of teams gets it's true no literally you said that and like a month ago i had a dream i was underwater making friends with different fish so and i knew i was underwater so i think it was a lucid dream but it was you are ahead of the curve you are you are ahead of the you are already breathing underwater my friends aqua money got nothing honest you're good all right okay and bringing it back to the topic at hand suzy is there any strategy that you have because since you're telling me you're creating books you have canticos you have maybe a series or movie in the in the picture for squelettina is there like a strategy used to compete with brands that have bigger budgets or have more time in the market but maybe less cultural authenticity?