Being bilingual made it much easier for Jeb Bush to eloquently communicate his campaign message on television to Latino voters in Florida. It was considered a critical factor in his gubernatorial win last week.

If only all Spanish-language ad agencies could have a Jeb Bush or two.

Conveying advertising messages to the nation’s fast-growing Latino market requires savvy, bilingual copywriters and they are getting more difficult to find.

“We require the same skills a general-market agency does, such as planning, research and creative development, over which we also need linguistic and cultural knowledge,” said Ana Maria Fernandez Haar, president of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies in Virginia. “Our situation reminds me of the old joke about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. They say he was the greatest dancer, but Ginger Rogers danced too and she did it backwards and in heels.”

Los Angeles is the leading Spanish-language advertising market in the United States, with about 4 million Latinos in the county who have purchasing power estimated at $66 billion. The two top-rated radio stations in the L.A. market broadcast in Spanish, and other forms of Spanish media are growing fast.

Trying to reach that booming population are a dozen or so local Latino ad agencies that have reported blistering growth in billings and employees over the course of the past decade. But the supply of seasoned Latino advertising executives is still small.

“Less than 2.8 percent of advertising and public relations managers are Hispanic. It’s pretty pitiful,” said Heidi Gardner, senior manager at the American Advertising Federation in Washington. “The workforce in advertising is not representative of the consumer.”

In the hunt for qualified bilingual executives, most local Latino agencies are looking beyond their backyards. Some have paid thousands of dollars in attorney fees to help individuals secure immigration visas to the United States from countries in Central and South America.

Century City-based Valdes Zacky Advertising, which has grown from five to 30 employees in 11 years, has filled vacancies with executives from Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Spain.

“It’s hard to find what we’re looking for here in the States,” said Eduardo Cortes, executive vice president and creative director at Valdes Zacky, whose major client is Mitsubishi Motor Sales of America Inc. “We consider the Hispanic market diverse, especially if we’re working on accounts at a national level. In the local market, 80 percent of Hispanics in L.A. are Mexican. But, if you go to Miami, you’ll find Cubans. You go to New York, there are Puerto Ricans. Each culture has its nuances.”

At La Agencia de Orci & Asociados in West Los Angeles, the county’s largest Latino ad agency, the entire 65-person staff is bilingual, from the finance department to the receptionist. That makes the search for bilingual labor a constant undertaking, said Hector Orci, the agency’s co-chairman.

“It’s easier to find Latinos that are bilingual than Anglos that are. We have an aggressive recruiting policy. We have a number of headhunters in Texas, Mexico, the West Coast. We’re always looking for talent and willing to grow,” said Orci, whose agency began as a five-employee shop in 1986.

Because they are in demand, qualified bilingual workers can usually command higher salaries than their English-only counterparts. “We tend to pay 10 to 12 percent above the general-market agencies,” Orci said. “Our account supervisors can earn more than $100,000 per year, compared to $60,000 to $80,000 paid at other companies.”

With Latino advertising budgets exploding, Orci said he can afford to offer bigger salaries. When his business first opened, he was dealing with companies that typically devoted tiny portions of their ad budgets, say $50,000 or so, toward reaching the Latino market. Now clients like American Honda Motor Co. spend millions on Spanish media, and Orci’s total billings now stand at $60 million.

Besides looking overseas for talent, Latino agencies are also targeting college students. Ad agencies specializing in Spanish-language media tend to be more willing to train inexperienced employees from scratch than general-market advertisers often taking in bilingual interns who haven’t yet graduated and teaching them such basics as correct Spanish grammar.

“We get them while they’re in college as interns. They learn the ropes and conceivably, we can hire them when they graduate,” said Anita Santiago, founder of Anita Santiago Advertising Inc. in Santa Monica, which worked on the Spanish-language version of the “Got Milk?” campaign.

“I feel lucky that I got a job here. It’s my first job out of college. I really think my bilingual skills helped me land this position,” said copywriter Carlos Gonzalez, 23, who has worked on Homebase Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. ads at Anita Santiago. “I know this culture, I live it, I speak it. When you know the market, you know how they will react. You can use your instincts to judge the success of a campaign.”

The shortage of bilingual employees may not last forever. Gardner said that, based on anecdotal evidence and the federation’s first survey on student study habits, more and more Latino college students are pursuing a career in advertising.

The AAF studied the membership of its campus chapters around the country, which are clubs made up of students in college advertising programs. About 19 percent of chapter members at UCLA are Latino, according to Gardner, along with 25 percent at the University of Arizona and 37 percent at the University of Miami.

“Compared to five years ago, we see the number of Hispanics entering the field rising,” Gardner said. “However, it can’t be assumed that all are bilingual, since many are second- and third-generation Hispanics.”