Hispanic & Asian Firms Partner To Target Tweens.

GarciaLKS 360 was named as one of the contractors of record for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Targeted Youth Media Campaign.

The CDC awarded a total of three contracts amounting to $125 million to three lead agencies, each with individual partners. The lead agencies included Frankel, The A Partnership, and Garcia LKS 360, who will work together to achieve the campaign’s goals.

GarciaLKS is one of two targeted contractors that the CDC selected from about 200 agencies to promote healthy lifestyles and displace unhealthy, risky behaviors among ethnic tweens (ages 9-13 years old). The goal is to promote positive activities that develop personal goals and self-esteem. These include sports, hobbies, potential career skills and community service among tweens and their influencers (parents, teens, teachers, coaches and others).

All kids have basic needs during this time of transition, change, experimentation, and puberty. Hispanic and Asian tweens, however, face some very different experiences from their general market counterparts when it comes to their health value systems. CDC officials reported that they were “excited to be working with GarciaLKS and their partner AAAZa to reach the ethnic youth of America with positive messages of inclusion and motivation.”

“We researched the values that are driving behavior in these two cultures and found similarities between Hispanics and Asians that could create a paradigm for future partnerships,” said Luis Garcia, president of GarciaLKS.

Jeanine Kim, AAAZa’s president, added: “Ours was an integrated approach to insure that the program would be multicultural in scope from inception. After all, today’s tween are themselves multicultural.”

GarciaLKS has assembled a team of specialists in a variety of functions working together on the CDC Targeted Youth Campaign to provide a plan that motivates and reaches Hispanic and Asian tweens: Magnet Communications Hispanic Practice in Los Angeles; Admerasia Media in New York City; Triton Productions in Miami; Media Rare in San Antonio; Elissa Moses’ Brain Group, and various other ethnic and tween experts. The campaign will use multi-media strategies that include advertising, in-school media, event marketing, outreach through partnerships, role models and extensive grassroots activities.

According to Garcia: “This is more than just a public awareness campaign for us. We’re truly passionate about the opportunity to use our advertising and marketing expertise in the Hispanic market to help a nation of tweens choose active and healthy lifestyles. These kids are the future of America and we should reach them early to help them get on the right track.” Garcia added, “We’re especially excited about taking this pivotal effort to community organizations and corporations for their involvement in reaching minority tweens, and their parents, for this worthy cause.”

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