PR Newswire Launches Broadcast Services For Hispanic & LatAM Markets.

PR Newswire launched U.S. Hispanic and Latin America Broadcast Services, providing both production and distribution services “in-language and in-culture” to serve the growing appetite for video and audio broadcast content in the thriving Latin marketplaces.

“The U.S. Hispanic and Latin American media are starved for multimedia — especially B-roll background video footage and video news releases — but they need the broadcasts in Spanish or Portuguese in order to use them,” said Larry Thomas, PR Newswire’s vice president of multimedia. “At the same time, many of our clients are starting to focus more on reaching the Latin markets, which have a combined buying power estimated at $452 billion worldwide.”

PR Newswire’s broadcast services, which include audio news releases, electronic press kits, B-roll packages and satellite media tours, reach the major Hispanic media in the United States and newsrooms across Latin America via e-mail and newswire alerts with story information and satellite coordinates. The company produced its inaugural Latin broadcast last week for Century 21 of Parsippany, N.J. on its Major League Baseball 2001 Home Run Derby contest. The successful satellite media tour and B-roll package has been viewed by 6.7 million people in English and Spanish.

A team experienced with reaching media in the Latin America and U.S. Hispanic markets will handle production, cultural adaptation and translation of broadcast services for the regions, according to Patricia Canary, PR Newswire’s vice president for Hispanic and Latin America markets.

“Every distribution ensures that our client’s message gets through to hundreds of newsrooms throughout 21 countries in Latin America and every U.S. region with a heavy Hispanic influence,” she said. “Our team has an extensive database of contacts, in-country affiliates and production experience to offer the most effective way for reaching the ever-growing number of Spanish language channels and their untapped audiences.”

Gina Amaro, PR Newswire’s manager of client services for Hispanic and Latin America markets, said the time is right to introduce services “in-culture and in-language given the fast growth and limited broadcast resources both here for Spanish language media and in Latin America.” It enables PR Newswire to offer its global clients a comprehensive set of communications services for multilingual and multicultural emerging markets, she said.

“We are responding to the growth of the Hispanic market, which is no longer a niche area – it’s a mass market that companies need to include as a component of their communications programs if they want to survive,” Amaro added. “Building this audience especially in the Spanish-speaking United States isn’t a luxury anymore, it’s critical for growth.”

Many U.S. companies have begun extending their product rollouts in Spanish because Hispanics are the fastest growth segment of our population. According to Amaro, the increase of Hispanics in the U.S. domestic population surpassed U.S. Census Bureau projections that one out of five residents in 20 years will be Hispanic. In Southern California, she said, one-third of the population is now Hispanic.

The boom has been paralleled by the increase in Spanish media.

But companies need to understand that the U.S. Hispanic and Latin America markets are very different from each other, Amaro said.

“The U.S. Hispanic audience shares the same interests, priorities and concerns as all Americans yet prefers to watch and listen to media in their native language. Otherwise, they exhibit the same consumer behavior as their counterparts,” she said. “Each area of the Latin American region, which encompasses major key markets in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, has unique cultural nuances.”

To reach the media effectively in Latin America, PR Newswire has opened local offices in Mexico City, São Paulo and Rio and plans an upcoming bureau in Buenos Aires while partnering with major news agencies in the region including O Globo (Brazil), Noticias Argentinas, FinSat (Mexico), CMA Brasil, Bloomberg Brazil, Infoven in Venezuela, Knight Ridder’s Press Link and the Reuters Multimedia Data Network.

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