Dieste Harmel & Partners – Ad Age ‘Multicultural Agency Of The Year’.

Advertising Age has selected Dieste Harmel & Partners as its first Multicultural Agency of the Year. Dieste Harmel, based in Dallas, is the biggest independent US. Hispanic agency and ranks third in size among all U.S. Hispanic ad agencies.

Reflecting the growing importance of multicultural marketing, Ad Age this added a multicultural agency to its annual lineup of best U.S. Agency of the Year and best Global Agency Network of the Year. Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide was named U.S. Agency of the Year and BBDO Worldwide was chosen Global Agency Network of the Year in this week’s issue of the magazine.

Ad Age editors selected Dieste Harmel because of the agency’s outstanding creative work, billings growth of more than 25% in 2001 and strategic insights into Hispanic consumers for clients like Anheuser-Busch Cos.’ Bud Light, PepsiCo, Hyundai and Radio Shack.

“Given the increasing amount of coverage we are dedicating to multicultural marketing, it’s important to add a multicultural agency to our annual best agencies contest,” said Laurel Wentz, Ad Age’s international editor. “We had excellent entries from a number of Hispanic and African-American agencies. Dieste won us over with a very high standard of creative work, combined with some amazing strategic insights into the Hispanic consumer. The agency also had an excellent new business record in 2001.”