Business

As the most desirable business goal, breakthrough innovations don’t come easy. Even though companies dedicate massive amounts of time, talent and resources to their innovation efforts, few initiatives yield something that’s truly a runaway success.

The latest Consensus Ad Forecast from Warc, the marketing intelligence service, indicates that global advertising expenditure will increase by 3.4% in 2013, a downgrade of -0.6pp from the previous forecast in January 2013. Adspend is expected to pick up next year with growth of 5.4%.

Prospects for the broader U.S. economy appear tepid. But among private enterprises, opportunity seemingly abounds. Our survey of 473 private company executives found that 58% say their companies are poised for revenue growth of 6% or greater in the year ahead. In fact, 15% say growth will range from 11% to 20%—and one out of 10 executives believes growth will run greater than 20%.

How often have we heard the well-worn sentiment of ‘perfect partners’ – tomato and basil, ying and yang, Fred and Ginger? For me, this romantic perfection is not a reality. Far more interesting are those partnerships that challenge each other – risotto and strawberries, the ANC Youth league and the South African Communist Party, Homer and Marge. It’s not perfect but the union amplifies mutual benefits. Imagine a set of knitting needles and wool – how do you achieve your mission without one or other?

Telemundo Station Group announced the opening of a new Business Development office in Mexico City. The new unit will support and generate investment from companies in Mexico and Latin America that are seeking to reach the U.S. Hispanic market at both national and local levels.

For those of you that know Ralph Paniagua, the Hispanic entrepreneur has been a true Pioneer in the Latino Marketing space for the past 30 years. Among his “First” includes the broadcast of the Caribbean World Series, the development and promotion of Latinos in Baseball, sponsorships of Championship boxing with HBO that set the way promoters market PPV events, and some of the best concerts produced in the city of New York.

Total advertising expenditures in the first quarter of 2013 declined 0.1 percent from a year ago and finished the period at $30.2 billion, according to data released by Kantar Media.

GLR Networks announced the addition of Sachari Milian as the Programming-Content Director and Executive Producer.

Health Media Network (HMN) is launching its newest information and education network created specifically for Hispanic healthcare physicians and consumers.

Findings support the importance of considering racial diversity in audience segmentation. Non-whites were more likely than were whites to actively seek information. Print media use was more predictive of information seeking and processing than was Internet, television, or radio use. Implications for audience segmentation in public health campaigns are discussed.

In recent years, diversity has been one of the prominent issues that companies have addressed on their Web sites. Yet, few studies have investigated public relations efforts on diversity communication via corporate Web sites.

Data analysis in business is not a new phenomenon. However, never before have we had so much data, from so many sources, available so quickly. At the same time, the technology to store, manipulate and make use of the data has never been more accessible. The explosion of data and the ability to use data to inform decision-making increasingly are referred to simply as “big data.” Big data has emerged both as an industry and as a practice within a growing number of companies that see the potential to derive new insights and ultimately gain competitive advantage from data. The rise of big data has received an enormous amount of press coverage, but we would like to draw attention to the organizational and talent investments required for big data to make a difference in the business.