Agency

Each year, the major U.S. cigarette and smokeless tobacco companies must submit reports to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that outline the total amounts they have spent to market the products they sell and the amounts they have spent in different marketing categories (such as magazine and newspaper ads, internet advertising, coupons, promotional expenditures at retail outlets, direct mail, and the like). The 2005 total includes $13.1 billion in cigarette marketing and $250.8 million in smokeless tobacco marketing. In 1998, the tobacco companies spent $6.9 billion on marketing ($6.7 billion for cigarettes and $145.5 million for smokeless tobacco).

How do you get your clients excited and committed to your market? I have found the variety of approaches we multicultural marketing professionals take to sell our market to corporate America inspiring, amusing and at times, just flat out embarrassing. And while we have become more sophisticated in communicating our target’s business value, it is fair to say that the most important step in marketing brands to Latinos starts with “marketing latinos” to brands.

Search Engine Strategies (SES) is hosting the second annual Search Engine Strategies (SES) Latino Conference and Expo in Miami, Florida, on June 18-19, 2007. Executives and their marketing and web development teams will attend the event to gain insight on how to reach this highly lucrative Spanish and Portuguese speaking audience. SES Latino will offer its sessions in English along with live translation in Spanish and Portuguese.

The huge influx of immigrants coming to the United States from every corner of the globe has helped propel the issue of immigration high up on the national agenda. Most of the attention has focused on the legal side of the issue, especially with Congress set to tackle comprehensive immigration reform this year.

In contrast, relatively little attention has focused on the side of the nation’s immigration story that represents the future: children.

The high costs of prescription drugs led many Hispanics and African Americans to take desperate measures, like delaying filling a prescription or skipping doses, according to a new AARP national study of adults 18 plus. The study also found a high level of support in the Hispanic and African American communities for state legislation to make prescription drugs more affordable.

New consumer research from Leichtman Research Group, Inc. (LRG) finds that 23% of all TV sets in consumers’ homes do not receive cable or Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) programming. This represents over 70 million TV sets in US households that only receive over-the-air broadcast television.

Madison Avenue’s scramble for digital media and advertising services is a drive to remain relevant and to avoid being subsumed by bigger, far more capitalized players. That seems to be the picture emerging after an unprecedented series of deals that have consolidated some $12 billion in digital advertising services in the hands of big agency holding companies like Publicis, Interpublic and WPP, as well as two outside players: Google and Microsoft. Microsoft’s acquisition of aQuantive, in particular, looks to be a game-changing deal, making the software giant one of the biggest players in the ad industry.

The broad picture of a niche medium.

It would be a mistake to think that the average podcast user is a 23-year-old male with a college education and a really big comic book collection. Podcast users are not a homogeneous group, and downloads range from music to religious broadcasts to museum tours.

That said, overall podcasting user demographics give a broad perspective on the medium.

Use a charcoal or gas grill? Prefer a full-size or portable grill? Serve chicken or hamburger? Who is more confident mastering the grill? The answers to these and other questions surprisingly varied between Hispanics and Americans overall, according to this year’s Weber Hispanic GrillWatch Survey, the country’s most comprehensive study on Hispanics’ grilling habits associated with ownership, usage, foods, and entertaining.

In case you are not familiar with these variables, let me explain. They are a measurement of your share of voice in advertising.