Agency

The number of mobile phone users in Latin America is growing at an increasingly slower pace. eMarketer estimates the number of individuals of any age who owned at least one mobile phone and used it at least once per month inched up a mere 4.2% in 2014 to reach 395.5 million. Roughly one-third of those users lived in Brazil, with an additional 78.2 million in Mexico. Colombia (31.7 million) came in third, ahead of Argentina’s 30.0 million users during the same period.

Desktops’ smaller-screen counterparts—laptops—saw a tiny decline in usage, as did smartphones, somewhat surprising considering their ever-growing relevance in consumers’ day-to-day lives. However, the reason for this may be due to increased usage of another touchscreen device: tablets.

Although Generation Y has yet to make a major impact on the new car market, GfK believes that this age group’s interest in all things “tech” is going to be critical for the future of the connected car industry.

KFC has launched a new Hispanic broadcast initiative geared toward bringing the slow and savory back into lunch with KFC’s “$5 Fill Ups.” Airing nationally through January 18th, KFC is helping adults; including Billennials (Hispanic millennials) indulge with five lunch alternatives that offer an abundant value.

The series will begin airing on the Qué Rica Vida YouTube channel on January 8, 2015 and will continue through Mother’s Day, with a new episode available every other Thursday.  

Now it’s brand marketers’ turn to go all in on native, as advertisers large and small are rushing to launch true native ad campaigns.  As they do, they know that to effectively succeed, their own content needs to take center stage.  Content creation coupled with content distribution is what publishers do best. As brands embrace native, they must (and some already do) think like publishers.

Telling CEOs these days that leadership drives performance is a bit like saying that oxygen is necessary to breathe. Over 90 percent of CEOs are already planning to increase investment in leadership development because they see it as the single most important human-capital issue their organizations face.

If social media is the new water cooler, U.S. viewers certainly had their share of “let’s discuss” moments in 2014. From someone kind of getting devoured by an anaconda to the U.S. Men’s World Cup soccer squad trying to make a go of it to, well, zombies, there’s no shortage of Twitter activity during programs—and even in the days after.

Consumers are dancing to the beat of Pandora. In an RBC Capital Markets study conducted in November 2014, 51% of US internet users reported listening to music via Pandora—nearly double those who did so in December 2013. This put the music streaming platform in the top spot as it surpassed more traditional FM/AM radio as well as CDs.

Young adult (YA) fiction adaptations—movies based on young adult fiction titles—are a growing slice of the box office pie, increasing 6% between 2013 and 2014. One might assume that teens are driving this trend, considering that the characters in these books are around their age. But in reality, young adults are heading to theaters less frequently than they were five years ago, and fans of the YA movie genre span many age groups.

In today’s world, social media usage appears to run rampant at times. Aside from just keeping in touch with friends and family, social media has a plethora of other uses; but while more Americans are seeing benefits from their social media usage, they are also encountering some negative experiences.

This time of year everyone comes out with lists of the biggest trends of the past year or bold predictions for the upcoming one. However, you can often forego bold predictions by paying close attention and adapting to big changes taking place right before our eyes. Using this lens, here are eight seismic changes to the Hispanic market that occurred in 2014, with huge implications for how to engage Hispanics in 2015 and beyond.  By Jose Villa / Sensis

When President Obama recently announced steps to significantly thaw the relationship between the United States and Cuba, it served as the latest and loudest wake-up call that tourism in the Caribbean region could soon be having a dramatic shift.

By Gonzalo López Martí / LMMIAMI.COM

• A few weeks back I ranted about the feeling of déjà vu a citizen of 2015 is exposed to when he or she is marketed to.
• Ads.
• You’ve seen one you’ve seen them all.
• The naïve consumer of old is gone for good.
• Those darned consumers are terminally jaded and blasé these days.
• They’ve been marketed to to such an extent, they have been exposed to such colossal amounts of advertising that they simply switched off their fickle attention or trained it elsewhere. 

Most consumers experience challenges using several new types of smart high tech devices, according to a new report from Accenture titled Engaging the Digital Consumer in the New Connected World.

The internet and cell phones have infiltrated every cranny of American workplaces, and digital technology has transformed vast numbers of American jobs. Work done in the most sophisticated scientific enterprises, entirely new technology businesses, the extensive array of knowledge and media endeavors, the places where crops are grown, the factory floor, and even mom-and-pop stores has been reshaped by new pathways to information and new avenues of selling goods and services. For most office workers now, life on the job means life online.

In digital advertising, marketers have traditionally relied on direct response advertising. But this is changing—brand marketing growth is outpacing direct response ad growth in the digital sphere.

With the current state of audience fragmentation and the proliferation of viewing platforms, Reach is a critical goal for advertisers seeking to engage with their desired audiences. In Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings, Reach measures how many unique individuals are exposed to an ad.

Compared to organizations in the retail, communications and financial services sectors that are gaining noteworthy value from advanced analytics, it is arguable whether consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies have yet to achieve the same results. Often they are still using outdated approaches to sales and marketing, and many are also not using social and mobile data to their full potential.

It is tradition that at the end of the year, writers and industry pundits light up their crystal ball and predict what they think will be the key developments in the industry for the coming year. Crystal-balling has in fact been a tradition since the invention of the almanac, dating back to some time to the middle of the second millennium BCE.
When it comes to marketing and advertising, I recently realized that predicting is actually not very hard at all. And I am going to prove this to you with this post.