Agency

AHAA: The Voice of Hispanic Marketing announced its Annual “Thinking Under the Influence” Conference will return to the Eden Roc Renaissance Hotel in Miami on April 25 to 27, 2015. With its high-level speakers and breaking new research, AHAA will continue its dialogue on the extraordinary evolution of the American landscape and the power of multicultural apparent not only in the marketing industry-at large but also across consumer trends, purchasing behavior, pop culture and entertainment.

Univision and Eventus announced the dates and lineup of the artists who will headline the 2014 “Premios Juventud” VIP Tour (PJ VIP Tour) presented by Dr Pepper, a series of private concerts featuring performances by today’s hottest Latin music stars, including past and present “Premios Juventud” nominees and winners.

Cristy Verdeja Zaldívar has been promoted to Account Manager at the Miami headquarters of Pinta. She previously worked as a Senior Account Executive coordinating a variety of public relations and marketing campaigns for clients including T-Mobile, Nat Geo Mundo and Terra.

Consumers are increasingly “going mobile,” but U.S.-based Hispanics in particular have adopted and embraced mobile technology at an equivalent or greater extent than non-Hispanics across a wide variety of mobile device activities, according to a new PwC US report titled “Mi Móvil: Hispanic Consumers Embrace Mobile Technology.”

Digital has become a key driver of business decisions across industries, with a significant number of those choices falling under the marketing function. Digital and its possibilities continue to impact the role of the CMO, but is there a danger that by placing so much emphasis on analytical skills, marketing leaders may be overlooking other vital skills? What skills will the CMO of the not-so-distant future need to be successful? To help answer these questions, Spencer Stuart surveyed more than 160 senior marketing leaders in advance of our annual CMO Summit, spanning the consumer, financial services, technology, life sciences, industrial, media and advertising, and nonprofit sectors.  By Arthur S. Brown, Grant Duncan, Thomas Seclow, Greg Welch

America’s milk companies launch Milk Life campaign in Spanish, the new multi-million dollar, cross-platform campaign designed to reinforce how milk’s many nutritional benefits – including high-quality protein – can help power the everyday potential of Latino families.

The US consumer packaged goods (CPG) and consumer products industry’s advertising spending on digital media will hit $4.20 billion in 2014 and steadily increase to $7.04 billion by 2018, according to a new eMarketer report, “The US CPG and Consumer Products Industry 2014: Digital Ad Spending Forecast and Trends,” part of our new report series, “2014 Digital Ad Spending Benchmarks by Industry.”

Culture is moving at an ever increasing rate. Consumers are cynical, tired of being sold to. The marketplace isn’t getting bigger yet competitors continue to flood the market. Meaningful differentiation and true innovation is increasingly hard to unlock.

Agencies are searching for a way to remain relevant in the data age of marketing. As a result of this quest, many are announcing “big strategic deals” with publishers like Facebook and Twitter.  These deals are intended to guarantee publisher revenue in exchange for preferred levels of service, but isn’t that what agencies are supposed to provide on their own?  Why do agencies have to be “all-in” in order to achieve efficiency?  Don’t these kinds of deals infringe on the agency’s ability to be nimble, strategic and flexible enough to find the right way to spend their client’s money?

Dallas based iNSPIRE! announced that Matt Reyes has officially joined the team as Director of Digital & Social Strategy. Matt will lead social and digital campaign development for clients such as Tecate, Indio, and Sprint reporting to iNSPIRE! President, Lonnie Limon.

Universal Pictures announced an intensified commitment to its multicultural marketing division by promoting Fabian Castro to oversee the department and extending Talitha Watkins’ contract. 

Americans appear ready to move on from worrying about the recession and one thing seems clear: they need a vacation.  Mintel’s annual comparative audit report, American Lifestyles 2014, suggests that renewed consumer spending is in line with pre-recession trends and consumer optimism is higher than it’s been in years.

In an earlier post, we showed how Hispanic Adult Millennials aren’t yet where they want to be in their careers. As they work their way toward landing their dream jobs, many are employed in low-wage professions they’ve taken just for the paycheck.  So when it comes to their current jobs, what are their biggest challenges?

US advertisers will collectively spend upward of $50 billion on digital advertising in 2014, according to new figures from eMarketer. This represents the fifth year in a row of torrid growth, reflecting broad economic and advertising industry trends that have driven nonstop, double-digit gains across virtually all industries since the trough of the Great Recession in 2009.

Eventus and the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County announced the creation of a new concert series, CUBA BEAT, sponsored by Baptist Health South Florida. The innovative series which begins on September 27th as part of the 2014-2015 season, will spotlight the best in Cuban music by celebrating diverse musical genres and its creators. Every show will feature a different artist, each a master of the highlighted genre.

Even in a world where consumers can connect with each other via text in an instant and do their shopping from their couches, people still crave a physical place to congregate, connect and engage. And more and more, shopping centers are a big part of fulfilling that need. So as shopping centers and malls remain prominent in our culture and consciousness, developers and retailers have big opportunities to become the centers of their communities.

It is a common situation faced by healthcare providers today. A patient, unable to communicate well in English, arrives for treatment and often waits longer than other patients to receive treatment, may not fully understand the treatment that they are receiving, and sometimes bring a different set of cultural values and experiences with health care providers.  Depending on the language and staffing support available, the outcome for the patient becomes a risky situation.  By Edward T. Rincón, Ph.D.

Digitization is rewriting the rules of competition, with incumbent companies most at risk of being left behind. Here are six critical decisions CEOs must make to address the strategic challenge posed by the digital revolution.  by Martin Hirt and Paul Willmott

By Gonzalo López Martí @LopezMartiMiami

We keep whining about Donald Sterling and his recently surfaced racist comments.
Question is, why do we want him to apologize?
Will a staged act of phony public contrition be enough for us to forgive him, move on and resume business as usual?
He was right when he scolded Anderson Cooper for having a “plantation mentality”.
We all have it.
Sterling’s point is quite insightful: we love our white slave owners.
We are happy to keep the status quo and butt our heads against the hurricane-proof glass ceiling.

A while ago, I wrote about terminology I wanted to rid the industry of, with immediate effect. It was (to date) one of my best-read and most responded-to columns on MediaPost. But it is not just the over-usage of industry lingo that is bad for the industry. Even worse is that the industry is still holding on to marketing terminologies and definitions of yesteryear.